# Setup Documentation for Nextcloud ## System Setup ### Configure Settings for Redis Redis depends on a few kernel/system parameters being set appropriately to run well. Since these are kernel parameters, they can only be set on the host (not the container), and must be configured as root. Firstly, the `overcommit_memory` system setting being set to zero may cause Redis to fail to background save. Make sure it is set to 1 by running: ``` sysctl vm.overcommit_memory=1 ``` The setting can be made persistent through reboots by adding the line ``` vm.overcommit_memory = 1 ``` to the bottom of your `/etc/sysctl.conf` file. Additionally, Redis has fairly serious latency issues with THP (Transparent Huge Pages) enabled, so it is best to disable it. Disable them by running: ``` echo never > /sys/kernel/mm/transparent_hugepage/enabled ``` This configuration is also not persistent through reboots. Redis recommends adding the command as a line to your `/etc/rc.local` file, but `rc.local` is deprecated, so we will instead create a systemd unit to disable THP at startup. Create a file `/etc/systemd/system/redis-disable-thp.service`, with the following contents: ``` [Unit] Description=Disable Transparent Huge Pages (THP) for Redis DefaultDependencies=no After=sysinit.target local-fs.target Before=lxd.service [Service] Type=oneshot RemainAfterExit=yes ExecStart=/bin/sh -c 'echo never | tee /sys/kernel/mm/transparent_hugepage/enabled > /dev/null' [Install] WantedBy=basic.target ``` Then enable the service by running: ``` systemctl enable redis-disable-thp ``` ### Create Container ``` lxc launch ubuntu-base nextcloud ``` ### Mount External Directory inside the container, create the directory: ``` lxc exec nextcloud -- bash mkdir /srv/nextcloud cd /srv/nextcloud mkdir database mkdir -p files/mar/files exit ``` outside the container, create the directory to be mounted, set its ownership: ``` cd /srv/lxd/mount mkdir nextcloud chown lxdfiles:lxdfiles nextcloud ``` create a symlink to your folder in `/srv/lxd/mount`, and mount the directory: ``` lxc config device add nextcloud database disk source=/srv/lxd/mount/nextcloud path=/srv/nextcloud/database lxc config device add nextcloud ext-mar disk source=/tank/files/mar path=/srv/nextcloud/files/mar/files lxc config set nextcloud raw.idmap 'both 60000 33' lxc restart nextcloud ``` The rest of the setup will be done inside the container: ``` lxc exec nextcloud -- bash ``` ## System Setup ### Install Packages install packages required for nextcloud: ``` apt update apt upgrade apt install unzip apache2 php7.2-fpm php7.2-gd php7.2-json php7.2-pgsql php7.2-curl php7.2-mbstring php7.2-intl php-imagick php7.2-xml php7.2-zip redis-server php-redis postgresql postgresql-doc ``` ### Create Directories in external mount create directories and set ownership: ``` cd /srv/nextcloud/ mkdir files mkdir database chown www-data:www-data files database ``` ### Download Nextcloud Then download the zip file containing the latest version of nextcloud: ``` cd wget https://download.nextcloud.com/server/releases/latest.zip ``` this will save it as `latest.zip` in your current directory. download the checksum: ``` wget https://download.nextcloud.com/server/releases/latest.zip.md5 ``` verify the checksum: ``` md5sum -c latest.zip.md5 < latest.zip ``` unzip the file: ``` unzip latest.zip ``` a nextcloud directory will appear in your root directory Move it to `/var/www/html`: ``` mv nextcloud /var/www/html/ rm latest.zip latest.zip.md5 ``` And finally, make sure it's owned by the `www-data` user: ``` cd /var/www/html/ chown -R www-data:www-data nextcloud ``` ### Make occ script We will want to use the Nextcloud `occ` command a lot, so we will create an alias for it for convenience. Create a scipt in `/usr/local/bin`: ``` cd /usr/local/bin/ nano nc-occ ``` The script should have the following contents: ``` #!/bin/sh sudo -u www-data php /var/www/html/nextcloud/occ "$@" ``` Don't forget to make it executable: ``` chmod +x nc-occ ``` ### Configure Apache `cd` to the Apache configuration directory: ``` cd /etc/apache2 ``` Activate the Apache modules required for Nextcloud: ``` a2enmod rewrite headers env dir mime proxy_fcgi a2dismod php7.2 a2enconf php7.2-fpm ``` Next, we will create a site configuration for NextCloud. We will make a new entry in `sites-available/nextcloud.conf`, with the following contents: ``` #ServerAdmin webmaster@localhost DocumentRoot /var/www/html/nextcloud/ Require all granted AllowOverride All Options FollowSymLinks MultiViews Dav off ErrorLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/error.log CustomLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/access.log combined #LogLevel debug # PHP-FPM SetHandler "proxy:unix:/var/run/php/php7.2-fpm.sock|fcgi://localhost/" ``` Next, we will go to `sites-enabled` and delete the default config and make a link to our NextCloud configuration file: ``` cd sites-enabled rm 000-default.conf ln -s ../sites-available/nextcloud.conf ``` ### Configure PHP-FPM Enable and start `php-fpm`: ``` systemctl enable php7.2-fpm service php7.2-fpm start ``` Next, edit the `php-fpm` configuration file at `/etc/php/7.2/fpm/php.ini`. Find the OPcache section, which should be marked by the header `[opcache]`, and add the following configuration: ``` opcache.enable=1 opcache.memory_consumption=128 opcache.interned_strings_buffer=8 opcache.max_accelerated_files=10000 opcache.revalidate_freq=2 opcache.save_comments=1 ``` Additionally, we want to set the following parameters in the same file to increase the allowed memory limit and upload size (search the file for the parameter name and edit that line): ``` max_execution_time = 240 memory_limit = 1G upload_max_filesize = 10G post_max_size = 11G ``` (`post_max_size` should be bigger than `upload_mas_filesize` to prevent errors) Finally, we will want to set some parameters to tune the performance of PHP-FPM specifically. Set the following parameters in `/etc/php/7.2/fpm/pool.d/www.conf` to at least the following: ``` clear_env = no pm = dynamic pm.max_children = 32 pm.start_servers = 12 pm.min_spare_servers = 8 pm.max_spare_servers = 16 pm.max_requests = 500 ``` These parameters will depend on your particular hardware. You can use the command `ps -C php-fpm7.0 -o rss= | awk '{ sum+=$1 } END { printf ("%d%s\n", sum/NR/1024,"M") }'` to see the average memory usage by PHP-FPM for your computer, or `ps -C php-fpm7.0 -o rss= | awk '{ sum+=$1 } END { printf ("%d%s\n", sum/1024,"M") }'` to see total memory usage. ### Configure Redis We will configure Redis to be available on a unix socket as well, as that will be faster than even using a loopback interface. Edit the file `/etc/redis/redis.conf`, and add the following configuration options: ``` port 0 unixsocket /var/run/redis/redis-server.sock unixsocketperm 770 supervised systemd ``` Add `www-data` to the `redis` group so it can have full permissions on the socket: ``` adduser www-data redis ``` ### Configure PostgreSQL In order to configure PostgreSQL, we will switch to the `postgres` user: ``` su - postgres ``` First, enter the SQL shell: ``` psql ``` And create a database and user for Nextcloud: ``` CREATE DATABASE nextcloud; CREATE USER ncadmin; GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON DATABASE nextcloud TO ncadmin; \q ``` Next, edit the file `/etc/postgresql/10/main/pg_hba.conf`. Since we are running nextcloud in a container, there is no need to worry about any other user connecting to the socket. So we will allow anyone to connect as `ncadmin` without needing authentication. So we will set the following configuration: ``` # Database administrative login by Unix domain socket local all postgres peer # Allow connection to Unix domain socket without authentication local all ncadmin trust ``` The `trust` directive tells PostgreSQL to allow connections to the socket without attempting to authenticate. These are the only lines that will be needed in the `pg_hba.conf` file. Feel free to delete or comment out all the other lines. Exit back to being root inside the container: ``` exit ``` The last step we need is to create a script to automatically dump the database on an hourly basis. We will create a script at `/usr/local/bin/dbdump`, with the following contents: ``` #!/bin/bash hour=$(date +%H) day=$(date +%d) month=$(date +%m) year=$(date +%Y) dbdir=/srv/nextcloud/database dbname=nextcloud dbuser=ncadmin mkdir -p $dbdir cd $dbdir if [[ -z "$1" ]]; then echo "[$year-$month-$day] Error: called with missing hour parameter. Script exited without running." | tee error.log exit 1 fi if [[ $hour == "$1" ]]; then nc-occ maintenance:mode --on fi pg_dump -U $dbuser -d $dbname > $dbname-hourly-$hour.sql 2>> error.log if [[ $hour == "$1" ]]; then nc-occ maintenance:mode --off mv $dbname-hourly-$hour.sql $dbname-daily-$day.sql 2>> error.log fi if [[ $day == "01" ]]; then mv $dbname-daily-$day.sql $dbname-$year-$month-$day.sql 2>> error.log fi # If error.log is size 0, erase it because I don't like seeing it if [[ ! -s ./error.log ]]; then rm error.log fi ``` Don't forget to make it executable: ``` chmod +x /usr/local/bin/dbdump ``` ### Restart Services Finally, we will restart all our services to make sure all the configuration changes have taken effect. The easiest way to do this is just restarting the container itself: ``` exit lxc restart nextcloud ``` ## Nextcloud Setup The rest of these steps should once again be executed on the nextcloud container: ``` lxc exec nextcloud -- bash ``` ### Install Nextcloud We will now run the Nextcloud installation script: ``` nc-occ maintenance:install --data-dir "/srv/nextcloud/files/" --database "pgsql" --database-host "/var/run/postgresql" --database-name "nextcloud" --database-user "ncadmin" --database-pass "" --admin-user "${admin_username:?}" --admin-pass "${admin_password:?}" ``` Where `${admin_username:?}` and `${admin_password:?}` are chosen by you, and will be the username and password of the Nextcloud admin user that will be created. The message `Nextcloud was successfully installed` should be displayed if done correctly. ### Configure Nextcloud Head over to the Nextcloud configuration directory: ``` cd /var/www/html/nextcloud/config/ ``` In addition to the default `config.php` file, Nextcloud also loads configuration parameters fron any file ending with `.config.php`. These custom files are not overwritten by Nextcloud, and the values in these files take precedence over the default config file `config.php`, which means, among other things, that configuration set in a custom file cannot be changed through the web interface. It is also important to note that Nextcloud doesn't take these configuration values directly from the file, but rather copies them into the default `config.php` file. So if you want to erase a config value defined in a custom file, you will have to erase it from `config.php` as well. We will create a file named `my.config.php` to neatly store our manually-set configuration parameters without having to search for our parameters in between all the automatically-configured parameters. The file should have the following contents: ``` '/srv/nextcloud/files/', 'htaccess.RewriteBase' => '/', /** Database **/ 'dbtype' => 'pgsql', 'dbname' => 'nextcloud', 'dbuser' => 'ncadmin', 'dbpassword' => '', 'dbhost' => '/var/run/postgresql', 'dbtableprefix' => 'oc_', /** Network **/ 'trusted_domains' => array ( 0 => 'nextcloud.lxd', ), 'trusted_proxies' => array ( 0 => 'nextcloud.lsu.brbytes.org', ), 'overwriteprotocol' => 'http', 'overwritehost' => 'medusa.casa.alemor.org', 'overwritewebroot' => '/nextcloud', 'overwrite.cli.url' => 'http://medusa.casa.alemor.org/nextcloud/', /** Memory Caching **/ 'memcache.local' => '\\OC\\Memcache\\Redis', 'memcache.distributed' => '\\OC\\Memcache\\Redis', 'memcache.locking' => '\\OC\\Memcache\\Redis', 'filelocking.enabled' => 'true', 'redis' => array ( 'host' => '/var/run/redis/redis-server.sock', 'port' => 0, 'timeout' => 0.0, ), ); ``` Don't forget to change the owner of the file to `www-data`: ``` chown www-data:www-data my.config.php ``` There are also a few maintenance commands we need to run to make sure Nextcloud is properly set up: ``` nc-occ maintenance:update:htaccess nc-occ db:add-missing-indices nc-occ db:convert-filecache-bigint ``` ## Set up crontab Nextcloud needs to execute periodic background tasks. The recommended way to do this is with `cron`. Open the `www-data` user's crontab for editing by entering: ``` crontab -u www-data -e ``` This will open a text editor where you can edit the crontab. We will add to the crontab the following lines: ``` # Run Nextcloud cron tasks every 5 minutes */5 * * * * php -f /var/www/html/nextcloud/cron.php # Dump database every hour 01 * * * * /usr/local/bin/dbdump 01 # Scan for new files every 15 minutes */15 * * * * /usr/local/bin/nc-occ files:scan mar ``` then save and exit. Finally, you can check that the job was properly scheduled by entering: ``` crontab -u www-data -l ``` ## Configure Reverse Proxy The following steps need to be run on the host machine. ### Configure Hosts Find out your container's IP by using `lxc list`, and add it to `/etc/hosts`: ``` ${container_ip:?} nextcloud.lxd ``` ### Configure HAproxy Add the following directives to your HAproxy configuration: ``` frontend www bind :80 mode http # Reroute caldav/carddav auto-discover to appropriate address (i.e. Nextcloud) # Put "code 301" after "redirect" to make it a 301 redirect http-request redirect location /nextcloud/remote.php/dav/ if { path /.well-known/caldav /.well-known/carddav } # Send to nextcloud if path begins with /nextcloud use_backend nextcloud if { path_beg /nextcloud } backend nextcloud mode http option forwardfor http-request set-header X-Forwarded-Proto https if { ssl_fc } # Remove the "/nextcloud" part from the path # WARNING: due to limitations in the config parser, the characters ")","]", or "," # are NOT allowed in any regular expression http-request set-path "%[path,regsub(^/nextcloud,)]" server nc-1 nextcloud.lxd:80 ``` And make sure to reload the configuration by running: ``` service haproxy reload ``` ## Nextcloud Tweaks Here are a few ways you can tweak your Nextcloud instance: If you are using the Calendar app, the default timeframe on which it updates subscriptions is one week. To set it to update subscriptions more often, use the command: ``` nc-occ config:app:set dav calendarSubscriptionRefreshRate --value ${timeframe:?} ``` where `${timeframe:?}` is in the format of a [`DateInterval`](https://www.php.net/manual/fr/dateinterval.construct.php) type. For a timeframe of one hour, use `PT1H`. For a timeframe of one day, use `P1D`. To remove the space for writing notes at the top of a folder in the Files app, run: ``` nc-occ config:app:set text workspace_available --value=0 ``` It can also be disabled on a user-by-user basis by disabling the "Show rich workspaces" option in the user settings for the Files app.