PHP Modules & Configuration

PHP Modules

This section lists all required and optional PHP modules. Consult the PHP manual for more information on modules. You can check the presence of a module by typing php -m | grep -i <module_name>. If you get a result, the module is present.

Required:

PHP (see System requirements for a list of supported versions)
PHP module ctype
PHP module curl
PHP module dom
PHP module fileinfo (included with PHP)
PHP module filter (only on Mageia and FreeBSD)
PHP module GD
PHP module hash (only on FreeBSD)
PHP module JSON (included with PHP >= 8.0)
PHP module libxml (Linux package libxml2 must be >=2.7.0)
PHP module mbstring
PHP module openssl (included with PHP >= 8.0)
PHP module posix
PHP module session
PHP module SimpleXML
PHP module XMLReader
PHP module XMLWriter
PHP module zip
PHP module zlib

Database connectors (pick the one for your database):

PHP module pdo_sqlite (>= 3, usually not recommended for performance reasons)
PHP module pdo_mysql (MySQL/MariaDB)
PHP module pdo_pgsql (PostgreSQL)

Recommended packages:

PHP module intl (increases language translation performance and fixes sorting of non-ASCII characters)
PHP module sodium (for Argon2 for password hashing. bcrypt is used as fallback, but if passwords were hashed with Argon2 already and the module is missing, your users can’t log in. Included with PHP >= 7.2)

Required for specific apps:

PHP module ldap (for LDAP integration)
PHP module smbclient (SMB/CIFS integration, see SMB/CIFS)
PHP module ftp (for FTP storage / external user authentication)
PHP module imap (for external user authentication)
PHP module bcmath (for passwordless login)
PHP module gmp (for passwordless login)

Recommended for specific apps (optional):

PHP module gmp (for SFTP storage)
PHP module exif (for image rotation in pictures app)

For enhanced server performance (optional) select one or more of the following caches:

PHP module apcu (>= 4.0.6)
PHP module memcached
PHP module redis (>= 2.2.6, required for Transactional File Locking)

See Memory caching to learn how to select and configure a cache.

For preview generation (optional):

PHP module imagick
avconv or ffmpeg
OpenOffice or LibreOffice

Note

If the preview generation of PDF files fails with a “not authorized” error message, you must adjust the imagick policy file. See https://cromwell-intl.com/open-source/pdf-not-authorized.html

For command line processing (optional):

PHP module pcntl (enables command interruption by pressing ctrl-c)

Note

You also need to ensure that pcntl_signal and pcntl_signal_dispatch are not disabled in your php.ini by the disable_functions option.

For command line updater (optional):

PHP module phar (upgrades Nextcloud by running sudo -u www-data php /var/www/nextcloud/updater/updater.phar)

ini values

The following ini settings should be adapted if needed for Nextcloud:

apc.enable_cli: see Memory caching
disable_functions: avoid disabling functions unless you know exactly what you are doing
max_execution_time: see Uploading big files > 512MB
memory_limit: should be at least 512MB. See also Uploading big files > 512MB
opcache.enable and friends: See Memory caching and Server tuning
open_basedir: see Hardening and security guidance
upload_tmp_dir: see Uploading big files > 512MB

php.ini configuration notes

Keep in mind that changes to php.ini may have to be configured on more than one ini file. This can be the case, for example, for the date.timezone setting. You can search for a parameter with the following command: grep -r date.timezone /etc/php.

php.ini - used by the Web server:

  /etc/php/8.0/apache2/php.ini
or
  /etc/php/8.0/fpm/php.ini
or ...

php.ini - used by the php-cli and so by Nextcloud CRON jobs:

/etc/php/8.0/cli/php.ini

Note

Path names have to be set in respect of the installed PHP (8.0, 8.1 or 8.2) as applicable.