Disabling the web-updater by default?

[szaimen]

What about disabling the web-updater by default?
Since the web-updater didn't work the last time I've tried it with Nextcloud VM, what about disabling it by default?
From the Nextcloud manual:

[enoch85]

Hmm, never thought of that. Wouldn't that make the update notification disabled as well?

I would like to have the VMs own notify system. It's possible, but some code is missing in the server still. Maybe next project for you? https://github.com/nextcloud/vm/pull/886/files

[szaimen]

I've tested the config option and it doesn't disable the web updater.
But I found this: nextcloud/server#18585

Hmm, never thought of that. Wouldn't that make the update notification disabled as well

Probably not.

I would like to have the VMs own notify system. It's possible, but some code is missing in the server still. Maybe next project for you? https://github.com/nextcloud/vm/pull/886/files

Maybe after smbshare is merged.

[szaimen]

This is probably how the nextcloud snap handles this:
nextcloud-snap/nextcloud-snap@31a623c
But i don't know if we could learn from it for doing the same with the nextcloud vm until there is an official option...

[enoch85]

@oparoz @kyrofa Hmm, how would you handle that in bash? Just create ncpath/htdocs/ and then put the same files as you did in there?

[kyrofa]

Can you just occ app:disable? We do that with theming, for example.

[szaimen]

Unfortunately not, since it's not a normal app:
If I do occ app:list, there is no updater app listed but it is definitely installed and working in the Nextcloud VM.

That is also probably the reason why a config.php option is discussed to disable the web-updater here: nextcloud/server#18585

[kyrofa]

Ah. Effectively all the organize does is rm -rf the app. Might as well just do that. We also disable updatenotification.

[szaimen]

Ah okay, I get it know 👍
So this would probably not work for the Nextcloud VM since you would loose the update-notifications. We just wanted to disable the web-updater.
But thank you for your fast and helpful reply, @kyrofa!

[szaimen]

@enoch85 here another idea:
What about blocking the url https://cloud.domain.tld/updater ?
that is the path to the web updater and if blocked, the web-updater shouldn't work...
If this url was opened, then you could redirect to the site that was open before...

A second option would be creating a cronjob that checks if a new version is found and automatically posts a notification with the information to the admin group. Then you could disable the updatenotification app.

The third option is of course just waiting for the config.php option to get implemented.

[enoch85]

What about blocking the url https://cloud.domain.tld/updater ?

We don't want to hack the code (are not allowed to really) by adding our own stuff in it such as blocking real Nextcloud URLs. It would be very hackish and @jospoortvliet already pointed that out in the past. The Nextcloud VM should deliver Nextcloud "as is" at least from my understanding.

A second option would be creating a cronjob that checks if a new version is found and automatically posts a notification with the information to the admin group. Then you could disable the updatenotification app.

I think that would be a much better option since then notify_users_gui() are in place, and we wouldn't touch the Nextcloud code. Also the VM uses its own CLI updater anyway.

A third option would be to be able to execute the CLI updater directly from GUI, really cool, but really insecure as the CLI updater requires root - and yeah, we don't want to go there. :)

If you have time @szaimen it would be great if you could put a PR togehter for discussion.

Thanks!

[szaimen]

@enoch85 I honestly don't think that we can substitute all features of the update notification app, but we'll see. (E.g. we cannot delete notifications to my knowledge)

But anyway, we should start with Nextcloud updates first.

As a note to myself:
I think these are the two important files:
https://github.com/nextcloud/server/tree/master/apps/updatenotification/lib/Notification

[enoch85]

I honestly don't think that we can substitute all features of the update notification app, but we'll see. (E.g. we cannot delete notifications to my knowledge)

What Nextcloud does:
Gives you a notification in GUI about that there's an new update and tell you to use the GUI updater

What the Nextcloud VM would do:
Gives you a notification in GUI about that there's an new update + instructions on how to update

Did I miss something?

I'm thinking:

1. Disable the standard update notification sent by Nextcloud
2. Use notify_users_gui() and send the same notification, but from a function in the VM that checks if there's a new update or not.

With that (---^) we could customize the notification text, such as give information about what the user should do (e.g. "Please run sudo bash /var/scripts/update.sh from your CLI") instead of confusing the user by using the Nextcloud GUI updater which doesn't work due to strong permissions in the VM (if you don't change them ofc).

[enoch85]

Btw, we should rename the notify function to notify_admin_gui.

[enoch85]

Very quick and dirty, but something like this as a cronjob:

if version_gt "$NCVERSION" "$CURRENTVERSION"
then 
notify_admin_gui \
"Update availabile!" \
"Please run 'sudo bash /var/scripts/update.sh' from your CLI"
fi