How to deploy a self-hold cloud disk(Nextcloud)

Posted on 2023-12-16 In tutorial Views: Word count in article: 13k Reading time ≈ 11 mins.

To be honest, the latest version of Nextcloud is not perfect at all. I have tried install it using Nginx and Apache2. The apache2 is officially supported and recommended, so it has better performance and the configuration of Nginx is much more complex. I used Nginx at first as I prefer this. But I found it has some issue. The first one is it cannot show log smoothly on web page. The second one is it cannot upload large file (exceeding 100 MB) with Chinese filename. Then I reinstalled system of my server and using Apache2 as my web server. The first issue solved but the later one remained. I think this is a bug of the latest version and I post this issue on github. The performance of Apache2 indeed is better( webpage load speed is faster), so in this post, I will teach you install Nextcloud using Apache2 as web server.

Environment

A brand new ubuntu 22.04 server. Log in as root.

How to install

Basic installation

apt update
apt upgrade
apt install apache2 mariadb-server libapache2-mod-php php-gd php-mysql php-curl php-mbstring php-intl php-gmp php-bcmath php-xml php-imagick php-zip
wget https://download.nextcloud.com/server/releases/latest.zip
md5sum latest.zip # compare it with the official value in https://nextcloud.com/install/#instructions-server:~:text=Check%20package%20integrity%20using%20MD5
unzip latest.zip
mv nextcloud /var/www/
chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www/nextcloud
vim /etc/apache2/sites-available/nextcloud.conf

<VirtualHost *:80>
  DocumentRoot /var/www/nextcloud/
  ServerName  your.domain

  RewriteEngine On
  RewriteCond %{HTTPS} off
  RewriteRule ^ https://%{HTTP_HOST}%{REQUEST_URI} [L,R=301]
</VirtualHost>

<VirtualHost *:443>
  DocumentRoot /var/www/nextcloud/
  ServerName  your.domain

  <Directory /var/www/nextcloud/>
    Require all granted
    AllowOverride All
    Options FollowSymLinks MultiViews

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

    <IfModule mod_headers.c>
      Header always set Strict-Transport-Security "max-age=15552000; includeSubDomains"
    </IfModule>

  </Directory>

  # SSL configuration
  SSLEngine On
  SSLCertificateFile /etc/letsencrypt/live/your.domain/fullchain.pem
  SSLCertificateKeyFile /etc/letsencrypt/live/your.domain/privkey.pem
  # Maybe you need to comment these before you generate a ssl certificate

</VirtualHost>

a2ensite nextcloud.conf
a2enmod headers
a2enmod env
a2enmod dir
a2enmod mime
a2enmod ssl
service apache2 restart
apt install certbot python3-certbot-apache
sudo certbot certonly --apache -d your.domain
service apache2 restart

mysql

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;

Then go to your.domain to make final installation following the instruction.

After this, you will finished a basic installation. However, when you go to your.domain/settings/admin/overview, you will see a lot of issues like below.

Screenshot 2023-12-15 at 20.09.24

If you want make a refinement in order to get a better performance, just go along with me.

Improvement

Shorten your url

This step will help you hide the index.php in your URL, which is much better and pretty.

1 2	a2enmod rewrite vim /var/www/nextcloud/config/config.php

<?php
$CONFIG = array (
  ...
  'overwrite.cli.url' => 'https://your.domain/',
  'htaccess.RewriteBase' => '/',
);

1 2	sudo -u www-data php /var/www/nextcloud/occ maintenance:update:htaccess service apache2 restart

Increase php memory

1	vim /etc/php/8.1/apache2/php.ini

1 2	; Find and change the following line, the value varies depends on your need memory_limit = 1G

Set the HSTS

This has been done in /etc/apache2/sites-available/nextcloud.conf. As this tutorial is written when I finished installation, so this step has been shown before.

1
2
3

<IfModule mod_headers.c>
  Header always set Strict-Transport-Security "max-age=15552000; includeSubDomains"
</IfModule>

Add SVG support

1 2	apt install php-imagick imagemagick service apache2 restart

Add memory cache

cd /var/www/nextcloud/
apt install php-apcu
apt install php-redis
apt install redis
vim config/config.php

<?php
$CONFIG = array (
  ...
  'memcache.local' => '\\OC\\Memcache\\APCu',
  'memcache.distributed' => '\\OC\\Memcache\\Redis',
  'memcache.locking' => '\\OC\\Memcache\\Redis',
  'redis' => 
  array (
    'host' => 'localhost',
    'port' => 6379,
  ),
);

1	vim /etc/php/8.1/apache2/conf.d/20-apcu.ini

1 2	extension=apcu.so apc.enable_cli=1

1	service apache2 restart

Install recommended php modules

1 2	apt install php-bz2 service apache2 restart

Set default phone region

1	vim /var/www/nextcloud/config/config.php

<?php
$CONFIG = array (
  ...
  'default_phone_region' => 'CN',
);

Set email server

Go to your.domain/settings/admin and fill your email server information like below.

Screenshot 2023-12-17 at 09.28.28

Then click Send email buttom to make a test.

After all refinement above, you will see your.domain/settings/admin/overview as below. All things have been down, just enjoy your own cloud disk.

Screenshot 2023-12-15 at 20.34.59

Nginx configuration for reference

If you still want to install Nextcloud using Nginx, I will give you Nginx configuration for reference. Now you can see how complex it will be if you install it with Nginx. You can also find more details in https://docs.nextcloud.com/server/latest/admin_manual/installation/nginx.html

upstream php-handler {
    #server 127.0.0.1:9000;
    server unix:/run/php/php8.1-fpm.sock;
}

# Set the `immutable` cache control options only for assets with a cache busting `v` argument
map $arg_v $asset_immutable {
    "" "";
    default "immutable";
}


server {
    listen 80;
    listen [::]:80;
    server_name your.domain;

    # Prevent nginx HTTP Server Detection
    server_tokens off;

    # Enforce HTTPS
    return 301 https://$server_name$request_uri;
}

server {
    listen 443      ssl http2;
    listen [::]:443 ssl http2;
    server_name your.domain;

    # Path to the root of your installation
    root /var/www/nextcloud;

    ssl_certificate /etc/letsencrypt/live/your.domain/fullchain.pem;
    ssl_certificate_key /etc/letsencrypt/live/your.domain/privkey.pem;

    # Prevent nginx HTTP Server Detection
    server_tokens off;

    # HSTS settings
    # WARNING: Only add the preload option once you read about
    # the consequences in https://hstspreload.org/. This option
    # will add the domain to a hardcoded list that is shipped
    # in all major browsers and getting removed from this list
    # could take several months.
    #add_header Strict-Transport-Security "max-age=15768000; includeSubDomains; preload" always;

    # set max upload size and increase upload timeout:
    client_max_body_size 102400M;
    client_body_timeout 300s;
    fastcgi_buffers 64 4K;

    # Enable gzip but do not remove ETag headers
    gzip on;
    gzip_vary on;
    gzip_comp_level 4;
    gzip_min_length 256;
    gzip_proxied expired no-cache no-store private no_last_modified no_etag auth;
    gzip_types application/atom+xml text/javascript application/javascript application/json application/ld+json application/manifest+json application/rss+xml application/vnd.geo+json application/vnd.ms-fontobject application/wasm application/x-font-ttf application/x-web-app-manifest+json application/xhtml+xml application/xml font/opentype image/bmp image/svg+xml image/x-icon text/cache-manifest text/css text/plain text/vcard text/vnd.rim.location.xloc text/vtt text/x-component text/x-cross-domain-policy;

    # Pagespeed is not supported by Nextcloud, so if your server is built
    # with the `ngx_pagespeed` module, uncomment this line to disable it.
    #pagespeed off;

    # The settings allows you to optimize the HTTP2 bandwidth.
    # See https://blog.cloudflare.com/delivering-http-2-upload-speed-improvements/
    # for tuning hints
    client_body_buffer_size 512k;

    # HTTP response headers borrowed from Nextcloud `.htaccess`
    add_header Referrer-Policy                   "no-referrer"       always;
    add_header X-Content-Type-Options            "nosniff"           always;
    add_header X-Frame-Options                   "SAMEORIGIN"        always;
    add_header X-Permitted-Cross-Domain-Policies "none"              always;
    add_header X-Robots-Tag                      "noindex, nofollow" always;
    add_header X-XSS-Protection                  "1; mode=block"     always;

    # Remove X-Powered-By, which is an information leak
    fastcgi_hide_header X-Powered-By;

    # Add .mjs as a file extension for javascript
    # Either include it in the default mime.types list
    # or include you can include that list explicitly and add the file extension
    # only for Nextcloud like below:
    include mime.types;
    types {
        text/javascript js mjs;
    }

    # Specify how to handle directories -- specifying `/index.php$request_uri`
    # here as the fallback means that Nginx always exhibits the desired behaviour
    # when a client requests a path that corresponds to a directory that exists
    # on the server. In particular, if that directory contains an index.php file,
    # that file is correctly served; if it doesn't, then the request is passed to
    # the front-end controller. This consistent behaviour means that we don't need
    # to specify custom rules for certain paths (e.g. images and other assets,
    # `/updater`, `/ocs-provider`), and thus
    # `try_files $uri $uri/ /index.php$request_uri`
    # always provides the desired behaviour.
    index index.php index.html /index.php$request_uri;

    # Rule borrowed from `.htaccess` to handle Microsoft DAV clients
    location = / {
        if ( $http_user_agent ~ ^DavClnt ) {
            return 302 /remote.php/webdav/$is_args$args;
        }
    }

    location = /robots.txt {
        allow all;
        log_not_found off;
        access_log off;
    }

    # Make a regex exception for `/.well-known` so that clients can still
    # access it despite the existence of the regex rule
    # `location ~ /(\.|autotest|...)` which would otherwise handle requests
    # for `/.well-known`.
    location ^~ /.well-known {
        # The rules in this block are an adaptation of the rules
        # in `.htaccess` that concern `/.well-known`.

        location = /.well-known/carddav { return 301 /remote.php/dav/; }
        location = /.well-known/caldav  { return 301 /remote.php/dav/; }

        location /.well-known/acme-challenge    { try_files $uri $uri/ =404; }
        location /.well-known/pki-validation    { try_files $uri $uri/ =404; }

        # Let Nextcloud's API for `/.well-known` URIs handle all other
        # requests by passing them to the front-end controller.
        return 301 /index.php$request_uri;
    }

    # Rules borrowed from `.htaccess` to hide certain paths from clients
    location ~ ^/(?:build|tests|config|lib|3rdparty|templates|data)(?:$|/)  { return 404; }
    location ~ ^/(?:\.|autotest|occ|issue|indie|db_|console)                { return 404; }

    # Ensure this block, which passes PHP files to the PHP process, is above the blocks
    # which handle static assets (as seen below). If this block is not declared first,
    # then Nginx will encounter an infinite rewriting loop when it prepends `/index.php`
    # to the URI, resulting in a HTTP 500 error response.
    location ~ \.php(?:$|/) {
        # Required for legacy support
        rewrite ^/(?!index|remote|public|cron|core\/ajax\/update|status|ocs\/v[12]|updater\/.+|ocs-provider\/.+|.+\/richdocumentscode\/proxy) /index.php$request_uri;

        fastcgi_split_path_info ^(.+?\.php)(/.*)$;
        set $path_info $fastcgi_path_info;

        try_files $fastcgi_script_name =404;

        include fastcgi_params;
        fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $document_root$fastcgi_script_name;
        fastcgi_param PATH_INFO $path_info;
        fastcgi_param HTTPS on;

        fastcgi_param modHeadersAvailable true;         # Avoid sending the security headers twice
        fastcgi_param front_controller_active true;     # Enable pretty urls
        fastcgi_pass php-handler;

        fastcgi_intercept_errors on;
        fastcgi_request_buffering off;

        fastcgi_max_temp_file_size 0;
    }

    # Serve static files
    location ~ \.(?:css|js|mjs|svg|gif|png|jpg|ico|wasm|tflite|map|ogg|flac)$ {
        try_files $uri /index.php$request_uri;
        add_header Cache-Control "public, max-age=15778463, $asset_immutable";
        access_log off;     # Optional: Don't log access to assets

        location ~ \.wasm$ {
            default_type application/wasm;
        }
    }

    location ~ \.woff2?$ {
        try_files $uri /index.php$request_uri;
        expires 7d;         # Cache-Control policy borrowed from `.htaccess`
        access_log off;     # Optional: Don't log access to assets
    }

    # Rule borrowed from `.htaccess`
    location /remote {
        return 301 /remote.php$request_uri;
    }

    location / {
        try_files $uri $uri/ /index.php$request_uri;
    }
}