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18% of people running Nextcloud don't know what database they are using (programming.dev)
submitted 3 months ago by otto@programming.dev to c/selfhosted@lemmy.world
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Nextcloud asked in a poll at https://mastodon.social/@nextcloud@mastodon.xyz/115095096413238457 what database its users are running. Interestingly one fifth replied they don't know. Should people know better where their data is stored, or is it a good thing everything is running so smoothly people don't need to know what their software stack is built upon?

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[-] eager_eagle@lemmy.world 6 points 3 months ago

I also have no idea if my place has PVC or galvanized steel plumbing; or its designed electrical load. Why should users care about the DBMS.

[-] Sprocketfree@sh.itjust.works 0 points 3 months ago

I found this way funnier then I think you meant it.... PVC wasn't persistent volume claim was it?

[-] Ajen@sh.itjust.works 6 points 3 months ago

I write software for a living, and have worked with all 3 database options in the past. I don't know what DB backend my nextcloud server is using, nor do I care.

[-] dustyData@lemmy.world 3 points 3 months ago

Yeah, that is the kind of concern for the service developer or a very opinionated sys admin. For self-hosting, few people will reach the workload where such a decision has any material or measurable impact.

[-] u_tamtam@programming.dev 0 points 3 months ago

Self hosting doesn't mean "being wasteful and letting containers duplicate services". I want to know which DB application X is using, so I pool it for applications Y and Z.

[-] Ajen@sh.itjust.works 2 points 3 months ago

For most applications the overhead of running a second DB server is negligible.

[-] absentbird@lemmy.world 1 points 3 months ago

And if it's SQLite (which I believe is the default) it's really just reading and writing a file on the file system.

[-] SparroHawc@lemmy.zip 3 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

If you're running it in a prebuilt container, as long as it works it shouldn't matter and you don't need to care.

Of course, when your database gets corrupted after Nextcloud updates because you had an app running that isn't supported in the new version, it will suddenly matter a lot.

[-] Pechente@feddit.org 1 points 3 months ago

I‘m using a hosted Nextcloud instance from Hetzner and I have no idea what this is running on either. There’s a significant number of people who didn’t set up their Nextcloud instance, so people not knowing what it’s running on isn’t too surprising.

[-] fodor@lemmy.zip 3 points 3 months ago

Well that's kind of misleading, right? If they didn't set one up, then it's probably SQLite. But if they did set one up, that was years ago, and who cares what it is, if it's working.

[-] roofuskit@lemmy.world 3 points 3 months ago

That's because they push the all in one container.

[-] dude@lemmings.world 1 points 3 months ago

I’ve made a choice a while ago while deploying Nextcloud. Now I don’t care, as I trust myself that I have opted for something reasonable which was hopefully not SQLite

[-] Ooops@feddit.org 1 points 3 months ago

Isn't that the whole point of containerised solutions? Having some pre-setup, auto-updating solution with very little requirement to dive into the details like what your database is and which dependencies you need to manage...

[-] dan@upvote.au 0 points 3 months ago

You still need to know what database system is being used in order to make backups of the database. You can't just snapshot or backup the data directory while a database is running, because you might end up with an inconsistent state that won't restore properly. You need to either stop the DB before doing the backup, or use the relevant DB-specific tools to perform a backup.

[-] onslaught545@lemmy.zip 1 points 3 months ago

Most of my containerized solutions do that for me.

[-] dan@upvote.au 1 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

Which containers do automatic DB backups? Normally the database is a separate container, unless the app is using SQLite. Is there a MySQL or PostgreSQL container that does automated backups?

[-] Ooops@feddit.org 1 points 3 months ago

So one in five doesn't do proper backups. That's much better than expected... 😅

[-] Zorque@lemmy.world 1 points 3 months ago

The rule of internet polls is that the funniest answer is always over-represented.

[-] Horta@discuss.tchncs.de 1 points 3 months ago

If some of them are users rather than admins, it makes sense and maybe it's a good sign that they don't have to know in order to use the service.

[-] m33@lemmy.zip 0 points 3 months ago

Users is the right word here, not admin, not sysadmin, not owner. Docker pull docker up users that’s it

[-] themurphy@lemmy.ml 0 points 3 months ago

Also just users. No docker or anything, just using the system someone else setup for them.

NextCloud is used everywhere, also in commercial use.

[-] slazer2au@lemmy.world 0 points 3 months ago

Honestly, does it matter to a regular user?
There will be some that do matter, if I were to run NC I would use Lite because why throw the data to another process just to write it to a disk when I only have a single node.

[-] chickenf622@sh.itjust.works 0 points 3 months ago

Well it does depend on your exact use case, but using a proper database is usually the better option for production. Now if this is just some little service you made for yourself use whatever you want.

[-] panda_abyss@lemmy.ca 2 points 3 months ago

SQLite is a proper database. Realistically you’ll never exhaust its 278tb storage limits, it’s thoroughly battle tested, and it’s dead easy to backup.

I doubt nextcloud is running enough parallel db writes for this to actually matter — and if it is WAL mode is still probably good enough.

Once you have multiple software clients running then you will need a client server dbms like Postgres. For most home or group installations, this should not be an issue.

[-] paraphrand@lemmy.world 0 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

Every person using a computer should know what their filesystem is and what database they are using. Otherwise they are fools.

Can you believe kids don’t know what NTFS or APFS are these days?! Stupid iPad babies.

[-] paper_moon@lemmy.world 1 points 3 months ago

Haha at some point it did matter to regular folks though. I remember in Junior high when I would try to pirate games or software on Windows, I learned the big difference between fat32 and the new filesystem Microsoft released, NTFS because I couldn't download files larger than 4GB on fat32.

[-] chickenf622@sh.itjust.works 0 points 3 months ago

Wait is APFS a new file system than NTFS? Guess I'm too busy on my Tiktoks and Nintendos to keep up to date

[-] grte@lemmy.ca 1 points 3 months ago

Apple file system

[-] Engywuck@lemmy.zip 0 points 3 months ago

Ewww...

[-] paraphrand@lemmy.world 1 points 3 months ago

Look into it, it’s pretty good.

And Apple updated hundreds of millions of devices to it from an old file system without losing any data. Imagine Microsoft pulling off such a migration. It was silently done in the background with a normal OS update. Really impressive.

this post was submitted on 04 Sep 2025
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