[NextCloud] NextCloud 12.0 installation with MariaDB and PHP 7.2

Valentine

NextCloud puts your data at your fingertips, under your control. You store your photos, calendar, contacts, and documents on a server of your choosing be it at home, a rented server or at one of our providers. Your existing data can stay at that FTP drive at work, Dropbox or a NAS you have at home, while you get at it through NextCloud.

A trusted solution giving you access to all the data you care about in one convenient place!

The tutorial was prepared with our "CentOS 7" template and is meant to work on our self-managed virtual private servers.

WARNING

CentOS 7 reached the EOL June 30, 2024:

https://blog.centos.org/2023/04/end-dates-are-coming-for-centos-stream-8-and-centos-linux-7/

Because of this, you may encounter some repository issues. We recommend that you reinstall another OS that has not yet reached EOL.

If you are using CentOS 7 and encounter a mirror issue, please check out this guide to resolve the problem.

0. Preliminary requirements:
"CentOS 7" template installed on the server;
Dependencies required for installation steps:

yum install -y epel-release yum-utils unzip curl wget bash-completion policycoreutils-python mlocate bzip2 nano

Fully updates server software (yum update);

1. MariaDB installation

yum install -y mariadb mariadb-server

Enable MariaDB to automatically start after server reboot:

systemctl enable mariadb.service

Start MariaDB:

systemctl start mariadbNow run the post-installation security script:
mysql_secure_installation

When the script asks you to enter MariaDB root password, press enter because you have not set the root password yet. Then enter "Y" to set the root password for the MariaDB server. And proceed with pressing Enter to answer all the remaining questions.

2. Apache and PHP 7 installation
Apache installation:

yum install -y httpd

Start Apache:

systemctl enable httpd.service
systemctl start httpd.service

This installation will be of only the necessary PHP modules. For more complete install, other PHP modules might be required too.  At the moment, proceed with the following installation:

yum install -y centos-release-scl
yum install -y rh-php72 rh-php72-php rh-php72-php-gd rh-php72-php-mbstring \
rh-php72-php-intl rh-php72-php-pecl-apcu rh-php72-php-mysqlnd rh-php72-php-pecl-redis \
rh-php72-php-opcache rh-php72-php-imagick

Create the required symlinks:

ln -s /opt/rh/httpd24/root/etc/httpd/conf.d/rh-php72-php.conf /etc/httpd/conf.d/
ln -s /opt/rh/httpd24/root/etc/httpd/conf.modules.d/15-rh-php72-php.conf /etc/httpd/conf.modules.d/
ln -s /opt/rh/httpd24/root/etc/httpd/modules/librh-php72-php7.so /etc/httpd/modules/
ln -s /opt/rh/rh-php72/root/bin/php /usr/bin/php

Restart Apache to load the new version of PHP:

systemctl restart httpd

3. Creating a MariaDB database and user
Login to your MariaDB:

mysql -u root -p

Create a database:

CREATE DATABASE nextcloud;

Create user:

CREATE USER nextclouduser@localhost IDENTIFIED BY 'your-password';

Grant privileges for user and exit:

GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON nextcloud.* to nextclouduser@localhost IDENTIFIED BY 'your-password';

FLUSH PRIVILEGES;

exit;

4. Enable Binary Logging in MariaDB

Open MySQL my.cnf configuration file for edit:

nano /etc/my.cnf

Add the following three lines in the [mysqld] section:

log-basename=master
log-bin
binlog-format=mixed

Restart MariaDB:

systemctl restart mariadb

5. Download NextCloud files:
Download latest NextCloud package:

wget https://download.nextcloud.com/server/releases/nextcloud-18.0.3.zip

The latest release can be found at: https://nextcloud.com/install/#instructions-server

Extract it:

unzip nextcloud-18.0.3.zip

Move files to your Apache directory:

mv nextcloud/* nextcloud/.* /var/www/html/

6. Setting strong directory permissions
Create "permissions.sh" file:

nano permissions.sh

Insert the content:

#!/bin/bash
ncpath='/var/www/html/'
htuser='apache'
htgroup='apache'
rootuser='root'

printf "Creating possible missing Directories\n"
mkdir -p $ncpath/data
mkdir -p $ncpath/assets
mkdir -p $ncpath/updater

printf "chmod Files and Directories\n"
find ${ncpath}/ -type f -print0 | xargs -0 chmod 0640
find ${ncpath}/ -type d -print0 | xargs -0 chmod 0750

printf "chown Directories\n"
chown -R ${rootuser}:${htgroup} ${ncpath}/
chown -R ${htuser}:${htgroup} ${ncpath}/apps/
chown -R ${htuser}:${htgroup} ${ncpath}/assets/
chown -R ${htuser}:${htgroup} ${ncpath}/config/
chown -R ${htuser}:${htgroup} ${ncpath}/data/
chown -R ${htuser}:${htgroup} ${ncpath}/themes/
chown -R ${htuser}:${htgroup} ${ncpath}/updater/

chmod +x ${ncpath}/occ

printf "chmod/chown .htaccess\n"
if [ -f ${ncpath}/.htaccess ]
then
chmod 0644 ${ncpath}/.htaccess
chown ${rootuser}:${htgroup} ${ncpath}/.htaccess
fi
if [ -f ${ncpath}/data/.htaccess ]
then
chmod 0644 ${ncpath}/data/.htaccess
chown ${rootuser}:${htgroup} ${ncpath}/data/.htaccess
fi

Run the file:

bash permissions.sh

7. NextCloud installation
Open your server hostname or IP address in the browser and finish the installation.

More information about NextCloud project can be found at: https://nextcloud.com/

Morphin

Hi
Are you sure with Step 5? (mv nextcloud/* nextcloud/.* /var/www/html/)
I get the following:


[root@ih0 ~]# mv nextcloud/* nextcloud/.* /var/www/html/
mv: overwrite '/var/www/html/.'? Y
mv: cannot move 'nextcloud/.' to '/var/www/html/.': Device or resource busy


May you can look at this issue? That would be great. I made excactly what you wrote. (Otherwise a very good instruction. Thank you very much!!)
Andy

Morphin

That is my structure:
root@ih0 ~]# ls -a
. .. .bash_logout .bash_profile .bashrc .cshrc .mysql_history .pki .tcshrc nextcloud nextcloud-9.0.53.zip setup-ius.sh
[root@ih0 ~]#

Morphin

Maybe mv nextcloud/{.,}* /var/www/html/ is better?

Valentine

When prompted with a line:

mv: overwrite '/var/www/html/.'?

And:

mv: overwrite '/var/www/html/..'?

Just press "Enter" do not write "Y" or "y".

There can be another ways to move everything from "nextcloud" folder to "html" folder.

Morphin

Thank's Valentine. Great!

DaVince

These instructions are ancient by now, and the custom installation of PHP 7.0 from this article is obsolete now. A colleague of mine used the instructions, however, and now it's causing conflicts when I want to install NextCloud through yum.

I'm not too familiar with CentOS, so I don't know how to remove the repository that offers the obsolete PHP 7.0. Could anyone help?

Valentine

DaVince said:

These instructions are ancient by now, and the custom installation of PHP 7.0 from this article is obsolete now. A colleague of mine used the instructions, however, and now it's causing conflicts when I want to install NextCloud through yum.

I'm not too familiar with CentOS, so I don't know how to remove the repository that offers the obsolete PHP 7.0. Could anyone help?

You can't follow two or more instructions on the same thing if you are not sure what you're doing. In our instructions there is no NextCloud installation through yum and that is why you get an error.

We will update this instruction in future with PHP 7.1 and NextCloud 12 version.

Regarding repository you can simply disable it by opening its file in /etc/yum.repos.d/ and replacing:

enabled=1

to

enabled=0

matjazv

Hi,

I had to

yum install sudo

before I could start with step 2 that installs PHP.

Giedrius

Hello @matjazv,

Current OS templates are minimal, it doesn't include "sudo" option so it needs to be installed.

However, if you are working as "root" user, the sudo isn't needed and you could run commands like this:

pm -Uvh https://mirror.webtatic.com/yum/el7/webtatic-release.rpm

Anyway, I have edited the article, glad you found a solution fast.

matjazv

Hi @Giedrius, thanks!
The next stump for me was at

systemctl restart httpd

because the template does not have an Apache yet. So I did

yum install httpd
sudo systemctl enable httpd.service
sudo systemctl restart httpd.service

which now allows me to do

systemctl restart httpd

Do I need to tweak anything else in Apache to adapt it to the local structure and/or keep it secure?

best

m

Giedrius

actually, there shouldn't be anything else that would need to be added to config additionally. Since previously Apache was pre-installed within our OS template, it had only basic config, nothing unusual.

So after your manual installation Apache should have the same basic config.