Table of Contents
1. What is Nextcloud?
Nextcloud is a self-hosted solution for storage, communications, editing, calendar, contacts, and more.
This tutorial assumes that you have an Ubuntu server and a domain name configured to point toward the server.
2. Install Dependencies
To start, you will need to install the packages that Nextcloud requires:
sudo apt install apache2 mariadb-server libapache2-mod-php7.4 sudo apt install php7.4-gd php7.4-mysql php7.4-curl php7.4-mbstring php7.4-intl sudo apt install php7.4-gmp php7.4-bcmath php-imagick php7.4-xml php7.4-zip
3. Set Up MySQL
Next, you will need to log in to MySQL as the root
user of the
machine.
sudo mysql -uroot -p
Once you've logged in, you must create a new user so that Nextcloud can
manage the database. You will also create a nextcloud
database and
assign privileges:
CREATE USER 'username'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'password'; CREATE DATABASE IF NOT EXISTS nextcloud CHARACTER SET utf8mb4 COLLATE utf8mb4_general_ci; GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON nextcloud.** TO 'username'@'localhost'; FLUSH PRIVILEGES; quit;
4. Download & Install Nextcloud
To download Nextcloud, go the
Nextcloud
downloads page, click on Archive File
and right-click the big blue
button to copy the link.
Then, go to your server and enter the following commands to download,
unzip, and move the files to your destination directory. This example
uses example.com
as the destination, but you can put it wherever you
want to server your files from.
wget https://download.nextcloud.com/server/releases/nextcloud-23.0.3.zip sudo apt install unzip unzip nextcloud-23.0.3.zip sudo cp -r nextcloud /var/www/example.com
5. Configure the Apache Web Server
Now that the database is set up and Nextcloud is installed, you need to
set up the Apache configuration files to tell the server how to handle
requests for example.com/nextcloud
.
First, open the following file in the editor:
sudo nano /etc/apache2/sites-available/nextcloud.conf
Once the editor is open, paste the following information in. Then, save and close the file.
<VirtualHost *:80> DocumentRoot /var/www/example.com ServerName example.com ServerAlias www.example.com ErrorLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/error.log CustomLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/access.log combined <Directory /var/www/example.com/nextcloud/> Require all granted AllowOverride All Options FollowSymLinks MultiViews Satisfy Any <IfModule mod_dav.c> Dav off </IfModule> </Directory> </VirtualHost>
Once the file is saved, enable it with Apache:
sudo a2ensite nextcloud.conf
Next, enable the Apache mods required by Nextcloud:
sudo a2enmod rewrite headers env dir mime
Finally, restart Apache. If any errors arise, you must solve those before continuing.
sudo systemctl restart apache2
For the app to work, you must have the correct file permissions on your
nextcloud
directory. Set the owner to be www-data
:
sudo chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www/example.com/nextcloud/
6. DNS
If you do not have a static IP address, you will need to update your DNS settings (at your DNS provider) whenever your dynamic IP address changes.
For an example on how I do that with Cloudflare, see my other post: Updating Dynamic DNS with Cloudflare API
7. Certbot
If you want to serve Nextcloud from HTTPS rather than plain HTTP, use the following commands to issue Let's Encrypt SSL certificates:
sudo apt install snapd sudo snap install core sudo snap refresh core sudo snap install --classic certbot sudo ln -s /snap/bin/certbot /usr/bin/certbot sudo certbot --apache
8. Results
VoilĂ ! You're all done and should be able to access Nextcloud from your domain or IP address.
See the screenshots below for the dashboard and a settings page on my
instance of Nextcloud, using the Breeze Dark
theme I installed from
the Apps page.
Figure 1: Nextcloud Dashboard
Figure 01: Nextcloud Dashboard
Figure 2: Nextcloud Settings
Figure 02: Nextcloud Security Settings