How to Install and Configure Nextcloud Hub 21

This tutorial explains how to install and configure Nextcloud Hub version 21 on Ubuntu Server 20.04 LTS. I show how to configure Apache and how to set up a MySQL user and database for Nextcloud Hub. I also walk you through common security & setup warning issues that often come up when installing Nextcloud. Finally, I explain how to properly configure PHP, set up a cronjob, ONLYOFFICE, and SMTP.

Updates

• Updated on 24th July 2021 to fix error: Memcache \OC\Memcache\APCu not available for local cache
• Updated on 07th November 2021 to work with the latest Nextcloud and PHP versions

Install Apache & MySQL

Most likely, you already have Apache2 and MySQL installed on your server. If not, you can quickly install them with

sudo apt update
sudo apt install apache2
sudo apt install mysql-server

Before setting up a new user and database, you should secure your MySQL server (again, you can skip this step if you already have used MySQL before)

sudo mysql_secure_installation
VALIDATE PASSWORD COMPONENT: n
New root passwort: <YOUR MYSQL PASSWORD>
Re-enter new password: <YOUR MYSQL PASSWORD>
Remove anonymous user: y
Disallow root login remotely: y
Remove test database and access to it: y
Reload privileges tables now: y

Prepare MySQL database

In a next step, you want to create a new user and database on your MySQL server:

sudo mysql -u root -p
<ENTER YOUR MYSQL PASSWORD>
mysql> create database nextcloud;
mysql> create user 'nextcloud'@'localhost' identified by 'PASSWORD';
mysql> grant all privileges on nextcloud.* to 'nextcloud'@'localhost';
mysql> flush privileges;
mysql> quit

Install PHP for Nextcloud

For Nextcloud to work, you will need a new version of PHP as well as a few PHP libraries. Likely, you have already installed a version of PHP but its also no problem to have multiple versions installed on your server. We will talk about how to enable the latest installed PHP version in Apache in the section Configure Apache for Nextcloud below.

sudo apt install software-properties-common
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ondrej/php
sudo apt update
sudo apt upgrade

Install PHP with all required libraries:

sudo apt install php8.0
sudo apt install php8.0-gd php8.0-mysql php8.0-curl php8.0-mbstring php8.0-apcu
sudo apt install php8.0-intl php8.0-gmp php8.0-bcmath php8.0-xml
sudo apt install libapache2-mod-php8.0 php8.0-zip php-imagick redis-server php-redis

As of writing this article, Nextcloud does not work with PHP8.1 so make sure to use PHP8.0 instead!

Download Nextcloud Hub 21

• Go to https://nextcloud.com
• Click on 「Get Nextcloud」
• Click on 「Server packages」
• Right-click on 「Download Nextcloud」
• Click on 「Copy link address」

Then, download the latest version of Nextcloud directly onto your home server:

wget https://download.nextcloud.com/server/releases/nextcloud-23.0.0.zip

Next, unzip Nextcloud directly into the www directory of Apache (first run sudo apt install unzip if you don’t have unzip installed yet):

sudo unzip nextcloud-23.0.0.zip -d /var/www

Switch directories and change ownership of the Nextcloud folder to Apache, which is the 「www-data」 user:

cd /var/www
sudo chown -R www-data:www-data nextcloud/

Configure Apache for Nextcloud

First, you need to enable a few Apache modifications for Nextcloud to properly run

sudo a2enmod headers env dir mime rewrite
sudo service apache2 restart

Add a VirtualHost entry in the default configuration file of Apache. If you already have a domain name, you can additionally specify it under the DocumentRoot directive. Don’t worry if you don’t have your own domain – you can just as easily use Nextcloud only locally without the need of a domain name.

<VirtualHost *:80>

    ServerName cloud.yourdomain.com
    DocumentRoot /var/www/nextcloud

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

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

        RewriteEngine On
        RewriteRule ^/\.well-known/carddav https://%{SERVER_NAME}/remote.php/dav/ [R=301,L]
        RewriteRule ^/\.well-known/caldav https://%{SERVER_NAME}/remote.php/dav/ [R=301,L]
        RewriteRule ^/\.well-known/host-meta https://%{SERVER_NAME}/public.php?service=host-meta [QSA,L]
        RewriteRule ^/\.well-known/host-meta\.json https://%{SERVER_NAME}/public.php?service=host-meta-json [QSA,L]
        RewriteRule ^/\.well-known/webfinger https://%{SERVER_NAME}/public.php?service=webfinger [QSA,L]

    </Directory>

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

</VirtualHost>

Finally, restart Apache

sudo service apache2 restart

Optionally, you can also secure your Nextcloud installation using SSL. You can find a tutorial on how to enable SSL for your Nextcloud installation here.

Nextcloud Configuration

I generally recommend to set up a static local IP address for your home server, which you can do in your router’s configuration:

In my case, my Nextcloud server is located at 192.168.1.50, hence I need to update the Nextcloud configuration file in order to be able to use that local IP address to browse to my Nextcloud instance. Also, this is where you can specify your domain if you have one:

'trusted_domains' => 
array(
  0 => 192.168.1.50:80
  1 => http://yourdomain.com
),

You should now be able to access your Nextcloud instance by browsing to http://YOUR-SERVER-LOCAL-IP

Fixing Installation Issues

Click on settings and then on 「Overview」 to see on-going issues with your Nextcloud installation. It is completely normal for a new installation to produce a few errors, so here is how you can fix the most common issues

Update PHP Configuration

Any fresh Apache & PHP installation will trigger the following warning:

• The PHP memory limit is below the recommended value of 512MB.

This can easily be fixed by increasing the respective value in the php.ini file:

memory_limit = 512M

Set up Cronjob for Nextcloud

For Nextcloud to run smoothly, you will want to set up a cronjob. This is a task that is executed automatically in the background. Modify your Apache cronjob:

sudo crontab -u www-data -e

If asked, press 「1」 to use the nano editor (which is super easy to use) and add the following line to your crontab file:

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

This will execute the Nextcloud cronjob every 5 Minutes. You can use this website to better understand how to modify the execution period: https://crontab.guru/every-5-minutes

No default phone region set

This error can simply be fixed by adding the following line to the Nextcloud config.php:

'default_phone_region' => 'GB',

No memory cache has been configured

It is highly recommended to set up some form of memory caching in order to improve your Nextcloud’s performance. I recommend using Redis for this purpose, which we have already previously installed during the PHP installation process.

First, check if Redis is actually running on your server. If you don’t get the output below, make sure to install ‘redis-server’ and ‘php-redis’

roman@tutserv:~$ ps ax | grep redis
2488834 ?        Ssl    1:24 /usr/bin/redis-server 127.0.0.1:6379

Add the Apache user (www-data) to the redis group and restart the web server

sudo usermod -a -G redis www-data
sudo service apache2 restart

Finally, simply add the following lines to your Nextcloud configuration

  'filelocking.enabled' => true,
  'memcache.local' => '\\OC\\Memcache\\APCu',
  'memcache.locking' => '\\OC\\Memcache\\Redis',
  'redis' =>
  array (
    'host' => '127.0.0.1',
    'port' => 6379,
  ),

Note: As of December 2021, using redis as file cache would crash your server with the infamous 「Internal Server Error」. Thanks to sebastian for suggesting a fix for this issue!

This will enable file locking to avoid corrupting files and specifies Redis as local caching server. We need to explicitly state that we want to use the Redis server running on our localhost (127.0.0.1) and on the default port (6379).

Fix php-imagick warning

On a fresh installation of Ubuntu 20.04 you will likely get the following warning message:

• Module php-imagick in this instance has no SVG support. For better compatibility it is recommended to install it.

Then you will have to first uninstall ImageMagick and all its dependencies using:

sudo apt remove imagemagick-6-common php-imagick
sudo apt autoremove

and then reinstall imagemagick;

sudo apt install imagemagick php-imagick

Install ONLYOFFICE

• Click on your user image
• Click on Apps
• Select Office & Text from the left menu
• Download and enable the Community Document Server
• Download and enable ONLYOFFICE
• Click on your user image and go to settings
• Make sure to update your Document Editing Service address

Move Nextcloud data directory

You can move the Nextcloud home directory to any drive of your liking if you want to save files that your Nextcloud serves on another drive than your OS drive (which you probably want since you likely won’t have terrabytes of space on your OS drive):

First, make sure that the External storage support is enabled: https://docs.nextcloud.com/server/latest/admin_manual/configuration_files/external_storage_configuration_gui.html

WARNING: Make sure that the 「data」 folder in the target directory does not yet exists!

sudo cp -a /var/www/nextcloud/data/. /mnt/cloud/data/

Next, update the Nextcloud configuration to reflect the new data directory:

'datadirectory' => '/mnt/cloud/data',

Further Nextcloud Configuration

If Nextcloud is not installed in a subfolder, update the .htaccess file

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

Set up SMTP

Attention: In order to set up SMTP and enable email notifications from Nextcloud you will need to have a valid SMTP server.

First, you will need to actually set an Email address for your Nextcloud user:

Next, enter your SMTP details under 「Basic settings」:

Finally, if you are running a firewall (which you should!), you will need to allow two ports for SMTP to work:

sudo ufw allow 465

Congratulations, you should now have a working version of Nextcloud Hub version 21 up and running!