OnlyOffice offers a file to download instead of opening it

[Zalfsten]

Sometimes it happens that nextcloud offers files for downloading instead of opening it. On one hand this is the case for Office documents because of the 20 session limit of OnlyOffice.
On the other hand this also happens for other files (e.g. Markdown) that are not handled by OnlyOffice. This is not deterministic and independent of the number of open sessions. Also we have confirmed that it is user-dependent: While one user can open the file, others can not.
There is an open nextcloud issue for this: nextcloud/server#41551

[darnold-zalf]

Daniel Arend reported on 27.11.2024 he couldn't open this file in OnlyOffice, he was only prompted to download it:

• this directory : https://nextcloud.fairagro.net/f/29770
• this file : https://nextcloud.fairagro.net/apps/onlyoffice/29770?filePath=%2FFAIRagro%2F06_TA_Ordner%2FTA4%2Fmeetings%2F2024-11-25_TA4_Retreat%2F2024-11-25_TA4Retreat_Notes_ML.docx
• he uses Chrome
• The following other users could successfully open the file in OnlyOffice : DA, ML, CS, JK ..
• It was not OnlyOffice max-connections related; 7-8 active connections, 20-user limit.

[darnold-zalf]

There should be a way to get to view the sessions at https://onlyoffice.fairagro.net/info/info.json, but it seems broken for me
( https://forum.onlyoffice.com/t/howto-count-monitor-sessions/4792 )

For now, to get the number of active OnlyOffice users:

kubectl exec -n fairagro-nextcloud -ti pod/nextcloud-fairagro-onlyoffice-66b5b747d5-vrfkz -- sh
bash
curl localhost/info/info.json
#(copy/paste `info.json` to `dis.txt` on your local, until we have jq installed on all containers)
$ jq '.quota.edit.connectionsCount,.licenseInfo.connections' dis.txt
7   # active users
20 # max number of users (Licensed)

[darnold-zalf]

Both Carmen S. and I are running into this issue now.

It's definitely a problem on the onlyoffice side.

ONLYOFFICE/onlyoffice-nextcloud#982 looks relevant.

In NC->OnlyOffice settings, I confirm that unticking the Allow the following groups to access the editors "fixes" it ...
It's fixed too for Carmen, but she had to logout/login. It also worked in a new private window for her.

[darnold-zalf]

Daniel A. reports more problems - https://nextcloud.fairagro.net/apps/onlyoffice/29770 - he is prompted to download the file and it doesn't open in OnlyOffice. Eventually it worked after about 10 minutes.

Tested it with Chrome, Firefox and Safari just 2 minutes ago

Now its working after waiting for ~10 min

It opens fine for me.

[darnold-zalf]

At a very rough estimate, about 1 out of every 20 attempts to 'open' a file instead downloads it.
Usually, waiting 5-10 minutes fixes it.

As an initial step towards a permanent fix, we need to upgrade to OpenOffice EE, then apply the latest updates. That is currently blocked by storage-reorganisation stuff.