Tag: nextcloud

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. These steps should work for other versions of Nextcloud. Leave a comment with your experience.

Start the install

apt-get install apache2 mariadb-server libapache2-mod-fcgid php-fpm php php-gd php-json php-mysql php-curl php-mbstring php-intl php-imagick php-xml php-zip php-bz2 python3-certbot-apache php-apcu redis-server php-redis php-bcmath php-gmp ffmpeg curl coreutils libmagickcore-7.q16-10-extra

Download Nextcloud

wget https://download.nextcloud.com/server/releases/latest-31.tar.bz2

Make sure the md5 matches

md5sum latest-31.tar.bz2

curl https://download.nextcloud.com/server/releases/latest-31.tar.bz2.md5

Extract the tar file and change permissions

tar xfv latest-31.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 (vi, nano, emacs)
/etc/apache2/sites-available/example.com.conf

uncomment and change

ServerName example.com

change the document root

DocumentRoot /var/www/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

enable example.com in apache

a2ensite example.com

a2enmod proxy_fcgi setenvif rewrite headers env dir mime userdir dav ssl

a2enconf php8.4-fpm

service apache2 restart

Setup Letsencrypt

certbot --apache -d example.com

tell it to redirect http to https if it asks. Otherwise, it should do automatically

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…

# 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 apache config

Edit
/etc/apache2/sites-enabled/000-default.conf

This is what 000-default.conf should look like

<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/8.4/fpm/php.ini

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

also add this under the [opcache] section in
/etc/php/8.4/fpm/php.ini

opcache.enable=1
opcache.enable_cli=1
opcache.memory_consumption=200
opcache.interned_strings_buffer=16
opcache.max_accelerated_files=10000
opcache.save_comments=1
opcache.revalidate_freq = 1

[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;

[Install Nextcloud]

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

[Setup Redis]

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

port 0
unixsocket /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

This is using APCu for memcache and Redis for distributed caching and file locking. Here we use a socket to connect to redis-server.

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

  'memcache.distributed' => '\OC\Memcache\Redis',
  'memcache.locking' => '\OC\Memcache\Redis',

  'redis' => [
    'host'     => '/run/redis/redis-server.sock',
    'port'     => 0,
  ],

systemctl restart redis-server

systemctl restart apache2

add apc cli enabling line in here -> /etc/php/8.4/cli/php.ini

apc.enable_cli=1

Restart php to pick up above changes

systemctl restart php8.4-fpm.service

[Setup cron for Nextcloud]

crontab -u www-data -e

*/5 * * * * php -f /var/www/example.com/cron.php

done;

If building Nextcloud for many users it will be necessary to increase the php fpm pm settings in /etc/php/8.4/fpm/pool.d/www.conf and apache mpm event in /etc/apache2/mods-enabled/mpm_event.conf

This is a handy calculator to estimate values for php -> https://spot13.com/pmcalculator/

For a 16GB 8 Core server the following values might be appropriate:

Edit
/etc/php/8.4/fpm/pool.d/www.conf

pm = dynamic
pm.max_children = 550
pm.start_servers = 20
pm.min_spare_servers = 10
pm.max_spare_servers = 50
pm.max_requests = 500

Additionally, apache multiprocessing module will need to be increased in
/etc/apache2/mods-enabled/mpm_event.conf

ServerLimit 20
StartServers 5
MinSpareThreads 50
MaxSpareThreads 100
ThreadsPerChild 25
MaxRequestWorkers 500
MaxConnectionsPerChild 100