used learnlinux.tv as below but using video
Commands and code samples
Initial server setup
Adding a user
After setting up Ubuntu Server, create a user for yourself if you don’t already have one:
adduser <username>
Adding the user to the sudo group:
sudo usermod -aG sudo <username>
After creating your user, be sure to log out from root, log in as that user.
Updating packages
Before continuing, let’s make sure all installed packages are up to date.
sudo apt update
sudo apt dist-upgrade
Clean up orphan packages (if there are any):
sudo apt autoremove
Updating the hostname
Edit the following files, and be sure they include the proper hostname or domain name for your server:
sudo nano /etc/hostname
sudo nano /etc/hosts
Reboot your server so that all the changes we’ve made so far will take effect.
sudo reboot
While that’s rebooting, update DNS for the domain name if you have one, so that can replicate while we finish the other steps.
Downloading Nextcloud
We’ll need to grab the Nextcloud zip file, which contains the necessary files we’ll be needing. Click here to open the download page, then copy the URL for the zip file.
On the server, download the Nextcloud zip file using the URL that you copied from the site:
wget https://download.nextcloud.com/server/releases/latest.zip
Note: If that URL doesn’t work (it can change at any time) grab the URL from the Nextcloud site.
MariaDB Setup
Setting up the database server
First, let’s install the mariadb-server package:
sudo apt install mariadb-server
Check the status of the mariadb service:
systemctl status mariadb
Running the secure installation script
Although there’s many tweaks and adjustments you can make to secure MariaDB, running the following command and answering the prompts will give us a decent starting point:
sudo mysql_secure_installation
Follow the prompts to set up some very basic security defaults for the database server.
Creating the Nextcloud Database
Next, we’ll create the database we’ll be using for Nextcloud. To do this, we’ll need to access the MariaDB console:
sudo mariadb
Then, we’ll create the database and set up permissions with the following commands:
CREATE DATABASE nextcloud;
SHOW DATABASES;
GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON nextcloud.* TO 'nextcloud'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'mypassword';
FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
CTRL+D to exit
Apache Webserver Setup
Installing the required packages to support Apache:
sudo apt install php php-apcu php-bcmath php-cli php-common php-curl php-gd php-gmp php-imagick php-intl php-mbstring php-mysql php-zip php-xml
Check the status with of Apache:
systemctl status apache2
Enable the recommended PHP extensions:
sudo phpenmod bcmath gmp imagick intl
Install zip and unzip the Nextcloud zip file:
sudo apt install unzip
unzip latest.zip
Now that we’ve unzipped the files, let’s move the files to where they’ll be served from and also set the permissions as well:
mv nextcloud nextcloud.learnlinux.cloud
sudo chown -R www-data:www-data nextcloud.learnlinux.cloud
sudo mv nextcloud.learnlinux.cloud /var/www
sudo a2dissite 000-default.conf
Creating a host configuration file for Nextcloud
Next, we’ll set up a config file for Apache that tells it how to serve Nextcloud.
sudo nano /etc/apache2/sites-available/nextcloud.learnlinux.cloud.conf
Add the following contents to the file (be sure to adjust the file names to match yours):
<VirtualHost *:80>
DocumentRoot "/var/www/nextcloud.learnlinux.cloud"
ServerName nextcloud.learnlinux.cloud
<Directory "/var/www/nextcloud.learnlinux.cloud/">
Options MultiViews FollowSymlinks
AllowOverride All
Order allow,deny
Allow from all
</Directory>
TransferLog /var/log/apache2/nextcloud.learnlinux.cloud_access.log
ErrorLog /var/log/apache2/nextcloud.learnlinux.cloud_error.log
</VirtualHost>
Enable the site:
sudo a2ensite apache-config-file-name.conf
Configuring PHP
Almost there! The next step will have us change some PHP options. First, edit the following file:
sudo nano /etc/php/8.1/apache2/php.ini
Adjust the following parameters:
memory_limit = 512M
upload_max_filesize = 200M
max_execution_time = 360
post_max_size = 200M
date.timezone = America/Detroit
opcache.enable=1
opcache.interned_strings_buffer=8
opcache.max_accelerated_files=10000
opcache.memory_consumption=128
opcache.save_comments=1
opcache.revalidate_freq=1
Enable the following PHP mods for Apache:
sudo a2enmod dir env headers mime rewrite ssl
Restart Apache to ensure the new PHP settings take effect:
sudo systemctl restart apache2
Acquiring a TLS certificate
Let’s set up Let’s Encrypt and obtain a certificate for our Nextcloud installation. The following steps will guide you through the process.
Note: Instructions are taken from this link, which you may want to visit in case the instructions change in the future.
Ensure snapd is installed:
sudo apt install snapd
Install the core snap:
sudo snap install core; sudo snap refresh core
Install Certbot:
sudo snap install --classic certbot
sudo ln -s /snap/bin/certbot /usr/bin/certbot
Attempt to obtain a certificate (DNS must have already propagated):
sudo certbot --apache
Answer the prompts carefully, and as long as you didn’t overlook everything you should have your very own TLS certificate!
Misc. Tweaks and Adjustments
Correct the permissions of the config.php file
We definitely wouldn’t want the config.php file to fall into the wrong hands, as it contains valuable setup information regarding our Nextcloud setup. Let’s adjust the permissions to better protect it.
sudo chmod 660 /var/www/<nextcloud_directory>/config/config.php
sudo chown root:www-data /var/www/<nextcloud_directory/config/config.php
Enable memory caching
Edit the Nextcloud config file:
sudo vim /var/www/nextcloud.learnlinux.cloud/config/config.php
Add the following line to the bottom:
'memcache.local' => '\\OC\\Memcache\\APCu',
Resolving warnings pertaining to the default phone region
Edit the Nextcloud config file:
sudo vim /var/www/nextcloud.learnlinux.cloud/config/config.php
Add the following line to the bottom of the file:
'default_phone_region' => 'US',
Note: Be sure to change “US” in the above example to your two-character country code, if yours is not US.
Get rid of the Image Magick error
Install the libmagickcore-6.q16-6-extra package:
sudo apt install libmagickcore-6.q16-6-extra
Enabling Strict Transport Security
Edit the SSL config file for our Nextcloud installation:
sudo vim /etc/apache2/sites-available/nextcloud.learnlinux.cloud-le-ssl.conf
Add the following line after the ServerName line:
<IfModule mod_headers.c>
Header always set Strict-Transport-Security "max-age=15552000; includeSubDomains"
</IfModule>