In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Nextcloud on your Debian 9. For those of you who didn’t know, For those of you who didn’t know, Nextcloud is an open-source self-hosted file sync and share application (Calendar, Contacts, Documents, Email, and more). The developers at Nextcloud are doing their best to give the users a more secure platform, fewer bugs, and overall a better product. Nextcloud not only has all the features of its ownCloud but also plans to provide new and innovative ones.
This article assumes you have at least basic knowledge of Linux, know how to use the shell, and most importantly, you host your site on your own VPS. The installation is quite simple and assumes you are running in the root account, if not you may need to add ‘sudo‘ to the commands to get root privileges. I will show you the step-by-step installation of Nextcloud open-source self-hosted file sync and share the application on a Debian 9 (Stretch) server.
- A server running one of the following operating systems: Debian 9 (Stretch).
- It’s recommended that you use a fresh OS install to prevent any potential issues.
- SSH access to the server (or just open Terminal if you’re on a desktop).
- A
non-root sudo useror access to theroot user. We recommend acting as anon-root sudo user, however, as you can harm your system if you’re not careful when acting as the root.
Install Nextcloud on Debian 9 Stretch
Step 1. Before we install any software, it’s important to make sure your system is up to date by running the following apt-get commands in the terminal:
apt-get update apt-get upgrade
Step 2. Install LAMP (Linux, Apache, MariaDB, and PHP) server.
A Debian 9 LAMP server is required. If you do not have LAMP installed, you can follow our guide here. It is also recommended that you use an SSL certificate (see our LetsEncrypt guide) to secure your Nextcloud server if you’re using it on a public-facing server.
Step 3. Installing Nextcloud.
The first thing to do is to go to Nextcloud’s download page and download the latest stable version of Nextcloud, At the moment of writing this article it is version 12.0.3:
wget https://download.nextcloud.com/server/releases/nextcloud-12.0.3.zip
Unpack the Nextcloud archive to the document root directory on your server:
unzip nextcloud-12.0.3.zip mv nextcloud /var/www/html
We will need to change some folders permissions:
chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www/html/nextcloud
Step 4. Configuring MariaDB for Nextcloud.
By default, MariaDB is not hardened. You can secure MariaDB using the mysql_secure_installation script. You should read and below each step carefully which will set a root password, remove anonymous users, disallow remote root login, and remove the test database and access to secure MariaDB.
mysql_secure_installation
Configure it like this:
- Set root password? [Y/n] y - Remove anonymous users? [Y/n] y - Disallow root login remotely? [Y/n] y - Remove test database and access to it? [Y/n] y - Reload privilege tables now? [Y/n] y
Next, we will need to log in to the MariaDB console and create a database for Nextcloud. Run the following command:
mysql -u root -p
This will prompt you for a password, so enter your MariaDB root password and hit Enter. Once you are logged in to your database server you need to create a database for Nextcloud installation:
MariaDB [(none)]> CREATE DATABASE nextcloud; MariaDB [(none)]> GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON nextcloud.* TO 'nextcloud'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'strong_password'; MariaDB [(none)]> FLUSH PRIVILEGES; MariaDB [(none)]> \q
Disable MariaDB binary logging by commenting on the following lines:
nano /etc/mysql/my.cnf
Add the following three lines in [mysqld] section:
log-bin = /var/log/mysql/mariadb-bin log-bin-index = /var/log/mysql/mariadb-bin.index binlog_format = mixed
Step 5. Configuring Apache web server for Nextcloud.
Create a new virtual host directive in Apache. For example, create a new Apache configuration file named ‘nextcloud.conf’ on your virtual server:
sudo a2enmod rewrite touch /etc/apache2/sites-available/nextcloud.conf ln -s /etc/apache2/sites-available/nextcloud.conf /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/nextcloud.conf nano /etc/apache2/sites-available/nextcloud.conf
Add the following lines:
<VirtualHost *:80> ServerAdmin admin@yourdomain.com DocumentRoot "/var/www/html/nextcloud/" ServerName your-domain.com ServerAlias www.your-domain.com <Directory "/var/www/html/nextcloud/"> Options FollowSymLinks AllowOverride All Order allow,deny allow from all </Directory> ErrorLog /var/log/apache2/your-domain.com-error_log CustomLog /var/log/apache2/your-domain.com-access_log common </VirtualHost>
Now, we can restart the Apache webserver so that the changes take place:
systemctl restart apache2.service
Step 6. Accessing Nextcloud.
Nextcloud will be available on HTTP port 80 by default. Open your favorite browser and navigate to http://your-domain.com/ or http://your-server-ip/ and complete the required steps to finish the installation. If you are using a firewall, please open port 80 to enable access to the control panel. What you do with Nextcloud is up to you. You can add new modules or just use it as cloud-based file sync and share. You can install the Android app and even make use of the ownCloud desktop clients (they’ll work fine with Nextcloud).
Congratulations! You have successfully installed Nextcloud. Thanks for using this tutorial for installing the latest version of Nextcloud open source file sync and share software on the Debian 9 Stretch server. For additional help or useful information, we recommend you check the official Nextcloud website.
