This is a set up guide for installing Nextcloud on a Raspberry Pi running Ubuntu server using docker.
This tutorial uses the 64-bit version of Ubuntu for the Raspberry Pi's OS. Using the official Raspberry Pi OS is also possible, but if you are using the 32-bit OS, then alternative docker images may be required.
In order to follow this through you will need a DNS domain.
Get a domain name and set up the DNS A record to point at your external ip. It may be helpful to set up a script using the API of the hosting service to keep the external ip up to date. xyz domains can be found cheaply.
Alternatively use a DNS service as either your domain name or to point your record at.
A domain may take a few hours to propagate so you may have to wait at this point.
- download the 64-bit image but do not unzip the image
- insert the sd card into your pc and flash the image using the gnomes disks program
- select the sd card and use the
restore disk imageoption fthe the setting menu
- select the sd card and use the
- plug the pi into your router and find it's ip
- ssh is enabled by default so you should be able to ssh into it
- user: ubuntu
- pass: ubuntu
when you first login it will ask you to change the password, do so then relog it over shh. On first boot ubuntu will expand the file system, after a short while you should be able to update ubuntu using sudo apt update and sudo apt upgrade.
sudo nano /etc/netplan/01-netcfg.yaml
add the following changing the ip to your preference (note this uses cloudfare 1.1.1.1 nameservers):
network:
version: 2
renderer: networkd
ethernets:
eth0:
dhcp4: no
addresses: [<ip-address>/24]
gateway4: 192.168.1.254
nameservers:
addresses: [1.1.1.1, 1.0.0.1]
forward ports 80 and 443 on your router to point at the raspberry pi.
curl -fsSL https://get.docker.com -o get-docker.sh
sh get-docker.sh
sudo usermod -aG docker $LOGNAME
Logout and back in.
Test out docker by running:
docker container run hello-world
Remove it if it runs successfully:
docker ps -a
docker rm ID_OF_HELLO_WORLD
More info can be found on the docker website.
This is not a required step, however portainer is a useful tool for setting up and managing docker containers so we are going to install this to make our lives easier to manage our containers later in the future.
docker volume create portainer_data
docker run -d -p 8000:8000 -p 9000:9000 --name=portainer --restart=always -v /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock -v portainer_data:/data portainer/portainer-ce
Navigate to http://<pi-ip-address>:9000. Setup the admin username and password.the the next page, select Docker as the container environment to manage. You will now be brought to the portainer homepage.
More info can be found in portainer's docs.
Install docker-compose
sudo apt install docker-compose
We are going to use Nginx Proxy Manager for our reverse proxy, but as we are only running on a raspberry pi will setup using sqlite and not a full SQL database.
docker network create proxy
cd ~
mkdir reverse-proxy
cd reverse-proxy
Create a docker-compose.yml file in the reverse-proxy directory with following content.
version: "3"
networks:
proxy:
external: true
services:
reverse-proxy:
image: "jc21/nginx-proxy-manager:latest"
restart: always
ports:
- "80:80"
- "443:443"
- "81:81"
environment:
DB_SQLITE_FILE: "/data/database.sqlite"
DISABLE_IPV6: "true"
volumes:
- ./data:/data
- ./letsencrypt:/etc/letsencrypt
networks:
- proxy
Create container:
docker-compose up -d
Navigate to http://<pi-ip-address>:81 and enter the default credentials:
Email: admin@example.com
Password: changeme
You will immediately be prompted to change these.
cd ~
mkdir nextcloud
cd nextcloud
mkdir conf.d
Create a docker-compose.yml file in the nextcloud directory with following content (swap out the details with your own).
version: '3'
volumes:
nextcloud-data:
nextcloud-db:
networks:
frontend:
external:
name: proxy
backend:
services:
nextcloud-app:
image: nextcloud
restart: always
volumes:
- nextcloud-data:/var/www/html
environment:
- MYSQL_PASSWORD=change_me_please
- MYSQL_DATABASE=nextcloud
- MYSQL_USER=nextcloud
- MYSQL_HOST=nextcloud-db
- PHP_UPLOAD_LIMIT=10G
- PHP_MEMORY_LIMIT=512M
networks:
- frontend
- backend
nextcloud-db:
image: mariadb
restart: always
command: --transaction-isolation=READ-COMMITTED --binlog-format=ROW --innodb-file-per-table=1 --skip-innodb-read-only-compressed
volumes:
- nextcloud-db:/var/lib/mysql
environment:
- MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD=change_me_please
- MYSQL_PASSWORD=change_me_please
- MYSQL_DATABASE=nextcloud
- MYSQL_USER=nextcloud
networks:
- backend
Create container:
docker-compose up -d
Navigate back to the Nginx Proxy Manager Web UI and set up a SSL certificate for your domain using web UI on the SSL Certificates tab. This will only be possible once the domain has propagated.
From the Hosts tab, set up a new proxy host for your domain and point it to the hostname nextcloud-app on port 80. Note as the docker compose was set up using the external network the containers can resolve themselves using their names. On the SSL tab, select the certificate created earlier and then select the Force SSL, HTTP/2 Support and HSTS Enabled options.
You should now be able to navigate to your domain (e.g. https://shinynewdomain.co.uk) and the login screen should pop up! You should also now see a secure connection using a lets encrypt certificate. Create the admin user and untick the Install recommended apps, for performance reasons using the pi, install only what you need using the nextcloud web gui later. After a short while, and possibly a couple of page refreshes, you should be able to log in and upload/download files from the nextcloud web gui.
Log into the console for the nextcloud container, if you installed portainer this can be done through the portainer web ui by navigating to the container and clicking the console icon. Otherwise use docker exec -it nextcloud_nextcloud-app_1 /bin/bash.
- use
apt update && apt install nanoto install nano
To remove the php-imagick warning you can install libmagickcore-dev:
- use
apt install libmagickcore-dev
To set the default phone region, use nano to add the following 'default_phone_region' => 'your-county-code' to the config.php file found in /var/www/html/config.
For caldav and carddav, add the following to the Custom Nginx Configuration in the advanced tab of the nextcloud proxy set up in the Nginx Proxy Manager.
location /.well-known/carddav {
return 301 https://<your-domain>/remote.php/dav;
}
location /.well-known/caldav {
return 301 https://<your-domain>/remote.php/dav;
}
The reverse proxy requires the following amendments to the config file otherwise the desktop and mobile sync apps do not work.
Log into the console for the nextcloud container.
Add/modify the following to the config.php file found in /var/www/html/config.
'overwrite.cli.url' => 'https://<your-domain>',
'overwritehost' => '<your-domain>',
'overwriteprotocol' => 'https',
Cron should be set up instead of the default AJAX for background jobs, especially if apps which require regular jobs being run (e.g. external storage) are to be installed. The php script to be run is included in the docker container but for some reason cron is not installed on the container and I could not get it to run properly inside the container after installing it. Therefore it needs to be set up on the host.
Use crontab -e and add the following:
*/5 * * * * /usr/bin/docker exec --user www-data nextcloud_nextcloud-app_1 php -f /var/www/html/cron.php
By default all files uploaded/downloaded to/from the nextcloud instance will be stored in the nextcloud user's data directory on the pi.
To set up external storage devices (e.g. a NAS or other cloud provider) which can then be accessed through nextcloud:
- first you must install smbclient on the server, log into the console for the nextcloud container
- use
apt update && apt install smbclient
- use
- now login to nextcloud through the web browser
- go to Apps
- scroll down and enable External storage support
- go to Settings -> Administration -> External storages
- add global desired storage or instead allows users to mount their own
- from the storage on the right hand side before clicking the tick icon to accept, additional options can be selected from the dropdown menu, for example allowing users to share from the storage pool
If external storgae is added is may be a good idea to add the following to the crontab to make sure it regulay scans all files added not through nextcloud:
0 */1 * * * /usr/bin/docker exec --user www-data nextcloud_nextcloud-app_1 php -f /var/www/html/occ files:scan --all
or just for a user:
0 */1 * * * /usr/bin/docker exec --user www-data nextcloud_nextcloud-app_1 php -f /var/www/html/occ files:scan <your-username>
From the nextcloud admin settings (on webpage) go to basic settings to set up email server, this is useful to be able to send out reset password emails for example.
If you are using a gmail account this is:
- send mode -> smtp.gmail.com
- encryption -> SSL/TLS
- authentication method -> login
- authentication required -> YES
- server address -> smtp.gmail.com : 465
- credentials are your email address and password (or an app password if using 2FA on google).
In order to update nextcloud version, first make sure to use latest docker image docker-compose pull, and then perform the in app gui update.
Restart the container to replace it with the latest one. And add back in any amendments that were made (e.g. with apt install).
Head to https://scan.nextcloud.com/ and enter your domain. This service does a quick scan of your setup and gives you a score for security of your server.
I put together this guide to suit my own setup but would like to credit the following as without their blogs/articles I would not have got it running:
And the setup guides from docker, portainer and nextcloud.