Nextcloud

Nextcloud is a Google Drive alternative. Through out this documentation we will see some variables starting with $. We will change those variables to suit our preference.

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Basic Installation

This part document describes the process of installing Nextcloud in Ubuntu 16.04 LTS.

Install the necessary packages

Using the following command we will install the necessary packages.

sudo apt update

sudo apt -y upgrade

sudo apt install -y apache2 postgresql-9.5 libapache2-mod-php7.0 php7.0-gd php7.0-json php7.0-curl php7.0-mbstring php7.0-intl php7.0-mcrypt php-imagick php7.0-xml php7.0-zip php7.0-pgsql

Download Nextcloud

Following this steps we can download Nextcloud to our web server

1. We need to go to this Nextcloud Download link with our preferred browser and click on Download button bellow Get Nextcloud Server section. A screen would pop up with a big Download Nextcloud button. Bellow that button we will see Details and Download options button. We need to click on that Details and Download options that will reviles 3 steps.

2. Next we need to right click on .tar.bz2 and copy link address of first step the 1. Download the .tar.bz2 or .zip archive which gives us the download link of latest and stable version of Nextcloud.

3. Now using wget download the nextcloud.tar.bz2 to your preferred location.

   wget -O nextcloud.tar.bz2 $copied_link
   

We can see while we are writing this documentation we have 13.0.1 of Nextcloud as latest and stable version.

4. Then we need to decompress the .tar.bz2 archive. We can do that by using this command.

   tar -xjf nextcloud.tar.bz2
   

5. To move Nextcloud to you web server document root use this command.

   sudo cp -r nextcloud $path_to_webserver_document_root
   

6. Change the owner of nextcloud directory to www-data

   sudo chown -R www-data:www-data $path_to_webserver_document_root/nextcloud
   

Database configuration

We are going to use PostgreSQL for our Nextcloud database. For other database configuration refer to Nextcloud Database Configuration document.

Use this commands to configure PostgreSQL for Nextcloud:

sudo -u postgres psql

Then a postgres=# prompt will appear. Now enter the following lines and confirm them with the enter key:

CREATE USER $username WITH PASSWORD '$password';
CREATE DATABASE nextcloud TEMPLATE template0 ENCODING 'UNICODE';
ALTER DATABASE nextcloud OWNER TO $username;
GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON DATABASE nextcloud TO $username;

You can quit the prompt by entering:

\q

Apache Web Server Configuration

Now we need to configure Apache Web Server. We will need to create a conf file for Nextcloud.

sudo nano /etc/apache2/sites-available/nextcloud.conf

Now paste the following on that file:

Alias /nextcloud "$path_to_webserver_document_root/nextcloud"

<Directory $path_to_webserver_document_root>
  Options +FollowSymlinks
  AllowOverride All

 <IfModule mod_dav.c>
  Dav off
 </IfModule>

 SetEnv HOME $path_to_webserver_document_root/nextcloud
 SetEnv HTTP_HOME $path_to_webserver_document_root/nextcloud

</Directory>

Now we will enable the site with the following command:

sudo a2ensite nextcloud.conf

Additionally we need to run this commands to enable some modules:

sudo a2enmod rewrite
sudo a2enmod headers
sudo a2enmod env
sudo a2enmod dir
sudo a2enmod mime

To see the changed configuration on effect we need to restart the Apache Web Server:

sudo systemctl restart apache2.service

Installation Wizard

We can go to the installation wizard by using our preferred browser and typing http://$server_ip/nextcloud on the address bar. On successful installation we should see the Nextcloud Installation Wizard. We need to follow this steps to finish installation.

1. At the top of the page we will be asked for user name and password for creating an admin account. Enter a good user name and strong password.
2. Next we have Data Folder which we can keep the default to $path_to_webserver_document_root/nextcloud/data to change to some other directory.
3. Next comes the database configuration. We need to give the user name, password and database from the Database configuration.

4. Now click Finish setup and wait for some time to finish Nextcloud setup. After finishing the setup you will be redirected to the home page of Nextcloud.

Pretty URLs

Pretty URLs remove the index.php-part in all Nextcloud URLs, for example in sharing links like https://example.org/nextcloud/index.php/s/Sv1b7krAUqmF8QQ, making URLs shorter and thus prettier.

mod_env and mod_rewrite must be installed on your webserver and the .htaccess must be writable by the HTTP user. Then you can set two variables in the config.php. If your setup is available on https://example.org/nextcloud do the following:

'overwrite.cli.url' => 'https://example.org/nextcloud',
'htaccess.RewriteBase' => '/nextcloud',

If it isn’t installed in a subfolder.:

'overwrite.cli.url' => 'https://example.org',
'htaccess.RewriteBase' => '/',

Finally run this occ-command to update your .htaccess file:

sudo -u www-data php $path_to_webserver_document_root/nextcloud/occ maintenance:update:htaccess

After each update, these changes are automatically applied to the .htaccess-file

Enabling SSL

To enable SSL run the following commands for Apache:

sudo a2enmod ssl
sudo a2ensite default-ssl
sudo systemctl restart apache2.service

Backup

To backup an Nextcloud installation there are four main things we need to retain:

1. The config folder
2. The data folder
3. The theme folder
4. The database

Turn on maintenance mode

maintenance:mode locks the sessions of logged-in users and prevents new logins in order to prevent inconsistencies of data. We must run occ as the HTTP user, like this example:

sudo -u www-data php $path_to_webserver_document_root/nextcloud/occ maintenance:mode --on

Make a backup directory

We will make a temporery backup directory where we will story the backup files and directorys until we make a single .tar archive from them.:

mkdir $path_to_backup/nextcloud_`date +"%d-%b-%Y"`

Change directory:

cd $path_to_backup/nextcloud_`date +"%d-%b-%Y"`

Backup folders

Simply copy config, data and theme folders (or even our whole Nextcloud install and data folder) to a place outside of our Nextcloud environment. We can use this command:

sudo rsync -Aax $path_to_webserver_document_root/nextcloud/ nextcloud_directory_backup/

We need to change the file and directory ownership to our current user so that we can compress the directory.:

sudo chown -R $USER:$USER nextcloud_directory_backup

Now compress the directory backup and make a .tar file:

tar -zcvf nextcloud_directory_backup.tar.gz nextcloud_directory_backup/

After the archiving is successfully complete we can delete the nextcloud_directory_backup directory:

rm -rf nextcloud_directory_backup/

Backup database

Now we will backup the PostgreSQL database:

PGPASSWORD="$password" pg_dump nextcloud -h localhost -U $username -f nextcloud_databese_backup.dump

Compress full backup

Finally, we will bundle the directory backup archive with the database backup and make it a single .tar file:

cd ..
tar -zcvf nextcloud_`date +"%d-%b-%Y"`.tar.gz nextcloud_`date +"%d-%b-%Y"`/

And we are done with backup!

Turn off maintenance mode

Run the following command to turn off maintenance mode:

sudo -u www-data php $path_to_webserver_document_root/nextcloud/occ maintenance:mode --off

Restore

To restore a Nextcloud installation there are four main things you need to restore:

1. The config folder
2. The data folder
3. The theme folder
4. The database

Note

You must have both the database and data directory. You cannot complete restoration unless you have both of these.

Decompress backup

Assuming we have a made a compressed backup archive following Compress full backup and want to restore that, we need to Decompress the backup archive.:

tar -xvzf $path_to_backup/nextcloud_$month-date-year.tar.gz

At this step, we should see one directory named nextcloud_$month-date-year which should contain one archive named nextcloud_directory_backup.tar.gz and a database dump named nextcloud_databese_backup.

Restore folders

We should found the archive named nextcloud_directory_backup.tar.gz inside the nextcloud_$month-date-year which contains Nextcloud config, data and theme directory. We need to decompress this directory:

tar -xvzf nextcloud_$month-date-year/nextcloud_directory_backup.tar.gz -C nextcloud_$month-date-year/

Then, we copy the decompressed directory to webserver root:

sudo rsync -Aax nextcloud_$month-date-year/nextcloud_directory_backup/ $path_to_webserver_document_root/nextcloud/

Finally, we need to change file and directory ownership to our web user:

sudo chown -R www-data:www-data $path_to_webserver_document_root/nextcloud

Restore database

To restore database we need to delete the old database and create a new one where the backup one will be restored. After deleting the existing database we will perform the same action that we did in Database configuration section.:

sudo -u postgres psql

Then a postgres=# prompt will appear. Now enter the following lines and confirm them with the enter key. First we will delete the existing nextcloud database:

DROP DATABASE nextcloud;

We are assuming the database user is already created as it is restoration process, if not or we want to create a PostgreSQL user:

CREATE USER $username WITH PASSWORD '$password';

Now create the new nextcloud database and allow permission:

CREATE DATABASE nextcloud TEMPLATE template0 ENCODING 'UNICODE';
ALTER DATABASE nextcloud OWNER TO $username;
GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON DATABASE nextcloud TO $username;

You can quit the prompt by entering:

\q

Note

not sure

Now we use the following command to restore the database:

PGPASSWORD="$password" psql -d nextcloud -h localhost -U $username < nextcloud_$month-date-year/nextcloud_databese_backup.dump

Email configuration

Nextcloud is capable of sending password reset emails, notifying users of new file shares, changes in files, and activity notifications. Users configure which notifications they want to receive on their Personal pages.

We will be configuring a Gmail account as SMTP mail server. Navigate to Settings > Administration > Additional settings. On top we will see Email server section. Put the following information:

• In Sent mode we will select SMTP
• In Encryption we will select SSL/TLS
• In From address we will enter Gmail username in mail before the @ sign and gmail.com in example.com after the @ sign.
• In Authentication we will select Login and Put check mark on ‘Authentication required’
• In Server address we will enter smtp.gmail.com:465

• In Credentials we have two parts SMTP Username and SMTP Password

  • In SMTP Username we will put our Gmail username
  • In SMTP Password we will put our Gmail password [If the Gmail account has 2FA enable see this link to make an app password].

Now click on Store credentials and click on Send email to sent a test mail.

Source

This document is based on or takes help from the following source(s):

• How To Install Nextcloud In Ubuntu 16.04 LTS
• Nextcloud Installation on Linux
• Nextcloud Database Configuration
• Nextcloud Installation Wizard
• Nextcloud Community answer
• Backing up Nextcloud
• Restoring backup
• Email configuration