NextCloud

Assumes Ubuntu 20.04, stable20 branch, and installing in /var/www/nextcloud for a cloud.example.com URL (c. December 2020).

Prerequisites

Instal some stuff first. This NextCloud recipe uses PostgreSQL, Redis, Apache 2.4, FastCGI with PHP FPM, and Dehydrated for Letsencrypt SSL certificate maangement.

sudo apt install apache2 libapache2-mod-fcgid \
   php7.4-{bcmath,bz2,curl,gd,fpm,gmp,intl,json,mbstring,opcache,pgsql,tidy,xmlrpc,xsl,zip}
   php-{imagick,redis} composer dehydrated postgresql redis-server

NOTE

NextClodu works fine under nginx, I just can't be bothered maintaining what goes in .htaccess which NextCloud expects to be writeable to keep itself updated.

Set up the webserver

Running Apache with mod-php is old hat, incompatible with HTTP/2, slow, and horribly memory ineffient under load. Luckily these days we can use PHP-FPM which has been built-in to all versions of PHP since 5.4.

Enable the required Apache configs and modules:

a2enconf php7.4-fpm
a2enmod proxy_fcgi mpm_worker setenvif rewrite ssl headers dir env
systemctl restart apache2

Deny access to git repositories

Add a global config to deny access to git repositories and other hidden stuff, in /etc/apache2/conf-available/deny-git.conf:

# /etc/apache2/conf-available/deny-git.conf
RedirectMatch 404 "/\.(git|hg|bzr|svn|cvs|hg|ht)"
<FilesMatch "^\.git">
  Require all denied
</FilesMatch>

Then enable it with:

a2enconf deny-git
systemctl restart apache2

Add a virtual host for NextCloud

Should look something like this:

<VirtualHost *:443>
  ServerName cloud.example.com
  DocumentRoot /var/www/nextcloud 
  <Directory "/var/www/nexcloud">
    Options FollowSymLinks MultiViews
    AllowOverride All
    Require all granted
    Satisfy Any 
    SetEnv HOME /var/www/nextcloud
    SetEnv HTTP_HOME /var/www/nextcloud
    <IfModule mod_dav.c>
      Dav off
    </IfModule>
  </Directory>
  SSLEngine On
  SSLCertificateFile ...
</VirtualHost>

Configure PHP

PHP needs a few things: enable the opcache, increase the memory limit, and increase the maximum POST size so you can upload large files. Fiddle with these settings in /etc/php/7.4/fpm/php.ini:

max_execution_time = 60
memory_limit = 512M
post_max_size = 500M
upload_max_filesize = 500M
opcache.enable=1

Create a database

Create a database in PostgreSQL:

sudo -u postgres createuser -SDRP <nextcloud-user>
sudo -u postgres createdb -E UTF8 -O <nextcloud-user> <nextcloud-dbname>

Install NextCloud

We can just clone it from git:

git clone https://github.com/nextcloud/server.git nextcloud
cd nextcloud
git checkout stable20  # or whatever the latest stable version is
git submodule update --init --recursive
chown www-data:www-data config apps .htaccess

Create a directory for the cache and user data, which should not reside under the web root:

mkdir -p /var/lib/nextcloud/data /var/cache/nextcloud
chown -R www-data:www-data /var/lib/nextcloud /var/cache/nextcloud

Configure NextCloud

Edit the configuration file in config/config.php and check or consider these settings, and add the database and SMTP connection details:

$config => [
  # ...
  #
  'passwordsalt' => "<very long random string>",
  'secret' => "<a different very long random string>",
  'trusted_domains' => [
    0 => "cloud.example.com",
  ],
  'datadirectory' => '/var/lib/nextcloud/data',
  'overwrite.cli.url' => 'https://cloud.example.com/',
  'htaccess.RewriteBase' => '/',

  # Database connection details
  'dbtype' => 'pgsql',
  'dbhost' => 'localhost',
  'dbuser' => "<nextcloud-dbuser>",
  'dbpassword' => "<password>",
  'dbname' => "<nextcloud-dbname>",
  'dbtableprefix' => 'oc_',

  # Force all URLs to use SSL or it may trip up things like OAuth
  'overwriteprotocol' => 'https',

  # Use Redis and caching to make everything go faster
  'memcache.local' => '\\OC\\Memcache\\Redis',
  'memcache.locking' => '\\OC\\Memcache\\Redis',
  'redis' => [
    'host' => 'localhost',
    'port' => 6379,
  ],
  'cache_path' => '/var/cache/nextcloud',

  # Send email details
  'mail_smtpmode' => 'smtp',
  'mail_smtpsecure' => 'tls',
  'mail_sendmailmode' => 'smtp',
  'mail_from_address' => "nexcloud@example.com",
  'mail_domain' => "example.com",
  'mail_smtpauthtype' => 'PLAIN',
  'mail_smtpauth' => 1,
  'mail_smtphost' => ""mail.example.com",
  'mail_smtpport' => '587',
  'mail_smtpname' => '<emailuser>',
  'mail_smtppassword' => '<emailpassword>',

Then navigate to the URL in the browser to install (or run the NextCloud ./occ tool from the command line).

Clean URLs

For clean URLs, make sure AllowOverride All is set for the parent directory; the /var/www definition is in the main /etc/apache2/apache.conf. Then run the follwing OCC command to enable the rewrite rules:

sudo -u www-data ./occ maintenance:update:htaccess

Previews of other file types

Edit /etc/ImageMagick/policy.xml and remove this line to get PDF previews to work:

<policy domain="coder" rights="none" pattern="PDF" /> 

Then add the following to config.php to get lots of other useful file previews:

  'enabledPreviewProviders' => [
    # ...
    8 => 'OC\\Preview\\MarkDown',
    9 => 'OC\\Preview\\Movie',
    10 => 'OC\\Preview\\PDF',
    11 => 'OC\\Preview\\OpenDocument',
    12 => 'OC\\Preview\\MSOfficeDoc',
    13 => 'OC\\Preview\\MSOffice2003',
    14 => 'OC\\Preview\\MSOffice2007',
  ],

Photos

Photos replaces the Gallery app, and is installed separately through the NC store or you can use git to manage it as a submodule. If it doesn't work you might need to build its JavaScript resources by running make in its apps/photos directory. Alternatively you can resuscitate the Gallery app, which stopped working after NextCloud version 17, by updating its JavaScript dompurify library to a newer version and bumping the app max version in apps/galleryappinfo/info.xml as follows (See also pull request #570):

<nextcloud min-version="17" max-version="20"/>

Maintenance

Keep the git checkout of NextCloud and its submodules up to date with git, and run the OCC upgrade command:

cd /var/www/nextcloud
git pull
git submodule update --init --recursive
sudo -u www-data ./occ upgrade

Cron job

In the administrator settings select cron rather than other methods, and put this in /etc/cron.d/nextcloud

*/5 * * * * www-data /usr/bin/php /var/www/nextcloud/cron.php