[nextcloud] Update to 33.0.0 requires configuration of unique tempdirectory

[transistortim]

As reported in this Nextcloud issue, Nextcloud 33.0.0 per default requires access to the file /tmp/sfi_file_sequence. If another user on the same host has previously run an update, that user already owns the file and updating nextcloud fails with

Exception: File sequence directory exists but is not writable
Update failed

The upstream fix is included in milestone 33.0.1, targeted for 2026-03-26.

Workaround
As a workaround, creating and configuring a unique tempdirectory in config.php fixes the issue.

[isabell@stardust ~]$ mkdir ~/html/data/nextcloudtmp

Line to add to ~/html/config/config.php:

   `tempdirectory` => `/var/www/virtual/<user>/html/data/nextcloudtmp`,

Should this temporary workaround be added to the guide?

[dallmair]

It need not be located in NextCloud's data directory, I've successfully updated with this config:

[isabell@stardust ~]$ mkdir ~/tmp/nextcloudtmp

and correspondingly

'tempdirectory' => '/home/isabell/tmp/nextcloudtmp',

[transistortim]

Actually I also tried to use a directory outside the data directory at first. This worked fine with the updater run from the command line (running with my user permissions).

However, when I logged into Nextcloud's web interface and looked at the logs, I noticed repeated warnings: Warnung no app in context Temporary directory /tmp/tempdir-53c8ae06d is not present or writable. I assumed this had to do with the webserver user apache not having permissions for that directory and changed to the data directory. The warning didn't appear again.

Are you observing any warnings in your nextcloud log?

[dallmair]

Interesting!

Are you observing any warnings in your nextcloud log?

No. However, the warning seems to point to a directory under /tmp (/tmp/tempdir-53c8ae06d) in your case. Did you put /tmp/... there or ~/tmp/...? I put it in the user's tmp directory and didn't get such warnings.

[transistortim]

I used the global /tmp with

[isabell@stardust ~]$ mkdir /tmp/tempdir-53c8ae06d
[isabell@stardust ~]$ chmod 770 /tmp/tempdir-53c8ae06d

To confirm, I changed it back again, refreshed Nextcloud's web interface, and the log immediately got flooded with about 16 warnings per second.

I then tried your suggestion (~/tmp/nextcloudtmp), which has been working fine without warnings for about 15 minutes now :)

No idea what's going on there, but I also prefer to keep the temp directory outside the data directory, so thanks for your comment!