Using bind mount point with NextCloud LXC on ZFS (or alternate options?)

[infranscia]

The title sums it up, more or less. I'm relatively new to ProxMox and self-hosting in general. I basically want to share NextCloud folders with other LXCs, and think I ran into a case of trying to figure out too many things all at once, and thought I'd ask for advice, just to be safe.

I'm pretty good with tech, using a type of Arch Linux on my main PC, and am comfortable using a terminal. I'm pretty self-driven to teach myself new stuff, and figured I could pretty much learn ProxMox and whatnot as I go along, but... yeah. I'm getting some confusing and/or conflicting information.

I've got ProxMox VE 9.1.9 (freshly updated) installed on a ~250 GB SSD, but I've got a 12 TB LXC/RAID of 5, 3TB SAS drives that I've decided to put my LXCs on. Right now, my only (running, non-test) LXC is NextCloud, version 33.0.2 (also freshly updated). I've mostly been using it to sync and/or backup files between devices, and it's been pretty good for my use case. For now I've been avoiding putting anything on it that I don't have backed up/stored elsewhere, so while I'd REALLY like to avoid it, worst case scenario, I can redo it from scratch.

I admittedly probably could've benefited from a bit more research before diving in. I saw mentions of "using shared folders with NextCloud" to share storage between LXCs, network folders, or whatever (mostly SAMBA, I think) and assumed NextCloud had a built-in option (via web interface or mobile) app to turn a folder into something shared across LXCs and/or the local network. I basically planned to use NextCloud as the central storage, easily syncing my stuff to it, and then sharing folders with various LXCs for things like video/music streaming (including to Roku TV), eBook reading, etc. Something where it's easy to try different self-hosted solutions and see what works best for me.

So... yeah. I've definitely found that I had it backwards - NextCloud accepts shared folders as storage, but doesn't really have an option to share them. WebDAV is sometimes mentioned as an option, but appears tricky at best (and I DON'T want to type it into a Roku TV if I can avoid it...). I guess you could say my hubris has gotten the better of me.

I'd still like to go with something close to my original idea - using NextCloud if possible and/or not too risky - but I'm open to other options, if needed. Biggest thing is I want/need is an easy way to sync and share my stuff between LXCs (preferably still synced with NextCloud, but at least still easily synced/uploaded to from my desktop). I can practice with a dummy LXC, if applicable.

One thing I've run into is that I hear making bind mount points is different with ZFS (as opposed to the main drive ProxMox is installed on), and uses its own set of commands in the terminal. Can anyone tell me if I've got that right?

So... yeah. I'd like to still know how viable my idea is and how it might be done, for point of reference. But also, for those who have been doing this type of stuff for a while, what might you recommend?

 

[complexplaster27]

Here's my way of doing it, unsure if there's a better way but I find it works really well.

I have a NAS LXC 100 just running Debian 13 and it has my raid drive data on it. Basically it's on a 4x4TB RAID10 and that's mounted on proxmox directly and mounted to /mnt/raid_drive so inside /etc/pve/lxc/100.conf I added this mount point mp0: /mnt/raid_drive,mp=/raid_drive

This essentially mounts the folder into the LXC directly as /raid_drive

Now I want to set up duplicati backups for it but i don't want it on the same LXC so I create a new one LXC 101 Debian 13 install duplicati and then write in the conf /etc/pve/lxc/101.conf and then add the same mount as 100 mp0: /mnt/raid_drive,mp=/raid_drive then when I configure the backups it can see the same files and folders that 100 can see.

You can pretty much repeat this with any LXC container as many times as possible just make sure your permissions are the same across all of them so each LXC can r/w the folder correctly.

I would imagine this process is the same for ZFS as you create the ZFS array and the mount it to a location somewhere on Proxmox where you can browse the folder structure. I Hope this helps somewhat.