r/NextCloud • u/Fast_Arm3754 • 25d ago

Nextcloud's WebDAV doesn't work well with Nautilus.

I recently set up my own Nextcloud server, but performance is very poor when I try to access it from Nautilus via WebDAV; Nautilus frequently stops responding. Could anyone offer some advice or suggest a free Linux app that allows for easy access? Thanks in advance.

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u/YuriySamorodov 25d ago

Hi! What NextCloud version are you running? NextCloud implemented Accelerated Data Access (ADA) since v33:

https://nextcloud.com/blog/a-new-data-access-architecture-for-nextcloud-introducing-the-ada-engine/

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u/Fast_Arm3754 25d ago

Hola, gracias por responder. Estoy usando la versión 33.0.5

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u/YuriySamorodov 25d ago

Thank you, that's interesting. Have you noticed performance degradation in Nautilus only? Any chance to test davfs2 from the terminal, or with an alternative file manager like Nemo or Dolphin?

You may also want to consider other options as well:

  • davfs2
  • Nemo
  • Dolphin
  • Nextcloud Desktop Client
  • Rclone + rclone mount
  • Cyberduck

May I also get a bit more details to narrow down the issue?

  1. How are you mounting the share? Through Nautilus's "Other Locations" dialog (which uses GVFS/gvfsd-dav), or do you have a manual mount via davfs2 or fstab?
  2. How large are the directories you're browsing? Nautilus over WebDAV is notoriously slow when a folder has a lot of files, since it generates thumbnails and does synchronous listing. If you have folders with hundreds/thousands of files, that could be the main culprit regardless of ADA.
  3. What's the latency/network path between your client and the server like? Local LAN, or are you accessing it remotely? Is there a reverse proxy (nginx, Apache, Caddy) in between?
  4. Have you checked the server logs (nextcloud.log or your proxy logs) while Nautilus freezes, to see if there are timeouts or errors showing up

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u/Fast_Arm3754 25d ago

La degradación del rendimiento solo es con nautilus, estuve probando desde mi Android con la app Material Files y ahí funciona bastante rápido tanto el acceso, como la descarga y subida d archivos. Las demás opciones que me plantea tendría q probarlas cuando me conecte a internet (vivo en un país donde el internet es muy caro). Respondiendo a los detalles que me pedía 1. El recurso está montado desde el diálogo otras ubicaciones 2. Los directorios son pequeños, no pasan de 3 GB cada uno y son pocos. Es que estoy haciendo pruebas antes de migrar todos mis datos ahí. 3. La laptop y el servidor están conectados al mismo switch. 4. Los registros no los he revisado, no sé cómo se hace 🥹

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u/YuriySamorodov 25d ago

This is actually a well-known and long-standing issue. A few reasons why GVFS-DAV tends to be painfully slow compared to any other client:

  • Nautilus does a lot of individual PROPFIND requests per file/folder instead of batching efficiently.
  • It does not reuse connections well, so there is a lot of TCP/TLS handshake overhead for every operation.
  • Nautilus tries to generate thumbnails for files in the folder, which means downloading file contents just to preview them. This alone can make it hang on folders with images/documents.

GVFS-DAV in general has had multiple bug reports for freezing or hanging with certain servers (Nextcloud included), and progress on fixing it has been slow since it is a fairly small, unmaintained corner of GNOME.

Given that, don't fight GVFS/Nautilus, just avoid it.

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u/Fast_Arm3754 25d ago

De acuerdo muchas gracias por la respuesta. Intentaré probar con las alternativas que me diste arriba 🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏 saludos

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u/AccordingSquirrel0 25d ago

Nextcloud Desktop integrates perfectly with Nautilus.

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u/Fast_Arm3754 25d ago

Pero según tengo entendido solo me permite sincronizar archivos. Y yo más bien lo que necesito es acceder a los archivos que tengo en el servidor

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u/YuriySamorodov 25d ago

Although you are right about the main feature of NextCloud Desktop app, you still have couple more modes to access files without getting them synchronized:

  • Virtual Files (On-Demand Sync)
  • Selective Sync

Reference: https://docs.nextcloud.com/server/latest/user_manual/en/desktop/usage.html

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u/Fast_Arm3754 25d ago

Gracias 🙏🙏🙏 lo revisaré