Hi Pete
The issue you’re describing is a known bug in Nextcloud and does concern External Storage using Samba in NC. See here:
The fix will probably come in one of the next updates. If you want to “fix” the issue until the fix is officially distributed, by all means. I did that also for myself / my clients and can confirm it works…
To replicate:
Backup your Server first, at least a config backup!
cp /usr/share/nextcloud/apps/files_external/3rdparty/icewind/smb/src/StringBuffer.php /usr/share/nextcloud/apps/files_external/3rdparty/icewind/smb/src/StringBuffer_Orig.php
nano /usr/share/nextcloud/apps/files_external/3rdparty/icewind/smb/src/StringBuffer.php
Edit the file according to the red highlighted line:
Save with CTRL-x, Confirm with y…
NC should work right away, it might make sense to restart apache (or just reboot the whole server).
My 2 cents
Andy