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It stores the documents in the form they were imported in a folder called '/originals/', with the contents sorted according to the rules you set in paperless. You can back that up however you'd like.
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Sure,
I used TTecks helper script to install paperless as an LXC. I then use proxmox's inbuilt back up schedule to grab snapshots of that LXC, and others, I usually keep 1 "nightly"and 1 "monthly" right now.
Syncthing, another LXC thank you tteck, has access to the back up folder. It is synced with a RPi 4 pulling double duty as my redundant DNS all installed using Docker. The pi 4 install is synced with my proxmox host and an off-site box, through tailscale at my parent's house.
There are better systems, like Borg and what not, but this one is mine.
I have an "important" share on a my NAS that is also synced 3-2-1. It would be better if Paperless saved to my NAS directly, then I'd only have 3 copies. Right now I have 6: 1 nightly and 1 monthly spread across 3 machines, not counting RAID because the "b" in "RAID" stands for back up.
My oh shit plan: grab a back up file. Rebuild the lxc from that snapshot. Access my pdfs.
I keep once in a lifetime stuff: birth certificate, paper counter part to my driver's license, etc. They're still backed up. But, for day-day communications that I'm supposed to keep: 5 years financials and the like, tennant agreements etc. My old filing system was "throw them in a box, if I remembered and find them never. Or, try not delete the email they're attached to". Now I have a glimmer of a hope
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Another alternative: https://pushover.net
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I've used an old phone just for this task...
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Immich is fantastic. Yes.
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So paperless works as a service that ties into your storage. I point mine at an NFS share on my Synology and just backup that share. The documents are all stored as PDFs still so worst case I still have “dumb” copies without all the tagging available if my paperless instance goes offline for some reason.
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Is there a way to share groups of files at once? For example I currently share tax files with my accountant using seafile so right now I scan everything and just drop it into a folder. I would love to use paperless but being able to share folder that can be downloaded all at once is a critical workflow for me.
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Definitely firewall things. Do you connect your personal phone to your work's Wi-Fi? I would really not.
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Unpopular opinion from what I've seen in this forum, but for me it is Nextcloud followed by Jellyfin.
I use Nextcloud setup fory whole family, about a dozen all together. I even sprang for the DavX5 plugin for several people so we can share calendars and contacts as well as files and notes. We backup photos from our phones using the Nextcloud app. Several of us use it as a backend for KeePass.
We use Jellyfin for streaming; movies, tv, music videos and music. It is the backend storage and library organizer for four Kodi boxes, five browsers, several phones and tablets and a couple of Roku's. It works like a champ, even with the occasional library re-sync.
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Is this accessible outside your own home network, or is it restricted to local?
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I do not know. I don't believe you can provide a share link for a whole tag, just individual documents. I'm not seeing an obvious way of exporting a tag either.
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Something a lot of people miss with paperless is its automatic import options.
There is a folder called 'consume' that you can place files in and paperless will import them just like you'd uploaded them manually.
Combined with tools like FolderSync or SyncThing you can have files on all sorts of devices automatically upload to paperless.Sitting down to use the flatbed scanner is a hassle, so I use GoogleLens to take multiple photos of a document, save them as a single pdf, then FolderSync moves them to my server automatically where paperless imports them.
Along side this; Paperless has an smtp mail importer. You can add your email accounts and paperless will automatically import new emails based on whatever criteria you specify. Imported mail will then be flagged, moved, or outright deleted from the mail server.
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The way you would do this with paperless is to create a user in paperless for your accountant to login to.
You would then grant that user permission to view/edit either: a tag, a storage path, a document type, a correspondent, or just individual documents. (or any/all of the above).
When it comes to providing external share links that anyone can use; you can only share single files at a time in paperless. If that's what you're looking for, I'd recommend FileBrowser. You can create a permanent share link that allows anyone that views it to view the contents of a folder and download each file or the whole collection as a .zip. You can even add a password to view the page if you like.
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No I'm trying to use it with my work phone. I can't connect my personal phone to the work wifi since it needs a certificate (802.1x) but there's a separate guest network I can use if needed.
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It's very accessible with a reverse proxy. Just please be secure if you choose to do so. It's been a wonderful piece of software and i will be paying for the lifetime server license this weekend.
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You're right, I don't take advantage of any of these features. I should.
Partly because of lack of know how on my part. So I don't trust myself to successfully have it log in, get what it needs and leave everything else untouched. My main uploads, payslips and bank statements are behind their own apps too.
Partly because paperless is isolated in it's own little container (in my setup at least) so access to the consume folder makes is behind another step, I could syncthing it... I just haven't.
And partly because I use the android app as my main interaction with Paperless. The app uses my phone as a good-enough scanner.
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Partly because paperless is isolated in it's own little container (in my setup at least) so access to the consume folder is behind another step, I could syncthing it... I just haven't.
For this, Bind-mounts are your friend:
Volumes:
- /srv/paperless-ngx/consume:/usr/src/paperless/consume
Files get dropped in /srv/paperless-ngx/consume on the host and import to the container.
As far as setting up mail goes: it's pretty straightforward. Add an account, then create a rule for each type of mail you want it to manage. Specify filters like who it's from, what's in the subject/body, how old is it, etc.
And until you are comfortable, just leave the action set to mark as read. Worst case, if you didn't set your filters right; it'll unnecessarily mark mail as read. No big deal.
I just have mine move processed mail to a folder on the mail server called 'Paperless-Imported', which I manually clean out now and again.
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And partly because I use the android app as my main interaction with Paperless.
We taught each other something new: I didn't know there was a monile app. Imma go check that out
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Thank you. Setting it up seems less daunting now. I'm going to try for setting up emails.
The android app is fairly functionally complete, and I only interact with my phone or tablet. In fact, for desktop tasks I have a Linux Mint VM I just console into from my tablet, a sort of sudo laptop.
In anycase, for manual uploading files my phone is probably easier. But, you're advice is good for everybody that's not me, sensible people.
Your comment about bindmounts might have solved my biggest problem with Paperless, in that it doesn't write to my 3-2-1 back up folder directly so I end up 3-2-1ing the whole machine. Which is fine, but I keep multiple snap shots of my LXCs so it's multiples of multiples.
</zpool/important/paperless:/use/src/paperless/original>
Specific file paths aside, would [path to zpool]:[path to originals] have paperless saving the originals to my zpool so I would only have 3 copies instead of 3*#of snapshots?
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Indeed it would. That's exactly how I have mine setup; with borg backing up the originals folder from the host.
If you are making this change to an existing installation; remember to copy the contents of the current originals folder out of the container and into the host folder you intended to bind mount, before you change the mount.
So, copy the contents of container:'/use/src/paperless/original' place them in host:'/use/src/paperless/original', THEN add your bind mount to the container config.
Otherwise you may lose the contents of the folder within the container and have to retrieve it from a backup.
