NextCloud Snap Packages updated to version 18

Just saw a notification that the Snap NextCloud installation I had running had been updated to version 18.0.4. For me this is fairly significant in that you can now self host your own office suite with “ONLYOFFICE” community edition and if you are ambitious enough, allowing the option to move away from the likes of Google and Microsoft (Office 365).

The catch is that you have to set it up yourself by installing the needed Apps.  To do this, go into Profile, then Apps and enable “Hub Bundle” (or at the very least “Community Document Server” and “ONLYOFFICE”)

Upon doing that, I ran into headaches with this vague and unhelpful error message…

Diving into the nextcloud.log… (the location of which is going to be different depending on your installation. Helpful I know.)

"message":"Allowed memory size of 134217728 bytes exhausted (tried to allocate 315857416 bytes)

I had to fire up an SSH session and send the following commands (applicable to Ubuntu Linux). One to increase the memory limit to 512 Megabytes and the 2nd one to restart the NextCloud service….

sudo snap set nextcloud php.memory-limit=512M 
sudo snap restart nextcloud

Back in NextCloud’s web interface, navigated back to Apps section and tried Enabling the Hub bundle again. Still got a flipping error!

"Cannot declare class OCA\\Talk\\Migration\\Version2000Date20170707093535, because the name is already in use at xxxxxxxxxxx"

At a loss as to now what to do, I then went through for each App under the Hub Bundle, clicking on Enable one by one and it worked for some completely and disconcertingly unknown reason (No errors happened this time around… have no idea why, sorry.)

After that, I went back to my Files and had a play at creating new word documents… (Success I guess)

Seems to work pretty well for a family user set up, even on the lowest tier VPS plan with my provider. (1CPU / 2GB RAM). Included with the ONLYOFFICE suite is a Word Processor, Spread Sheet and Presentation (slides) application. At the moment, the biggest issue I can see is the lack of a working spell checker on the community server plugin as reported here and here which I feel is fairly fundamental to a Word Processor. Little bit concerning is that the web browser based (core or plugin based) spell checkers don’t appear to work inside of it either.

I think at this stage, for word processing, will stick with using the visual Markdown editor “Text” (by Julius Härtl) and continue trailing out the Spread Sheet application by doing my Tax return on it and then reporting back here.

Despite the messing around and troubleshooting to get it working I’m overall pretty otherwise pleased with the “Only Office” implementation (Community Server plugin) as a proof of concept.

 

NextCloud Snap Packages updated to version 18

Stream of Consciousness Week 20th April 2020

Stream of conciousness and other personal thoughts garnered throughout the week and which will be added to as the week rolls on. These thoughts are unrefined, unquantified, unverified, and raw. Any of these may be either be edited, deleted or otherwise spawn out into it’s own separate post…

  • Looks like we are indeed going to need to be a lot more cognizant of all respiratory diseases and not just Coronaviruses going forward I feel. If CoVid-19 is causing this much concern, then Influenza while not the focus at the moment I assert is also a bit of a worry. Even though we have Vaccines for seasonal Influenza, my current feeling is that they have been pretty woefully ineffective in recent times, particularly in the elderly. Some sort of social distancing and social counter measures every flu season is likely to remain for the foreseeable future.

Older Stream of Conciousness thoughts can be found here.

Stream of Consciousness Week 20th April 2020

FaceBorg – Privacy? How about we talk about the concentration of power?

To be honest, privacy issues aside, I am significantly far more concerned around our continued almost exclusive reliance on Facebook’s products to communicate with our friends and family and subsequently helping Facebook, a sole for profit entity, gain a very concerning amount of control over our lives collectively.

Facebook Inc. aren’t some benevolent entity, they are a business and their first and foremost mandate ahead of anything else (including a head of wider social concerns) is to ultimately maximise profits to their owners.

Decades on, I desperately struggle to see why more of us aren’t concerned about this. Please, can someone enlighten me as to the faults in my thinking here? Please?

Also, Custom Audiences. I know I am alone in this thinking, But I consider businesses uploading my personal client information as part of a Custom Audience List to Facebook a breach of my privacy. You are effectively giving my personal information over to a 3rd party and that is not OK.

Facebook use that information to their advantage by matching up information as to where I have been, where I have shopped, etc.

We really don’t need to be rewarding nor supporting Facebook’s on going track record of behaviour, and we really don’t need to help support such a company (particularly a for-profit one) taking so much power and subsequently control over our lives.

FaceBorg – Privacy? How about we talk about the concentration of power?

Current Personal Take regarding CoViD-19

Indeed, my views have shifted over time. This is a rapidly evolving situation where frankly anything can go. I do agree that CoVid-19 is serious enough to warrant extra and utmost caution including taking measures such as proper and thorough hand washing, staying well away from others if you’re sick (CoVid-19 or not), and drastically limiting any non-essential travel. This is more so with protecting the more vulnerable in our communities (such as those who are elderly, who have pre-existing medical conditions, who are immunocompromised) along with flattening the curve to avoid overloading our health services (which includes the many hard-working health personnel on the front line).

At the moment, I am of the feeling that the lockdowns happening around the world on balance will save lives but a question does hover over whether these measures will ultimately be a net positive for people’s livelihood in terms of situational (e.g access to gainful employment, individual “agency”) and mental well-being overall in the longer term.

While I agree this situation is indeed serious, I am still of the opinion that many of the commercial mainstream media outlets globally have been irresponsibly fanning a counter-productive, unhelpful, and needless level of panic among the general population by cherry-picking the most extreme stories to come out of this. It would appear that a lot of people on the regular social media channels have been induced in to talking themselves in to a funk including lapping up what I consider as needlessly extreme apocalyptic fearporn doom scenarios and this appears to be getting more pronounced as the situation rolls on. I have been avoiding through blocking as much as possible, my own consumption of any mass media or social media during this period.

I don’t begrudge our own Government imposing a lock down. Given how globalised we were, The New Zealand Government had to do something (or at least been seen to do something) and it appears to be having at least a visible and measurable positive effect by way of decline in new cases each day. In saying that, as the lock down rolls on, I am seeing a lot of people’s mental well-being starting to decline being holed up in their homes and I am concerned that we could see a bit of increasing push back happening in the form of defiance or disobedience among a few of our own citizens.

People I feel need to be mindful that the Data, particularly surrounding death rates, coming out globally may be skewed until such time we can broaden testing availability to more of the general population. The people who will be most often tested at this stage of the cycle naturally will be the ones showing the worse symptoms.

Once this current situation recedes, It will be interesting to see if we will also be taking more consideration of other potentially deadly respiratory diseases such as influenza from here on in. I’m picking physical distancing (more commonly referred to as social distancing) will become a matter of habit for a few years after CoVid-19 comes to pass and may even be something encouraged as a matter of common courtesy every flu season.

Again, like any view expressed in this blog, my views are most certainly subjected to change as events unfold and as new information comes to light.

Current Personal Take regarding CoViD-19

Stream of Consciousness Week 6th April 2020

Stream of conciousness and other personal thoughts garnered throughout the week and which will be added to as the week rolls on. These thoughts are unrefined, unquantified, unverified, and raw. Any of these may be either be edited, deleted or otherwise spawn out into it’s own separate post…

  • It is worth highlighting that “Coronaviruses” are a type (or class if you will) of Virus. These include Common human coronaviruses which may only produce a mild, cold like, symptoms. I do wonder how reliable the test kits have been… How many false positives and false negatives there have been and has there been any such follow-up testing or otherwise investigation to ensure we aren’t picking up ordinary common coronaviruses as CoViD-19 and vice versa.
  • One positive thing about the lock down is that upon walking once were busy streets, you’re no longer suffocating in petrol and diesel fumes any more. This was especially so with busier roads such as Remuera Road, Lunn Avenue and St Johns Road for example.
  • Discovered some new tracks around the neighbourhood that I haven’t even realized that were there. Will probably go back and explore that track network later on.
  • Trialling YouTube red for a while. Probably the best time to do it.

Other CoVid-19 thoughts have been rolled up into their own post.

 

 

Stream of Consciousness Week 6th April 2020

Stream of Consciousness Week 30th March 2020

Stream of conciousness and other personal thoughts garnered throughout the week. These thoughts are unrefined, unquantified, unverified, and raw. Any of these may be either be edited, deleted or otherwise spawn out into it’s own separate post…

  • This period, would certainly be a time to learn new stuff. Trying to learn more about general Linux server administration and getting more into the guts of this. More for my own edification mainly for personal projects. In a small way, it may increase, slightly, the opportunities available.
  • The Remuera Golf Course has been closed for golf and has been kindly opened up for public access walking and jogging during the lock-down period. It’s a good large area to walk around and explore and recommend at least 2 hours if you want to stroll the entire area. Though try to stay off any greens that are under maintenance.  Restricted to those local to the area obviously.
  • Snitching on your fellow citizens… RNZ Audio Bite. While could be argued that the new Police form to report CoViD-19 L4 breaches is an essential tool to aid compliance, I am concerned that it may also inevitably breed fear, contempt and distrust of fellow citizenry in one’s community. I am also concerned that some may be treating this like game in that some people may derive a twisted sense of gratification reporting others… Like idiots who repeatedly upload snore-fest videos cataloguing a series of (minor) driving mistakes to YouTube from their Dashcam and acting all virtuous and sanctimonious about it.

Other CoVid-19 thoughts have been rolled up into their own post.

 

Stream of Consciousness Week 30th March 2020