Feb 24, 2020

The complete guide to installing Nextcloud on Debian 10

By Albin / 2020-02-24

Today we’re installing the free and open source cloud platform Nextcloud on a machine running Debian 10. Nextcloud is, in a nutshell, a secure self-hosted replacement for Dropbox, Google Docs and Google Calendar. You should own your data – not the big companies.

The guide somewhat resembles the WordPress how-to – as we did then we set up a database, a web server and a website written in PHP that is meant to sit behind a reverse proxy giving it a secure connection to the internet.

Just a note: there are more simple ways of doing this, either by using Docker or Snaps – but you won’t get the same ability to tweak, configure or add third party apps. And most importantly, you won’t learn how it works.

I. The Database

We start off with installing a relational database management system:

apt -y install mariadb-server mariadb-client

Then we set it up – use a long secure password for the root user:

mysql_secure_installation

Now it’s time to create the database and database user Nextcloud will be using:

mysql -u root -p

CREATE USER 'nextcloud_user'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'super-secure-password';
CREATE DATABASE nextcloud_db;
GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON nextcloud_db.* TO 'nextcloud_user'@'localhost';
FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
QUIT;

II. The Web Server

Since Nextcloud is written in PHP, we install it (and some extensions):

apt -y install php php-{cli,xml,zip,curl,gd,cgi,mysql,mbstring,imagick,intl}

Then install Apache:

apt -y install apache2 libapache2-mod-php

Adjust PHP settings:

nano /etc/php/7.3/apache2/php.ini

Set the following values:

date.timezone = Europe/Stockholm
memory_limit = 512M
upload_max_filesize = 500M
post_max_size = 500M
max_execution_time = 300

Download the latest version of Nextcloud:

wget https://download.nextcloud.com/server/releases/latest-18.zip
unzip latest-18.zip

Move files into web root and set permissions:

rm /var/www/html/index.html

cd nextcloud/
mv * /var/www/html/
mv .htaccess /var/www/html/
mv .user.ini /var/www/html/

chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www/html
chmod -R 755 /var/www/html

Create a data folder outside the web root:

mkdir /nextcloud-data
chown -R www-data:www-data /nextcloud-data

Create the Apache config:

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

Paste the following:

<VirtualHost *:80>
	ServerAdmin replaceme@email.com
	DocumentRoot /var/www/html
	ServerName replaceme.com

	<Directory /var/www/html/>
		Options +FollowSymlinks
		AllowOverride All
		Require all granted
		<IfModule mod_dav.c>
			Dav off
		</IfModule>
		SetEnv HOME /var/www/html
		SetEnv HTTP_HOME /var/www/html
	</Directory>

	ErrorLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/error.log
	CustomLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/access.log combined
</VirtualHost>

Activate the config and enable modules:

unlink /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/000-default.conf
ln -s /etc/apache2/sites-available/nextcloud.conf /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/

a2enmod rewrite
a2enmod headers
a2enmod env
a2enmod dir
a2enmod mime

systemctl restart apache2

Edit the Nextcloud config for trusted domains:

nano /var/www/html/config/config.php

'trusted_domains' =>
array (
  0 => '192.168.1.50',
  1 => 'example.com',
  2 => 'www.example.com',
),

III. Additional Fixes

Check for errors in:

http://your-ip-address/settings/admin/overview

Fix missing DB indexes:

cd /var/www/html/
apt install sudo
sudo -u www-data php occ db:add-missing-indices

Fix column type conversion:

sudo -u www-data php occ db:convert-filecache-bigint

Enable pretty URLs:

nano /var/www/html/config/config.php

'overwrite.cli.url' => 'http://example.com',
'overwritehost'     => 'example.com',
'htaccess.RewriteBase' => '/',

Update Nextcloud with new settings:

cd /var/www/html/
sudo -u www-data php occ maintenance:update:htaccess

Set up a cron job for background tasks:

crontab -u www-data -e

*/5  *  *  *  * php -f /var/www/html/cron.php

Install and configure APCu cache:

apt install php-apcu
systemctl restart apache2

Enable APCu in config:

nano /var/www/html/config/config.php

'memcache.local' => '\OC\Memcache\APCu',

Enable APCu CLI in PHP:

nano /etc/php/7.3/apache2/php.ini

apc.enable_cli=1

And that is it! You are now the owner of your very own cloud. 🙂

P.S. if you find something wrong with the guide please tell me so I can fix it!