Installing Nextcloud v22 on Debian v11 (buster) using Redis

This is a concise tutorial, it is not meant to be a hand holding step by step guide. Please comment or contact me if you find errors.

Prerequisites:
Setup a domain/sub domain with an A record to the ip of the server or a CNAME to a “dynamic DNS” hostname. I recommend https://freedns.afraid.org.
The server needs to have ports 80 and 443 reachable to the public. The DNS must be propagated for letsencrypt to be successful.

Start the install

apt-get install apache2 mariadb-server libapache2-mod-php php-gd php-json php-mysql php-curl php-mbstring php-intl php-imagick php-xml php-zip php-bz2 python3-certbot-apache redis-server php-redis php-bcmath php-gmp ffmpeg curl coreutils libmagickcore-6.q16-6-extra

Download Nextcloud

wget https://download.nextcloud.com/server/releases/latest-22.tar.bz2

Make sure the md5 matches
md5sum latest-22.tar.bz2
curl https://download.nextcloud.com/server/releases/latest-22.tar.bz2.md5

Extract the tar file and change permissions
tar xfv nextcloud-22.x.tar.bz2
mv nextcloud/ /var/www/example.com/
chown www-data:www-data -R /var/www/example.com/

Setup Apache

Create a apache virtual site
cp /etc/apache2/sites-available/000-default.conf /etc/apache2/sites-available/example.com.conf

edit /etc/apache2/sites-available/example.com.conf
uncomment and change
“ServerName example.com“

change the document root
DocumentRoot /var/www/html/example.com

change log location if you would like
ErrorLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/example.com_error.log
CustomLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/example.com_access.log combined

a2ensite example.com

a2enmod php7.4 rewrite headers env dir mime userdir dav ssl

service apache2 restart

Setup Letsencrypt

certbot --apache -d example.com

tell it to redirect http to https

Edit /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/example.com-le-ssl.conf

  <Directory /var/www/example.com/>
    Require all granted
    AllowOverride All
    Options FollowSymLinks MultiViews
    <IfModule mod_dav.c>
      Dav off
    </IfModule>
  </Directory>

To avoid certain race conditions between the /etc/apache2/sites-available/example.com.conf and /etc/apache2/sites-available/000-default.conf
I prefer to remove example.com.conf and move the http->https redirect into the 000-default.conf

cat /etc/apache2/sites-available/example.com.conf

….snip…
# include a line for only one particular virtual host. For example the
# following line enables the CGI configuration for this host only
# after it has been globally disabled with “a2disconf”.
#Include conf-available/serve-cgi-bin.conf
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{SERVER_NAME} =example.com
RewriteRule ^ https://%{SERVER_NAME}%{REQUEST_URI} [END,NE,R=permanent]
</VirtualHost>

# vim: syntax=apache ts=4 sw=4 sts=4 sr noet

copy the rewrite rule at the bottom:

RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{SERVER_NAME} =example.com
RewriteRule ^ https://%{SERVER_NAME}%{REQUEST_URI} [END,NE,R=permanent]

edit and paste into the default conf
vi /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/000-default.conf

<VirtualHost *:80>

ServerAdmin webmaster@localhost
DocumentRoot /var/www/html

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

RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{SERVER_NAME} =example.com
RewriteRule ^ https://%{SERVER_NAME}%{REQUEST_URI} [END,NE,R=permanent]

</VirtualHost>

Configure php
edit /etc/php/7.4/apache2/php.ini

memory_limit = 768M
upload_max_filesize = 1024M
post_max_size = 1024M
max_execution_time = 300

Create a database, user and password for nextcloud

mariadb -uroot


CREATE USER 'nextcloud'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'PASSWORD';
CREATE DATABASE IF NOT EXISTS nextcloud;
GRANT SELECT, INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE, CREATE, DROP, INDEX, ALTER, CREATE TEMPORARY TABLES ON nextcloud.* TO 'nextcloud'@'localhost';
FLUSH privileges;

run the installer at https://example.com/

Now we can setup Redis

edit /etc/redis/redis.conf
Under the # Unix socket. section add the following

port 0
unixsocket /var/run/redis/redis-server.sock
unixsocketperm 770

add www-data to redis group

usermod -a -G redis www-data
/etc/group will now have an entry like this “redis:x:119:www-data”

systemctl enable redis-server

Add the following to /var/www/example.com/config/config.php

'memcache.local' => '\\OC\\Memcache\\Redis',
  'memcache.distributed' => '\\OC\\Memcache\\Redis',
  'memcache.locking' => '\\OC\\Memcache\\Redis',
  'redis' =>
  array (
    'host' => '/var/run/redis/redis-server.sock',
    'port' => 0,
    'dbindex' => 0,
    'timeout' => 1.5,
  ),

edit /etc/php/7.4/apache2/php.ini

  opcache.enable=1
  opcache.enable_cli=1
  opcache.memory_consumption=128
  opcache.interned_strings_buffer=8
  opcache.max_accelerated_files=10000
  opcache.save_comments=1
  opcache.revalidate_freq = 1

systemctl restart redis-server
systemctl restart apache2
Setup cron for Nextcloud

crontab -u www-data -e
*/5 * * * * php -f /var/www/example.com/cron.php

done;