LXC NextCloud

26 Mar 2022

The purpose of this article, is to deploy a light-weight, cloud solution for friends and family. I will be creating a Proxmox VE 7 LXC, running Ubuntu 20.04 LTS and deploying NextCloud. Furthermore.

What is NextCloud

NextCloud offers the industry-leading, on-premises content collaboration platform. It combines the convenience and ease of use of consumer-grade solutions like Dropbox and Google Drive with security, privacy and control, while being compliant with HIPAA, GDPR and more.

NextCloud is entirely open-source, free of lockin or paywalls.

  • NextCloud Files makes it easy to sync, share and collaborate on your files.
  • NextCloud Talk provides screensharing, online meetings & web conferencing without data leaks.
  • NextClooud Groupware makes team planning and email made easy
  • NextCloud is expandable with more than 200 additional Apps and community support.

See how NextCloud compares against Office 365, OwnCloud and others.

LXC Creation

In this demonstration I will be deploying a light-weight NextCloud instance using a Proxmox unprivileged LXC running Ubuntu 20.04 LTS. This instance will be without the integrated Office and Talk features, therefore my resources will be set to:

  • CPU: 1 Core
  • RAM: 1024 MB (1 GB)
  • Disk: 8 GB
  • Mount: 128 GB TrueNAS disk (/mnt/data)

I have monitored this deployment and over a month the maximum memory usage was 271 MB and average CPU between 0.1 to 0.5%. The completed installation takes 1.01 GB of the 8 GB disk.

NextCloud Installation

Always start by updating the repositories and upgrading any available packages.

sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade -y

Now install the core packages required for NextCloud.

sudo apt install -y gpg

sudo apt install -y apache2 mariadb-server libapache2-mod-php7.4

sudo apt install -y php7.4-gd php7.4-mysql php7.4-curl php7.4-mbstring php7.4-intl

sudo apt install -y php7.4-gmp php7.4-bcmath php-imagick php7.4-xml php7.4-zip

Because I have an addition hard disk I will be creating a nextcloud directory and setting its permissions.

mkdir /mnt/data/nextcloud

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

Creating the database

Now we start mySQL and login using root

sudo /etc/init.d/mysql start
sudo mysql -uroot -p

The following commands will create a new database called nextcloud and a user called nextcloud.

CREATE USER 'nextcloud'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'UNxQzQn8jdzEMBDs4yKKVzwmm';
CREATE DATABASE IF NOT EXISTS nextcloud CHARACTER SET utf8mb4 COLLATE utf8mb4_general_ci;
GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON nextcloud.* TO 'nextcloud'@'localhost';
FLUSH PRIVILEGES;


quit;

Install NextCloud

Download the NextCloud release

wget https://download.nextcloud.com/server/releases/nextcloud-23.0.0.tar.bz2
wget https://download.nextcloud.com/server/releases/nextcloud-23.0.0.tar.bz2.sha256

sha256sum -c nextcloud-23.0.0.tar.bz2.sha256 < nextcloud-23.0.0.tar.bz2


wget https://download.nextcloud.com/server/releases/nextcloud-23.0.0.tar.bz2.asc
wget https://nextcloud.com/nextcloud.asc

gpg --verify nextcloud-23.0.0.tar.bz2.asc nextcloud-23.0.0.tar.bz2

Extract the contents

tar -xjvf nextcloud-23.0.0.tar.bz2

Copy the contents over to the /var/www directory

cp -r nextcloud /var/www

Clean up by removing the NextCloud files

rm -R nextcloud \
nextcloud-23.0.0.tar.bz2 \
nextcloud-23.0.0.tar.bz2.asc \
nextcloud-23.0.0.tar.bz2.sha256 \
nextcloud.asc

Apache Configuration

Now we will create a new Apache configuration for our NextCloud instance.

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

Copy the below and modify the ServerName value.

<VirtualHost *:80>
  DocumentRoot /var/www/nextcloud/
  ServerName  nextcloud.networkingdream.com

  <Directory /var/www/nextcloud/>
    Require all granted
    AllowOverride All
    Satisfy Any
    Options FollowSymLinks MultiViews
    
    php_admin_value memory_limit 512M

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

Test the Apache configuration by using the following command

apache2ctl configtest

Now enable the NextCloud site conf and disable the default site.

a2ensite nextcloud.conf
a2dissite 000-default.conf

We will be enabling a few Apache2 modes

  • Rewrite - provides a way to do URL manipulations.
  • Headers - provides directives to control and modify HTTP request and response headers.
  • Env - allows for control of internal environment variables that are used by various Apache HTTP Server modules.
  • Dir - Provides for “trailing slash” redirects and serving directory index files.
  • Mime - used to assign content metadata to the content selected for an HTTP response by mapping patterns in the URI or filenames to the metadata values.
a2enmod rewrite
a2enmod headers
a2enmod env
a2enmod dir
a2enmod mime

Once enabled, reload the Apache2 service.

sudo systemctl reload apache2

Installation wizard

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

Find the IP address of the NextCloud server

ip addr

Visit server address and complete Installation Wizard.

http://192.168.1.x/

Addition Configurations

Trusted domain

Modify the NextCloud config file

sudo nano /var/www/nextcloud/config/config.php

Add your trusted domains as an array, as shown below.

  'trusted_domains' => 
  array (
    0 => '192.168.1.x',
    1 => 'nextcloud.networkingdream.com',
  ),

Pretty URLs

Modify the NextCloud config file

sudo nano /var/www/nextcloud/config/config.php

Copy and overwrite the value in your configuration file, make sure to change the address.

'overwrite.cli.url' => 'https://nextcloud.networkingdream.com',
'htaccess.RewriteBase' => '/',

Run the below occ-command to update your .htaccess file.

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

Now reload the Apache2 service.

sudo systemctl reload apache2

Reverse Proxy Settings

Modify the NextCloud config file

sudo nano /var/www/nextcloud/config/config.php

Add your reverse proxy server information, as shown below.

'trusted_proxies' => ['192.168.1.250'],
'overwriteprotocol' => 'https',

Now reload the Apache2 service.

sudo systemctl reload apache2

Memory Cache

Install the php-apcu package and then reload the Apache2 service.

sudo apt install -y php-apcu

sudo systemctl reload apache2

Next modify the Nextcloud config file

sudo nano /var/www/nextcloud/config/config.php

Setting the below value.

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

SVG Support

To enable SVG support install the below packages

sudo apt install -y php-imagick libmagickcore-6.q16-6-extra

Phone Region

The default phone region is en, to set a new default region, modify the NextCloud config file

sudo nano /var/www/nextcloud/config/config.php

Set your region as shown below.

'default_phone_region' => 'GB',
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