Nextcloud

This guide does not tamper with PHP's central configuration file but instead puts Nextcloud specific PHP configuration in places where it does not potentially interfere with settings for other PHP based applications. These places are:

• A dedicated copy of in (for the occ command line tool and the background job).
• Corresponding settings in the configuration of the application server. These will be covered in the section about application servers.

Make a copy of in /etc/webapps/nextcloud. Although not strictly necessary change ownership of the copy:

Most of the prerequisites listed in Nextcloud's installation instructions are already enabled in a bare PHP installation. Additionally enable the following extensions:

Set to your preferred timezone, e.g.:

Raise PHP's memory limit to at least 512MiB:

Optional: For additional security configure . This limits the locations where Nextcloud's PHP code can read and write files. Proven settings are

/etc/webapps/nextcloud/php.ini

open_basedir=/var/lib/nextcloud/data:/var/lib/nextcloud/apps:/tmp:/usr/share/webapps/nextcloud:/etc/webapps/nextcloud:/dev/urandom:/usr/lib/php/modules:/var/log/nextcloud:/proc/meminfo

Depending on which additional extensions you configure you may need to extend this list, e.g. in case you opt for Redis.

It is not necessary to configure opcache here as this is only used by the occ command line tool and the background job, i.e. by short running PHP processes.

Add the following entries to Nextcloud's configuration file:

Adapt the given example hostname . In case your Nextcloud installation will be reachable via a subfolder (e.g. ) overwrite.cli.url and have to be modified accordingly.

To make sure the Nextcloud specific is used by the occ tool set the environment variable :

Also add this line to your to make this setting permanent.

As a privacy and security precaution create the dedicated directory for session data:

Since MariaDB has been the default MySQL implementation in Arch Linux since 2013 this text only mentions MariaDB.

In case you want to run your database on the same host as Nextcloud install (if you have not done so already). See the corresponding article for details. Do not forget to initialize MariaDB with mariadb-install-db. It is recommended for additional security to configure MariaDB to only listen on a local Unix socket:

Nextcloud's own documentation recommends to set the transaction isolation level to READ-COMMITTED. This is especially important when you expect high load with many concurrent transactions.

The other recommendation to set is obsolete. The default in recent MariaDB versions is at least as good as the recommended . In any case the setting is only relevant when replication is applied.

Start the CLI tool mysql with database user root. (Default password is empty, but hopefully you change it as soon as possible.)

Create the user and database for Nextcloud with

( is a placeholder for the actual password of DB user nextcloud you must choose.) Quit the tool with \q.

So that you have decided to use MariaDB as the database of your Nextcloud installation you have to enable the corresponding PHP extension:

Further configuration (related to MariaDB) is not required (contrary to the information given in Nextcloud's admin manual).

Now setup Nextcloud's database schema with:

Mind the placeholders (e.g. ) and replace them with appropriate values. This command assumes that you run your database on the same host as Nextcloud. Enter and see Nextcloud's documentation for other options.

Consult the corresponding article for detailed information about PostgreSQL. In case you want to run your database on the same host as Nextcloud install (if you have not done so already). For additional security in this scenario it is recommended to configure PostgreSQL to only listen on a local UNIX socket:

/var/lib/postgres/data/postgresql.conf

listen_addresses = ''

Especially do not forget to initialize your database with . After having done so start PostgreSQL's CLI tool

and create the database user nextcloud and the database of the same name

( is a placeholder for the passwort of database user nextcloud that you have to choose.)

Install the additional package as dependency (pacman option ) and enable the corresponding PHP extension in :

Now setup Nextcloud's database schema with:

occ maintenance:install \
    --database=pgsql \
    --database-name=nextcloud \
    --database-host=/run/postgresql \
    --database-user=nextcloud \
    --database-pass=xxxxxxxx \
    --admin-pass=zzzzzzzz \
    --admin-email=aaaa@bbbbb \
    --data-dir=/var/lib/nextcloud/data

Mind the placeholders (e.g. ) and replace them with appropriate values. This command assumes that you run your database on the same host as Nextcloud. Enter and see Nextcloud's documentation for other options.

uWSGI has its own article. A lot of useful information can be found there. Install and the plugin - preferrably as dependencies, i.e. with . To run Nextcloud's code with (or in) uWSGI you have to configure one uWSGI specific configuration file () and define one systemd service.

nextcloud.ini

The package includes a sample configuration file already in the right place /etc/uwsgi/nextcloud.ini. In almost any case you will have to adapt this file to your requirements and setup. Find a version with lots of commented changes (compared to the package's version). It assumes a no-frills Nextcloud installation for private use (i.e. with moderate load).

See section Background jobs for arguments why not to configure recurring jobs in this file. In general keep the enabled extensions, extension specific settings and in sync with (with the exception of opcache).

Enable and start

The package provides a template unit file (). The instance ID (here nextcloud) is used to pick up the right configuration file. Enable/start .

In case you have more than a few (e.g. 2) services started like this and get the impression this is a waste of resource you might consider using emperor mode.

In case you opt to use php-fpm as your application server install - preferrably as a dependent package ().

Configuration consists of a copy of relevant for all applications served by php-fpm and a so-called pool file specific for the application (here Nextcloud). Finally you have to tweak the systemd service file.

php-fpm.ini

As stated earlier this article avoids modifications of PHP's central configuration in . Instead create a php-fpm specific copy.

Make sure it is owned and only writeable by root (-rw-r--r-- 1 root root ... php-fpm.ini). Enable the op-cache, i.e. uncomment the line

and put the following parameters below the existing line :

nextcloud.conf pool file

Next you have to create a so called pool file for php-fpm. It is responsible for spawning dedicated php-fpm processes for the Nextcloud application. Create a file - you may use this functional version as a starting point.

Again make sure this pool file is owned and only writeable by root (i.e. -rw-r--r-- 1 root root ... nextcloud.conf). Adapt or add settings (especially , and ) to your liking. The settings and must be consistent with the corresponding settings in (but not ).

The settings done by means of and could instead be specified in php-fpm.ini. But mind that settings in php-fpm.ini apply for all applications served by php-fpm.

php-fpm service

php-fpm is (of course) run as a systemd service. You have to modify the service configuration to be able to run Nextcloud. This is best achieved by means of a drop-in file (e.g. with systemctl edit) and add:

• It replaces the line by a start command that uses the php-fpm.ini covered in the previous section.
• The directories and (and everything below) are made writable. The in the original service definition causes /usr, and to be mounted read-only for the php-fpm processes.

Enable and start

Do not forget to enable and start the php-fpm service.

Keep /etc tidy

The Nextcloud package unconditionally creates the uWSGI configuration file /etc/uwsgi/nextcloud.ini. Of course it is of no use when you run php-fpm instead of uWSGI (and it does no harm whatsoever). In case you nevertheless want to get rid of it just add the following lines to

Configuration of nginx is way beyond the scope of this article. See the relevant article for further information. Also consult Nextcloud's documentation for an elaborated configuration. Most likely you will have to copy it into a file with an appropriate name below /etc/nginx/sites-available and create the corresponding symbolic link in .

The usage of the block is not necessary. Just specify in the block that deals with forwarding request with PHP URIs to the application server. When using uWSGI instead of php-fpm replace this block with:

Things you might have to adapt (not exhaustive):

• Your server name (server_name clauses 2x), i.e. the server part of the URL your Nextcloud installation will be reachable with.
• The name of the certificate and key you use for SSL / TLS.
• If and where you want an access log written to.
• The location where Certbot (or any other ACME client) will put the domain verification challenges. Usage of instead of is probably more adequate here.
• The path used to reach your Nextcloud installation. (The part right to the server name & port section in the URL.)
• What application server (uWSGI or php-fpm) you are using, i.e. how and where nginx will pass requests that need to trigger some PHP code. (See above.)
• Configure OCSP stapling.

There is no need to install any additional modules since nginx natively supports both protocols FastCGI and uwsgi.

Find lots of useful information in the article about the Apache HTTP Server. Nextcloud's documentation has some sample configuration that can also be found in . Both implicitely rely on mod_php that cannot be used anymore. mod_proxy_fcgi or mod_proxy_uwsgi need to be applied.

Information about how to integrate Apache with php-fpm can be found here in this wiki. uWSGI's documentation has some information about how to integrate Apache with PHP by means of uWSGI and mod_proxy_uwsgi. Mind that the Apache package comes with both modules mod_proxy_fcgi and mod_proxy_uwsgi. They need to be loaded as required.

The following Apache modules are required to run Nextcloud:

Also uncomment the following directive to pull in TLS configuration parameters:

Consult Mozilla's SSL configurator for details about how to optimize your TLS configuration.

Refer to the following two sample configuration files depending on how you want to access your Nextcloud installation:

• In case your Nextcloud installation is accessed via a dedicated host name (e.g. https://cloud.example.com/) put this fragment into .

• In case your Nextcloud installation is located in a subfolder of your web site (e.g. https://www.example.com/nextcloud/) put this fragment in your /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf.

Of course you must adapt these sample configuration files to your concrete setup. Replace the directive by when you use uWSGI.

The Nextcloud package comes with a that already takes care of a lot of rewriting and header stuff. Run to adapt this file. Parameter in is vital for this.

The official client can be installed with the nextcloud-client package. Alternative versions are available in the AUR: . Please keep in mind that it is not supported to use the with Nextcloud.

The desktop client basically syncs one or more directories of your desktop computer with corresponding folders in your Nextcloud's file service. It integrates nicely with your desktop's file manager (Dolphin in KDE Plasma, Nautilus in Gnome) displaying overlays representing synchronization and share status. The context menu of each file gets an additional entry Nextcloud to manage sharing of this file and getting the public or internal share link. Nextcloud's documentation has an own volume exclusively about the desktop client.

Additional packages are needed for some features:

• Auto-login: All of them use to store and retrieve account-specific access tokens. To achieve auto-login when the client starts, one of optional dependencies of qtkeychain should be installed as well. Moreover, if you choose as the backend for qtkeychain, a service that provides org.freedesktop.secrets should be running when the client starts.
• File manager integration: for nextcloud-client, integration with file managers (e.g., show Nextcloud folders in GTK+ file dialogs) requires another package nextcloud-client-cloudproviders. nextcloud-client already includes cloudproviders supports by default.

Since version 91 Thunderbird fully supports CalDAV and CardDAV - even with auto detection (i.e. you do not have to provide long URLs to access your calendars and address books). Nextcloud's documentation is not up to date in this respect.

There are a few ways how to start the new calendar wizard. One is via the main menu (☰ at the very right) → ➕ New → Calendar… Choose Network and click Next. On the next page enter your username (that on your Nextcloud server) and the top URL of your Nextcloud server (e.g. ). Click Search calendar. Now provide your password (or even better an app token (see above)). Finally select the calendar(s) you want to see in Thunderbird and click Subscribe. Be sure to mark read-only calendars (e.g. Nextcloud's birtday calendar) as read-only. Otherwise you will repeatably see reminders that you cannot effectively close.

Open Thunderbird's address book - e.g. by Shift+Ctrl+B. Choose File → New → CardDAV address book. On the next page enter your username (that on your Nextcloud server) and the top URL of your Nextcloud server (e.g. ). Click Next. Now provide your password (or even better an app token (see above)). Finally select the address book(s) you want to set in Thunderbird's address book window and click Next.

If you want to mount your Nextcloud using WebDAV, install (as described in davfs2).

To mount your Nextcloud, use:

# mount -t davfs https://your_domain/nextcloud/remote.php/dav/files/username/ /path/to/mount

You can also create an entry for this in

You can access the files directly in Nautilus ('+ Other Locations') through WebDAV protocol - use the link as shown in your Nextcloud installation Web GUI (typically: https://example.org/remote.php/webdav/) but replace the protocol name from 'https' to 'davs'. Nautilus will ask for user name and password when trying to connect.

Download the official Nextcloud app from Google Play or F-Droid.

To enable contacts and calendar sync (Android 4+):

1. download DAVx⁵ (Play Store, F-Droid)
2. Enable mod_rewrite.so in httpd.conf
3. create a new DAVdroid account in the Account settings, and specify your "short" server address and login/password couple, e.g. (there is no need for the part if you configured your web server with the proper redirections, as illustrated previously in the article; DAVdroid will find itself the right URLs)

Download the official Nextcloud app from the App Store.

A useful tool for server administration is occ. Refer to Nextcloud's documentation for details. You can perform many common server operations with occ, such as managing users and configuring apps.

A convenience wrapper around is provided with which automatically runs as the default user (nextcloud), using the default PHP and PHP configuration file. The environment variables , and can be used to specify a non-default user, PHP executable and PHP configuration file (respectively). Especially the latter (using ) is necessary when Nextcloud was setup in a way as described in the sections #Configuration and #Application servers, i.e. using PHP configurations specific to Nextcloud. In this case put export NEXTCLOUD_PHP_CONFIG=/etc/webapps/nextcloud/php.ini in your .

To automatically upgrade the Nextcloud database on package update, you can make use of the included pacman hook:

# mkdir -vp /etc/pacman.d/hooks
# ln -sv /usr/share/doc/nextcloud/nextcloud.hook /etc/pacman.d/hooks/

The instructions in section Web server will result in a setup where your Nextcloud installation is reachable via a dedicated server name, e.g. . If you would like to have Nextcloud located in a subdirectory. e.g. , then:

• For nginx refer to the section in Nextcloud's documentation that explicitely covers this topic.

• For apache edit the /etc/httpd/conf/extra/nextcloud.conf you included and comment out the part of the include file.

See the ownCloud or Nextcloud repository for Docker.

There are currently three different solutions for office integration:

• Collabora Online
• ONLYOFFICE
• MS Office Online Server

All three have in common that a dedicated server is required and your web server needs to be adapted to forward certain requests to the office service. The actual integration with Nextcloud is then accomplished by means of a Nextcloud app specific for one of the above products.

Mind that all three products are aimed at businesses, i.e. you will have to pay for the office service. Only Collabora offers a developers plan (CODE) for free. ONLYOFFICE offers a Home Server plan for a reasonable price.

For installation, setup instructions and integration with Nextcloud consult:

• Collabora online, app
• ONLYOFFICE, app
• MS Office Online Server, app

By default, nextcloud reccomends apps to new clients, which can result in a lot of notifications. To disable this, disable the recommendation app using occ.

The package can be installed and configured to provide regular backups of the calendar and/or address book databases. Edit to your liking and then start and enable calcardbackup.timer.

Since version 21.0.0 nextcloud more closely follows the web application package guidelines. This introduces the separate user nextcloud, as which the web application is run.

After an upgrade from nextcloud < 21.0.0 make sure that

• the data directory is located at
• the writable apps directory is located at
• both the data directory and the writable apps directory, alongside all files beneath them are writable and owned by the nextcloud user
• the web application configuration file resides in and that that directory and its contents are writable and owned by the nextcloud user
• an application server, such as or UWSGI is configured to run the web application as the nextcloud user and not the http user
• update the cron job/systemd timer to run with the new user

Uncomment the line in as per Nextcloud documentation:

env[PATH] = /usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin

ownCloud uses Wikipedia:cURL and Wikipedia:SabreDAV to check if WebDAV is enabled. If you use SSL/TLS with a self-signed certificate, e.g. as shown in LAMP, and access ownCloud's admin panel, you will see the following error message:

Your web server is not yet properly setup to allow files synchronization because the WebDAV interface seems to be broken.

Assuming that you followed the LAMP tutorial, execute the following steps:

Create a local directory for non-distribution certificates and copy LAMPs certificate there. This will prevent -updates from overwriting it.

# cp /etc/httpd/conf/server.crt /usr/share/ca-certificates/WWW.EXAMPLE.COM.crt

Add WWW.EXAMPLE.COM.crt to :

WWW.EXAMPLE.COM.crt

Now, regenerate your certificate store:

# update-ca-certificates

Restart the httpd service to activate your certificate.

Once you have followed the setup for SSL, as on Apache HTTP Server#TLS for example, early versions of DAVdroid will reject the connection because the certificate is not trusted. A certificate can be made as follows on your server:

# openssl x509 -req -days 365 -in /etc/httpd/conf/server.csr -signkey /etc/httpd/conf/server.key -extfile android.txt -out CA.crt
# openssl x509 -inform PEM -outform DER -in CA.crt -out CA.der.crt 

The file should contain the following:

basicConstraints=CA:true

Then import to your Android device:

Put the file onto the sdcard of your Android device (usually to the internal one, e.g. save from a mail attachment). It should be in the root directory. Go to Settings > Security > Credential storage and select Install from device storage. The .crt file will be detected and you will be prompted to enter a certificate name. After importing the certificate, you will find it in Settings > Security > Credential storage > Trusted credentials > User.

Thanks to:

Another way is to import the certificate directly from your server via CAdroid and follow the instructions there.

This is most likely a certificate issue. Recreate it, and do not leave the common name empty or you will see the error again.

# openssl req -new -x509 -nodes -newkey rsa:4096 -keyout server.key -out server.crt

The cause is probably a new app that you installed. To fix that, you can use the occ command as described here. So with

# sudo -u http php /usr/share/webapps/nextcloud/occ app:list

you can list all apps (if you installed nextcloud in the standard directory), and with

# sudo -u http php /usr/share/webapps/nextcloud/occ app:disable <nameOfExtension>

you can disable the troubling app.

Alternatively, you can either use phpMyAdmin to edit the table (if you got lucky and the table has an edit option), or do it by hand with mysql:

# mysql -u root -p owncloud
MariaDB [owncloud]> delete from oc_appconfig where appid='<nameOfExtension>' and configkey='enabled' and configvalue='yes';
MariaDB [owncloud]> insert into oc_appconfig (appid,configkey,configvalue) values ('<nameOfExtension>','enabled','no');

This should delete the relevant configuration from the table and add it again.

If using HTTP basic authentication, make sure to exclude "status.php", which must be publicly accessible.

After waking up from a suspended state, the Nextcloud client tray icon may disappear from the system tray. A workaround is to delay the startup of the client, as noted here. This can be done with the .desktop file, for example:

You may see the following error in the ownCloud sync client:

   SQLSTATE[23000]: Integrity constraint violation: ... Duplicate entry '...' for key 'fs_storage_path_hash')...

This is caused by an issue with the File Locking app, which is often not sufficient to keep conflicts from occurring on some webserver configurations. A more complete Transactional File Locking is available that rids these errors, but you must be using the Redis php-caching method. Install and , comment out your current php-cache mechanism, and then in uncomment extension=redis. Then in make the following changes:

   'memcache.local' => '\OC\Memcache\Redis',
   'filelocking.enabled' => 'true',
   'memcache.locking' => '\OC\Memcache\Redis',
   'redis' => array(
        'host' => 'localhost',
        'port' => 6379,
        'timeout' => 0.0,
         ),

and start/enable .

Finally, disable the File Locking App, as the Transational File Locking will take care of it (and would conflict).

If everything is working, you should see 'Transactional File Locking Enabled' under Server Status on the Admin page, and syncs should no longer cause issues.

As mentioned in the official admin manual, either you need an apps directory that is writable by the http user, or you need to set to .

If you have set in your PHP/web server configuration file (e.g. /etc/httpd/conf/extra/nextcloud.conf), it may be necessary to add your /path/to/data directory to the string on the line starting with :

/etc/httpd/conf/extra/nextcloud.conf

php_admin_value open_basedir "''/path/to/data/'':/srv/http/:/dev/urandom:/tmp/:/usr/share/pear/:/usr/share/webapps/nextcloud/:/etc/webapps/nextcloud"

If you are putting your apps folder outside of the nextcloud installation directory make sure your webserver serves it properly.

In nginx this is accomplished by adding a location block to the nginx configuration as the folder will not be included in it by default.

location ~ /apps2/(.*)$ {
    alias /var/www/nextcloud/apps/$1;
}

If you load your Nextcloud web gui and it is missing styles etc. check the browser's console logs for lines like:

The resource from “https://example.com/core/css/guest.css?v=72c34c37-0” was blocked due to MIME type (“text/plain”) mismatch (X-Content-Type-Options: nosniff).

There are a few possible reasons, possibly you have not included any mime types in your add the following to

types_hash_max_size 2048;
types_hash_bucket_size 128;
include mime.types;

Here we use the provided by , due to the large number of types included we increase the allowed size of the types hash.

Other possible reasons for these errors are missing permissions on the files. Make sure the files are owned by and can be read and written to by this user.

At the top of the admin page there might be a warning to set the , X-Content-Type-Options, , and according to https://docs.nextcloud.com/server/latest/admin_manual/installation/harden_server.html even though they are already set like that.

A possible cause could be that because owncloud sets those settings, uwsgi passed them along and nginx added them again:

While the fast_cgi sample configuration has a parameter to avoid that ( ), when using uwsgi and nginx the following modification of the uwsgi part in nginx.conf could help:

Can be fixed for Gnome by installing the following 2 packages, and gnome-keyring. Or the following for KDE, and .

FolderSync needs access to , so you could create another alias for owncloud in your /etc/httpd/conf/extra/nextcloud.conf

  <IfModule mod_alias.c>
    Alias /nextcloud /usr/share/webapps/nextcloud/
    Alias /owncloud /usr/share/webapps/nextcloud/
  </IfModule>

The cause could be a too high PHP version. Until this is fixed, the log level in nextcloud's config.php can be adjusted.