Nextcloud is the most popular self-hosted collaboration solution for tens of millions of users at thousands of organizations across the globe.
This service requires the following other services:
- a Postgres database
- a Traefik reverse-proxy server
- (optional) a KeyDB data-store, installation details below
- (optional) the exim-relay mailer
To enable this service, add the following configuration to your vars.yml file and re-run the installation process:
########################################################################
# #
# nextcloud #
# #
########################################################################
nextcloud_enabled: true
nextcloud_hostname: mash.example.com
nextcloud_path_prefix: /nextcloud
# KeyDB configuration, as described below
########################################################################
# #
# /nextcloud #
# #
########################################################################In the example configuration above, we configure the service to be hosted at https://mash.example.com/nextcloud.
You can remove the nextcloud_path_prefix variable definition, to make it default to /, so that the service is served at https://mash.example.com/.
KeyDB can optionally be enabled to improve Nextcloud performance. It's dubious whether using using KeyDB helps much, so we recommend that you start without it, for a simpler deployment.
To learn more, read the Memory caching section of the Nextcloud documentation.
As described on the KeyDB documentation page, if you're hosting additional services which require KeyDB on the same server, you'd better go for installing a separate KeyDB instance for each service. See Creating a KeyDB instance dedicated to Nextcloud.
If you're only running Nextcloud on this server and don't need to use KeyDB for anything else, you can use a single KeyDB instance.
Regardless of the method of installing KeyDB, you may need to adjust your Nextcloud configuration file (e.g. /mash/nextcloud/data/config/config.php) to add this:
'memcache.distributed' => '\OC\Memcache\KeyDB',
'memcache.locking' => '\OC\Memcache\KeyDB',
'keydb' => [
'host' => 'REDIS_HOSTNAME_HERE',
'port' => 6379,
],Where REDIS_HOSTNAME_HERE is to be replaced with:
mash-nextcloud-keydb, when Creating a KeyDB instance dedicated to Nextcloudmash-keydb, when using a single KeyDB instance.
To install a single (non-dedicated) KeyDB instance (mash-keydb) and hook Nextcloud to it, add the following additional configuration:
########################################################################
# #
# keydb #
# #
########################################################################
keydb_enabled: true
########################################################################
# #
# /keydb #
# #
########################################################################
########################################################################
# #
# nextcloud #
# #
########################################################################
# Base configuration as shown above
# Point Nextcloud to the shared KeyDB instance
nextcloud_redis_hostname: "{{ keydb_identifier }}"
# Make sure the Nextcloud service (mash-nextcloud.service) starts after the shared KeyDB service (mash-keydb.service)
nextcloud_systemd_required_services_list_custom:
- "{{ keydb_identifier }}.service"
# Make sure the Nextcloud container is connected to the container network of the shared KeyDB service (mash-keydb)
nextcloud_container_additional_networks_custom:
- "{{ keydb_identifier }}"
########################################################################
# #
# /nextcloud #
# #
########################################################################This will create a mash-keydb KeyDB instance on this host.
This is only recommended if you won't be installing other services which require KeyDB. Alternatively, go for Creating a KeyDB instance dedicated to Nextcloud.
The following instructions are based on the Running multiple instances of the same service on the same host documentation.
Adjust your inventory/hosts file as described in Re-do your inventory to add supplementary hosts, adding a new supplementary host (e.g. if nextcloud.example.com is your main one, create nectcloud.example.com-deps).
Then, create a new vars.yml file for the
inventory/host_vars/nextcloud.example.com-deps/vars.yml:
---
########################################################################
# #
# Playbook #
# #
########################################################################
# Put a strong secret below, generated with `pwgen -s 64 1` or in another way
# Various other secrets will be derived from this secret automatically.
mash_playbook_generic_secret_key: ''
# Override service names and directory path prefixes
mash_playbook_service_identifier_prefix: 'mash-nextcloud-'
mash_playbook_service_base_directory_name_prefix: 'nextcloud-'
########################################################################
# #
# /Playbook #
# #
########################################################################
########################################################################
# #
# keydb #
# #
########################################################################
keydb_enabled: true
########################################################################
# #
# /keydb #
# #
########################################################################This will create a mash-nextcloud-keydb instance on this host with its data in /mash/nextcloud-keydb.
Then, adjust your main inventory host's variables file (inventory/host_vars/nextcloud.example.com/vars.yml) like this:
########################################################################
# #
# nextcloud #
# #
########################################################################
# Base configuration as shown above
# Point Nextcloud to its dedicated KeyDB instance
nextcloud_redis_hostname: mash-nextcloud-keydb
# Make sure the Nextcloud service (mash-nextcloud.service) starts after its dedicated KeyDB service (mash-nextcloud-keydb.service)
nextcloud_systemd_required_services_list_custom:
- "mash-nextcloud-keydb.service"
# Make sure the Nextcloud container is connected to the container network of its dedicated KeyDB service (mash-nextcloud-keydb)
nextcloud_container_additional_networks_custom:
- "mash-nextcloud-keydb"
########################################################################
# #
# /nextcloud #
# #
########################################################################Nextcloud supports Single-Sign-On (SSO) via LDAP, SAML, and OIDC. To make use of this you'll need a Identity Provider like authentik or Keycloak. The following assumes you use authentik.
The official documentation of authentik to connect nextcloud via SAML seems broken
MASH can connect Nextcloud with authentik via OIDC. The setup is quite straightforward, refer to this blogpost by Jack for a full explanation.
In short you should:
- Create a new provider in authentik and trim the client secret to <64 characters
- Create an application in authentik using this provider
- Install the app
user_oidcin Nextcloud - Fill in the details from authentik in the app settings
Troubleshooting
If you encounter problems during login check (error message containes SHA1 mismatch) that
- Nextcloud users and authentik users do not have the same name -> if they do check
Use unique user IDin the OIDC App settings
To enable Samba external Windows fileshares using smbclient, add the following additional configuration to your vars.yml file:
nextcloud_container_image_customizations_samba_enabled: trueIf you've decided to install a dedicated KeyDB instance for Nextcloud, make sure to first do installation for the supplementary inventory host (e.g. nextcloud.example.com-deps), before running installation for the main one (e.g. nextcloud.example.com).
After installation, you should follow Nextcloud's setup wizard at the URL you've chosen.
You can choose any username/password for your account.
In Storage & database, you should choose PostgreSQL (changing the default SQLite choice), with the credentials you see after running just run-tags print-nextcloud-db-credentials
Once you've fully installed Nextcloud, you'd better adjust its default configuration (URL paths, trusted reverse-proxies, etc.) by running: just run-tags adjust-nextcloud-config
To integrate the Collabora Online office suite, first install it by following its dedicated documentation page.
Then add the following additional Nextcloud configuration:
nextcloud_collabora_app_wopi_url: "{{ collabora_online_url }}"
# By default, various private IPv4 networks are whitelited to connect to the WOPI API (document serving API).
# If your Collabora Online installation does not live on the same server as Nextcloud,
# you may need to adjust the list of networks.
# If necessary, redefined the `nextcloud_collabora_app_wopi_allowlist` environment variable here.There's no need to re-run the playbook after adjusting your vars.yml file.
You should, however run: just run-tags install-nextcloud-app-collabora
This will install and configure the Office app for Nextcloud.
You should then be able to click any document (.doc, .odt, .pdf, etc.) in Nextcloud Files and it should automatically open a Collabora Online editor.
You can also create new documents via the "plus" button.
It is possible to setup preview generation, using this playbook.
First modify your vars.yml file by adding at least the following line (other options are also present, check the corresponding defaults/main.yml file):
nextcloud_preview_enabled: truethen install Nextcloud (or rerun the playbook if already installed).
Next, from the Settings/Application menu in your Nextcloud instance install the preview generator app (https://apps.nextcloud.com/apps/previewgenerator).
After the application is installed run just run-tags adjust-nextcloud-config that will start the original preview-generation and when finished, enables the periodic generation of new images.
The original generation may take a long time, but a continuous prompt is presented by ansible as some visual feedback (it is being run as an async task), however it will timeout after approximately 27 hours.
On 60GBs, most of the data being images, it took about 10 minutes to finish.
If it takes more time to run than a day, you may want to start it from the host by calling
/usr/bin/env docker exec mash-nextcloud-server php /var/www/html/occ preview:generate-allAlso, please note: every time Nextcloud version is updated, you should rerun: just run-tags adjust-nextcloud-config.
Other supported variables:
nextcloud_preview_preview_max_x and nextcloud_preview_preview_max_y sets the maximum size of the preview in pixels..
Their default value according to the documentation is null which is set by the playbook.
Using a numeric value will set the corresponding nextcloud variable and sets the size of the preview images.
nextcloud_preview_app_jpeg_quality JPEG quality setting for preview images.
The default follows upstream default with 80.