Example installation on CentOS 8
In this install tutorial we will be deploying CentOS 8, PHP 7.4, MariaDB, Redis as memcache and Nextcloud running on Apache.
Start off by installing a CentOS 8 minimal install. This should provide a sufficient platform to run a successful Nextcloud instance.
First install some dependencies you will be needing during installation, but which will also be useful in every day use situations:
dnf install -y epel-release yum-utils unzip curl wget \
bash-completion policycoreutils-python-utils mlocate bzip2
Now make sure your system is up to date:
dnf update -y
Apache
dnf install -y httpd
Create a virtualhost in /etc/httpd/conf.d/nextcloud.conf and add the following content to it:
<VirtualHost *:80>
DocumentRoot /var/www/html/nextcloud/
ServerName your.server.com
<Directory /var/www/html/nextcloud/>
Require all granted
AllowOverride All
Options FollowSymLinks MultiViews
<IfModule mod_dav.c>
Dav off
</IfModule>
</Directory>
</VirtualHost>
See Apache Web server configuration for further details.
Make sure the apache web service is enabled and started:
systemctl enable httpd.service
systemctl start httpd.service
PHP
Note
CentOS 8 doesn’t come with packages for the redis and imagick php extensions.
Those can either be installed using pecl. Apart from the official PHP packages there are 3rdparty
repositories available at https://rpms.remirepo.net. Using remirepo you can also install the
latest PHP version instead of the standard shipped one.
Setting up remirepo with PHP 7.4
More details can be found on https://blog.remirepo.net/pages/Config-en
Command to install the Remi repository configuration package:
dnf install https://rpms.remirepo.net/enterprise/remi-release-8.rpm
Command to install the yum-utils package (for the yum-config-manager command):
dnf install yum-utils
You want a single version which means replacing base packages from the distribution. Packages have the same name than the base repository, ie php-*. Some common dependencies are available in remi-safe repository, which is enabled by default.
You have to enable the module stream for 7.4:
dnf module reset php
dnf module install php:remi-7.4
dnf update
Installing PHP and the required modules
Next install the PHP modules needed for this install. Remember, because this is a limited basic install, we only install the neccessary modules, not all of them. If you are making a more complete install, please refer to PHP module list in the source installation documentation, Installation on Linux.:
dnf install -y php php-gd php-mbstring php-intl php-pecl-apcu\
php-mysqlnd php-opcache php-json php-zip
Manually building redis/imagick (optional)
dnf install -y php-pear gcc curl-devel php-devel zlib-devel pcre-devel make
pecl install redis
dnf config-manager --set-enabled PowerTools
dnf install -y ImageMagick ImageMagick-devel
pecl install imagick
After installing the extensions make sure to load the extensions in your php.ini file with:
extension=redis.so
extension=imagick.so
Database
As mentioned, we will be using MySQL/MariaDB as our database.:
dnf install -y mariadb mariadb-server
Make sure the database service is enabled to start at boot time.:
systemctl enable mariadb.service
systemctl start mariadb.service
Improve MariaDB security.:
mysql_secure_installation
After you have done this, make sure you create a database with a username and password so that Nextcloud will have access to it. For further details on database setup and configuration, see the Database configuration documentation.
Redis
dnf install -y redis
systemctl enable redis.service
systemctl start redis.service
Installing Nextcloud
Nearly there, so keep at it, you are doing great!
Now download the archive of the latest Nextcloud version:
Go to the Nextcloud Download Page.
Go to Download Nextcloud Server > Download > Archive file for server owners and download either the tar.bz2 or .zip archive.
This downloads a file named nextcloud-x.y.z.tar.bz2 or nextcloud-x.y.z.zip (where x.y.z is the version number).
Download its corresponding checksum file, e.g. nextcloud-x.y.z.tar.bz2.md5, or nextcloud-x.y.z.tar.bz2.sha256.
Verify the MD5 or SHA256 sum:
md5sum -c nextcloud-x.y.z.tar.bz2.md5 < nextcloud-x.y.z.tar.bz2 sha256sum -c nextcloud-x.y.z.tar.bz2.sha256 < nextcloud-x.y.z.tar.bz2 md5sum -c nextcloud-x.y.z.zip.md5 < nextcloud-x.y.z.zip sha256sum -c nextcloud-x.y.z.zip.sha256 < nextcloud-x.y.z.zip
You may also verify the PGP signature:
wget https://download.nextcloud.com/server/releases/nextcloud-x.y.z.tar.bz2.asc wget https://nextcloud.com/nextcloud.asc gpg --import nextcloud.asc gpg --verify nextcloud-x.y.z.tar.bz2.asc nextcloud-x.y.z.tar.bz2
For the sake of the walk-through, we grabbed the latest version of Nextcloud in the form a zip file, confirmed the download with the above-mentioned command, and now we will extract it:
unzip nextcloud-*.zip
Copy the content over to the root directory of your webserver. In our case, we are using apache so it will be /var/www/html/:
cp -R nextcloud/ /var/www/html/
During the install process, no data folder is created, so we will create one manually to help with the installation wizard:
mkdir /var/www/html/nextcloud/data
Make sure that apache has read and write access to the whole nextcloud folder:
chown -R apache:apache /var/www/html/nextcloud
Restart apache:
systemctl restart httpd.service
Create a firewall rule for access to apache:
firewall-cmd --zone=public --add-service=http --permanent
firewall-cmd --reload
SELinux
Again, there is an extensive write-up done on SELinux which can be found at SELinux configuration, so if you are using SELinux in Enforcing mode, please run the commands suggested on that page. The following commands only refers to this tutorial:
semanage fcontext -a -t httpd_sys_rw_content_t '/var/www/html/nextcloud/data(/.*)?'
semanage fcontext -a -t httpd_sys_rw_content_t '/var/www/html/nextcloud/config(/.*)?'
semanage fcontext -a -t httpd_sys_rw_content_t '/var/www/html/nextcloud/apps(/.*)?'
semanage fcontext -a -t httpd_sys_rw_content_t '/var/www/html/nextcloud/.htaccess'
semanage fcontext -a -t httpd_sys_rw_content_t '/var/www/html/nextcloud/.user.ini'
semanage fcontext -a -t httpd_sys_rw_content_t '/var/www/html/nextcloud/3rdparty/aws/aws-sdk-php/src/data/logs(/.*)?'
restorecon -R '/var/www/html/nextcloud/'
setsebool -P httpd_can_network_connect on
If you need more SELinux configs, refer to the above-mentioned URL, return to this tutorial.
Once done with with SELinux, please head over to http://your.server.com/nextcloud and follow the steps as found Installation wizard, where it will explain to you exactly how to proceed with the final part of the install, which is done as admin user through your web browser.
Note
If you use this tutorial, and you see warnings in the web browser after installation about OPcache not being enabled or configured correctly, you need to make the suggested changes in /etc/opt/rh/rh-php74/php.d/10-opcache.ini for the errors to disappear. These warnings will be on the Admin page, under Basic settings.
Because we used Redis as a memcache, you will need a config similar to the following example in /var/www/html/nextcloud/config/config.php which is auto-generated when you run the online installation wizard mentioned earlier.
Example config:
'memcache.distributed' => '\OC\Memcache\Redis',
'memcache.locking' => '\OC\Memcache\Redis',
'memcache.local' => '\OC\Memcache\APCu',
'redis' => array(
'host' => 'localhost',
'port' => 6379,
),
Remember, this tutorial is only for a basic setup of Nextcloud on CentOS 8, with PHP 7.4. If you are going to use more features like LDAP or Single Sign On, you will need additional PHP modules as well as extra configurations. So please visit the rest of the Admin manual, Introduction, for detailed descriptions on how to get this done.