EDIT 190515: Oops. Apparently in the instructions below in the Nautilus section I failed to say how to actually connect. Adding that now. Sorry.
Nice long title. Thankfully the speed of getting your first big upload to your new Nextcloudpi (NCP) server won’t be so long, thanks to this tutorial! By spending 10 minutes and doing this tutorial you will be uploading 95% faster (that was my experience).
Assumptions Before Beginning
- You have full 100% admin access to your NCP (ie. you are the master admin and probably created the server and installed it, or are close friends with the person who did)
- You have SSH access to your NCP, and you know how to SSH into your NCP. If you don’t… you’ll need to research that first.
1. Confirm the Username in NCP Who Will receive the Big File Shipment
This major upload will need to be associated with a username. In my case, I have created a ‘master-master user’ for this kind of reason. So I will be shipping this big upload to my ‘master-master user’ so that after it’s done that user can assign which files are to be shared with whom (and how). I think this is the right way to do it, even if you are the admin yourself. Topic is open to discussion, but that’s how I roll…
Make sure this user exists in NCP is the key point.
2. SSH into your NCP
NOTE! Apparently you can do steps 2, 3, and 4 via the NCP web admin so this means you might not need SSH, plus it might be easier. I won’t have a chance to test myself for a while but try that out first maybe! Otherwise, learn SSH and do the next few steps the way I write.
3. Setup Samba in NCP
sudo ncp-config
The first screen is informative and the ‘yes/no’ answers don’t make sense if you read it for grammatical sense. Just chose ‘yes’ which means “I understand that I have to force NCP to ‘scan’ the files when I’m done putting files on the box” This has now (Dec 2018) been fixed by the developers and it now says ‘I understand’ in the option box. Nice and thanks!
You will see:
ACTIVE: NO
PASSWORD: ownyourbits
Type ‘yes’ (no quotes) overtop of ‘no’ in ‘active’ and type in a strong password. You will use this password later and probably you don’t want to give this to anyone else because if you do, that user can go in and mess with other people’s files (I think) Use the Tab key until you arrive at ‘yes’ and press ‘enter’
It should automatically create the ‘samba shares’ for each username you have already put into the system. This means that every user in your box can also access files on the cloud this way and not just with a nextcloud client user features. But the main point is that we’ll be able to move files quickly across the Local Area Network (LAN)
Once this part is done, press any key it will bring you back to your ncp-config screen.
Tab twice until you hit ‘finish’ and then press enter. That will bring you back to your terminal.
4. Do your Samba Shares (and I don’t mean the dance….)
In this example I will be using Ubuntu desktop, so if you are using some other operating system – tough bananas – and you’ll have to search some other tutorial about how to connect your computer to your NCP using Samba.
First, open Nautilus (also called ‘Files” if you mouse-over it. The thing that lets you browser your files on your computer and looks like a file cabinet.
Next, go down to ‘Other Locations’ on the left panel and click it. In this case we want to use the LAN IP address because that’s the whole point of this exercse – fast transfer across LAN instead of going through the internets…
- EDIT 190515: enter into the ‘connect to Server’ field at the bottom smb://ipaddress (ie. smb://192.168.1.30) where the ip address is, of course, the address of your nextcloud box
- Enter in the credentials for the Samba user you made.
As soon as you enter it in, assuming your box is on, it will find all those usenames and folders for them automatically. Double click the one you want to dump all the files into (probably your master-master admin account). The next part, although it seems easy – is not! But the reward is great so let’s do it.
I realized that what you need here for the username is indeed the NCP username but, but, but.. the password is the one you created in step 3 above! So tricky but alas…
5. “You like to Move it, Move it.”
Let’s move the files now. In Nautilus, middle mouse click wherever your main dump of files are. That will open up a new Nautilius tab from where you can drag, drop stuff into the other tab you just logged into. I just find this a nice and easy way but you can drag drop files there however you like.
Now, select everything you want to move and move them into your NCP user’s Nautilus tab.
Note: You should consider doing this piece by piece unlike me who tried to move 13 GB at a time. You don’t have an easy way to check the progress in this way so consider doing these moves small pieces at a time so you can see progress more easily.
While this is file move is happening, read on to the next section because you’ll have to tell NCP to scan the files when it’s done.
6. Scan the Files
After the move is completely finished from step __ above, in your Nextcloudpi web admin area, scroll down to the ‘nc-scan’ section and run it. It took much less time than I expected. It quickly scans all the files associated with all the users and (I guess) says ‘hey, there is a file here connected to this user’. After running the scan NCP is ready to roll.
7. Start your sharing
Log into the account you just put the files in and start sharing as you like and normally do.
We here at wayne(outthere) hope this made your day shiny and bright. Have a nice day.
