this post was submitted on 04 Feb 2026
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I currently have Nextcloud running, and it's stable, performant...no issues whatsoever. But it's also a LOT more than what I need, and stores files in an "unusable" state if I want to look at them outside of Nextcloud. The real kicker is that the linux client wants to download the entire cloud drive, which simply doesn't work for me.

For most cases, I think a samba share is all I need, but I do have times when I don't have internet access, so the ability to save specific files locally to sync back when I'm home would be great. Nextcloud and OneDrive have a "always keep on this device" option which has been perfect in the past.

I use Syncthing for some specific cases, but it adds extra steps I don't want to deal with all the time.

Specifically, I'm looking for something with these requirements:

  • provide a virtual drive for Linux and Windows
  • can keep specific files/folders from that drive offline
  • point the server to a folder (or folders), and that's what it shares

And "would be nice, but not required"

  • web interface to view/download files
  • user-level access
  • web and virtual drive can be accessed via reverse proxy

I've tried poking around, and can't find anything that seems to fit. I'm surprised there isn't a webdav client or samba config option that would do what I want, but I may also be in a mental rut and missing a key term.

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[–] rimu@piefed.social 4 points 4 months ago

It exists and I've tried it - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Davfs2

Thing is, when an app thinks a directory is on a local disk, it does things which do not scale well over a network. e.g. reading every file in the directory to make thumbnails.