nextcloud_news_updater 10.0.0

Dependencies

• Python >=3.5

Pre-Installation

To run the updates via an external threaded script the cron updater has to be disabled. To do that go to the admin section an uncheck the Use Nextcloud cron checkbox or open nextcloud/data/news/config/config.ini and set:

useCronUpdates = true

to:

useCronUpdates = false

Installation

There are two different ways to install the updater:

• Installation using pip (recommended)

• Manual installation

• No installation

sudo pip3 install nextcloud_news_updater --install-option="--install-scripts=/usr/bin"

sudo pip3 install --upgrade nextcloud_news_updater --install-option="--install-scripts=/usr/bin"

sudo pip3 uninstall nextcloud_news_updater

sudo apt-get install python3-setuptools

python3 setup.py install --install-scripts=/usr/bin

python3 setup.py uninstall

python3 -m nextcloud_news_updater /path/to/nextcloud

Usage

There are two ways to run the updater:

• Using the console API (recommended):

  nextcloud-news-updater /path/to/nextcloud

• Using the REST API (when running the updater on a different machine than Nextcloud):

  nextcloud-news-updater https://domain.com/path/to/nextcloud --user admin_user --password admin_password

Note: admin_user is a user id with admin rights, admin_password the user’s password

You can view all options by running:

nextcloud-news-updater --help

usage: __main__.py [-h] [--threads THREADS] [--timeout TIMEOUT]
                   [--interval INTERVAL] [--apilevel {v1-2,v2}]
                   [--loglevel {info,error}] [--config CONFIG]
                   [--phpini PHPINI] [--user USER] [--password PASSWORD]
                   [--version] [--mode {endless,singlerun}] [--php PHP]
                   [url]

positional arguments:
  url                   The URL or absolute path to the directory where
                        Nextcloud is installed. Must be specified on the
                        command line or in the config file. If the URL starts
                        with http:// or https://, a user and password are
                        required. Otherwise the updater tries to use the
                        console based API which was added in 8.1.0

optional arguments:
  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
  --threads THREADS, -t THREADS
                        How many feeds should be fetched in parallel, defaults
                        to 10
  --timeout TIMEOUT, -s TIMEOUT
                        Maximum number of seconds for updating a feed,
                        defaults to 5 minutes
  --interval INTERVAL, -i INTERVAL
                        Update interval between fetching the next round of
                        updates in seconds, defaults to 15 minutes. The update
                        timespan will be subtracted from the interval.
  --apilevel {v1-2,v2}, -a {v1-2,v2}
                        API level. Use v1-2, v2 is currently a draft only
  --loglevel {info,error}, -l {info,error}
                        Log granularity, info will log all urls and received
                        data, error will only log errors
  --config CONFIG, -c CONFIG
                        Path to config file where all parameters except can be
                        defined as key values pair. An example is in
                        bin/example_config.ini
  --phpini PHPINI, -P PHPINI
                        Custom absolute path to the php.ini file to use for
                        the command line updater. If omitted, the default one
                        will be used
  --user USER, -u USER  Admin username to log into Nextcloud. Must be
                        specified on the command line or in the config file if
                        the updater should update over HTTP
  --password PASSWORD, -p PASSWORD
                        Admin password to log into Nextcloud if the updater
                        should update over HTTP
  --version, -v         Prints the updater's version
  --mode {endless,singlerun}, -m {endless,singlerun}
                        Mode to run the updater in: endless runs the update
                        again after the specified interval, singlerun only
                        executes the update once
  --php PHP             Path to the PHP binary, e.g. /usr/bin/php7.0, defaults
                        to php

You can also put your settings in a config file, looking like this:

[updater]
# only needed when using the REST API
user = admin
# only needed when using the REST API
password = admin
threads = 10
interval = 900
loglevel = error
# or https://domain.com/nextcloud when using the REST API
url = /path/to/nextcloud
phpini = /path/to/custom/php.ini
# or v2 which is currently a draft
apilevel = v1-2
mode = endless
# path to php binary
php = /usr/bin/php7.0

Note: You can omit options in the config file if you want to use the defaults, but you can not have more than the allowed parameters present, otherwise an exception will abort the updater.

Then run the updater with:

nextcloud-news-updater -c /path/to/config

Note: Command line parameters will always overwrite config parameters, so if you just want to change your loglevel to info for one run you can now do the following without globally changing the config file:

nextcloud-news-updater -c /path/to/config --mode singlerun --loglevel info

Running The Updater As Systemd Service

Almost always you want to run and stop the updater using your in init system. As for Systemd, you can create a simple text file at /etc/systemd/system/nextcloud-news-updater.service with the following contents:

[Unit]
After=default.target

[Service]
Type=simple
User=http
ExecStart=/usr/bin/nextcloud-news-updater -c /etc/nextcloud/news/updater.ini

[Install]
WantedBy=default.target

Then to enable and start it run:

sudo systemctl enable nextcloud-news-updater.service
sudo systemctl start nextcloud-news-updater.service

Note: If you are using the cli based updater (as in set an absolute directory as url) you need to set the web-server user as user in the unit file. Otherwise the command will fail because Nextcloud checks for the owner of its files. This user varies from distribution to distribution, e.g in Debian and Ubuntu you would use the www-data user:

[Unit]
After=default.target

[Service]
Type=simple
User=www-data
ExecStart=/usr/bin/nextcloud-news-updater -c /etc/nextcloud/news/updater.ini

[Install]
WantedBy=default.target

If you are using the REST API, most of the time you can get away by using nobody as user, but again, that might vary depending on your distribution.

Troubleshooting

If you are having trouble debugging updater errors, try running it again using the info loglevel:

nextcloud-news-updater --loglevel info -c /path/to/config.ini

# delete folders and feeds marked for deletion
php -f /home/bernhard/programming/core/occ news:updater:before-update

# get all feeds to udpate
php -f /home/bernhard/programming/core/occ news:updater:all-feeds

# run all feed updates
php -f /home/bernhard/programming/core/occ news:updater:update-feed FEED_ID USER_ID

# delete old articles
php -f /home/bernhard/programming/core/occ news:updater:after-update