Nextcloud - Self-Hosted Google Cloud
I love Nextcloud. It has completely moved me away from Google's ecosystem.
Installation
The Nextcloud installation is a bit of a pain. You are dealing with a whole LAMP stack. You could use docker and just use the prebuilt image from the Nextcloud devs, but I hate docker!
We need a lot of dependencies for Nextcloud. We are also going to be using NGINX over the standard Apache configuration, due to NGINX just being better.
You will also have to install a bunch of other php-* packages that are different for every setup.
Next grab the latest Nextcloud release and put it into /var/www/nextcloud as this will be our home directory.
mkdir -p /var/www/nextcloud
cd /var/www/nextcloud
wget https://download.nextcloud.com/server/releases/latest.zip
unzip latest.zip
rm -r latest.zip
Next we need to set up NGINX so that our server is available. We aren't going to use TLS for this setup since we will be using Caddy to reverse proxy it later.
You can find more documentation on NGINX at the Nextcloud docs.
NGINX
# Version 2025-07-23
upstream php-handler {
#server 127.0.0.1:9000;
server unix:/run/php/php8.4-fpm.sock;
}
map $arg_v $asset_immutable {
"" "";
default ", immutable";
}
server {
#listen 80 http2;
#listen [::]:80 http2;
# With NGinx >= 1.25.1 you should use this instead:
listen 80;
listen [::]:80;
http2 on;
server_name nextcloud-lxc.localdomain;
# Path to the root of your installation
root /var/www/nextcloud;
# https://mozilla.github.io/server-side-tls/ssl-config-generator/
#ssl_certificate /etc/ssl/certs/ssl-cert-snakeoil.pem;
#ssl_certificate_key /etc/ssl/private/ssl-cert-snakeoil.key;
# Prevent nginx HTTP Server Detection
server_tokens off;
# HSTS settings
# WARNING: Only add the preload option once you read about
# the consequences in https://hstspreload.org/. This option
# will add the domain to a hardcoded list that is shipped
# in all major browsers and getting removed from this list
# could take several months.
add_header Strict-Transport-Security "max-age=31536000; includeSubDomains; preload" always;
# set max upload size and increase upload timeout:
client_max_body_size 512M;
client_body_timeout 300s;
fastcgi_buffers 64 4K;
# Proxy and client response timeouts
# Uncomment an increase these if facing timeout errors during large file uploads
proxy_connect_timeout 60s;
proxy_send_timeout 60s;
proxy_read_timeout 60s;
send_timeout 60s;
# Enable gzip but do not remove ETag headers
gzip on;
gzip_vary on;
gzip_comp_level 4;
gzip_min_length 256;
gzip_proxied expired no-cache no-store private no_last_modified no_etag auth;
gzip_types application/atom+xml text/javascript application/javascript application/json application/ld+json application/manifest+json application/rss+xml application/vnd.geo+json application/vnd.ms-fontobject application/wasm application/x-font-ttf application/x-web-app-manifest+json application/xhtml+xml application/xml font/opentype image/bmp image/svg+xml image/x-icon text/cache-manifest text/css text/plain text/vcard text/vnd.rim.location.xloc text/vtt text/x-component text/x-cross-domain-policy;
# Pagespeed is not supported by Nextcloud, so if your server is built
# with the `ngx_pagespeed` module, uncomment this line to disable it.
#pagespeed off;
# The settings allows you to optimize the HTTP2 bandwidth.
# See https://blog.cloudflare.com/delivering-http-2-upload-speed-improvements/
# for tuning hints
client_body_buffer_size 512k;
# HTTP response headers borrowed from Nextcloud `.htaccess`
add_header Referrer-Policy "no-referrer" always;
add_header X-Content-Type-Options "nosniff" always;
add_header X-Frame-Options "SAMEORIGIN" always;
add_header X-Permitted-Cross-Domain-Policies "none" always;
add_header X-Robots-Tag "noindex, nofollow" always;
add_header X-XSS-Protection "1; mode=block" always;
# Remove X-Powered-By, which is an information leak
fastcgi_hide_header X-Powered-By;
# Set .mjs and .wasm MIME types
# Either include it in the default mime.types list
# and include that list explicitly or add the file extension
# only for Nextcloud like below:
include mime.types;
types {
text/javascript mjs;
application/wasm wasm;
}
# Specify how to handle directories -- specifying `/index.php$request_uri`
# here as the fallback means that Nginx always exhibits the desired behaviour
# when a client requests a path that corresponds to a directory that exists
# on the server. In particular, if that directory contains an index.php file,
# that file is correctly served; if it doesn't, then the request is passed to
# the front-end controller. This consistent behaviour means that we don't need
# `/updater`, `/ocs-provider`), and thus
# `try_files $uri $uri/ /index.php$request_uri`
# always provides the desired behaviour.
index index.php index.html /index.php$request_uri;
# Rule borrowed from `.htaccess` to handle Microsoft DAV clients
location = / {
if ( $http_user_agent ~ ^DavClnt ) {
return 302 /remote.php/webdav/$is_args$args;
}
}
location = /robots.txt {
allow all;
log_not_found off;
access_log off;
}
# Make a regex exception for `/.well-known` so that clients can still
# access it despite the existence of the regex rule
# `location ~ /(\.|autotest|...)` which would otherwise handle requests
# for `/.well-known`.
location ^~ /.well-known {
# The rules in this block are an adaptation of the rules
# in `.htaccess` that concern `/.well-known`.
location = /.well-known/carddav { return 301 /remote.php/dav/; }
location = /.well-known/caldav { return 301 /remote.php/dav/; }
location /.well-known/acme-challenge { try_files $uri $uri/ =404; }
location /.well-known/pki-validation { try_files $uri $uri/ =404; }
# Let Nextcloud's API for `/.well-known` URIs handle all other
# requests by passing them to the front-end controller.
return 301 /index.php$request_uri;
}
# Rules borrowed from `.htaccess` to hide certain paths from clients
location ~ ^/(?:build|tests|config|lib|3rdparty|templates|data)(?:$|/) { return 404; }
location ~ ^/(?:\.|autotest|occ|issue|indie|db_|console) { return 404; }
# Ensure this block, which passes PHP files to the PHP process, is above the blocks
# then Nginx will encounter an infinite rewriting loop when it prepends `/index.php`
# to the URI, resulting in a HTTP 500 error response.
location ~ \.php(?:$|/) {
# Required for legacy support
rewrite ^/(?!index|remote|public|cron|core\/ajax\/update|status|ocs\/v[12]|updater\/.+|ocs-provider\/.+|.+\/richdocumentscode(_arm64)?\/proxy) /index.php$request_uri;
fastcgi_split_path_info ^(.+?\.php)(/.*)$;
set $path_info $fastcgi_path_info;
try_files $fastcgi_script_name =404;
include fastcgi_params;
fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $document_root$fastcgi_script_name;
fastcgi_param PATH_INFO $path_info;
fastcgi_param HTTPS on;
fastcgi_param modHeadersAvailable true; # Avoid sending the security headers twice
fastcgi_param front_controller_active true; # Enable pretty urls
fastcgi_pass php-handler;
fastcgi_intercept_errors on;
fastcgi_request_buffering on; # Required as PHP-FPM does not support chunked transfer encoding and requires a valid ContentLength header.
# PHP-FPM 504 response timeouts
# Uncomment and increase these if facing timeout errors during large file uploads
#fastcgi_read_timeout 60s;
#fastcgi_send_timeout 60s;
#fastcgi_connect_timeout 60s;
fastcgi_max_temp_file_size 0;
}
# Serve static files
location ~ \.(?:css|js|mjs|svg|gif|ico|jpg|png|webp|wasm|tflite|map|ogg|flac)$ {
try_files $uri /index.php$request_uri;
# HTTP response headers borrowed from Nextcloud `.htaccess`
add_header Cache-Control "public, max-age=15778463$asset_immutable";
add_header Referrer-Policy "no-referrer" always;
add_header X-Content-Type-Options "nosniff" always;
add_header X-Frame-Options "SAMEORIGIN" always;
add_header X-Permitted-Cross-Domain-Policies "none" always;
add_header X-Robots-Tag "noindex, nofollow" always;
access_log off;
}
location ~ \.(otf|woff2?)$ {
try_files $uri /index.php$request_uri;
expires 7d; # Cache-Control policy borrowed from `.htaccess`
access_log off;
}
# Rule borrowed from `.htaccess`
location /remote {
return 301 /remote.php$request_uri;
}
location / {
try_files $uri $uri/ /index.php$request_uri;
}
}
We are using the http2 on; as we are going to be using h2c with Caddy for the reverse proxy.
Configuration
The configuration for Nextcloud is relatively simple once you install all the dependencies.
We need to edit the config file in /var/www/nextcloud/config/config.php. My one is pretty mature, but I will leave it here for documentation purposes.
<?php
$CONFIG = array (
'instanceid' => 'secret',
'passwordsalt' => 'secret',
'secret' => 'secret',
'trusted_domains' =>
array (
0 => 'nextcloud.mydomain.com',
),
'trusted_proxies' =>
array (
0 => 'caddy-lxc.localdomain',
),
'datadirectory' => '/var/www/nextcloud/data',
'dbtype' => 'pgsql',
'version' => 'version',
'overwrite.cli.url' => 'https://nextcloud.mydomain.com',
'overwriteprotocol' => 'https',
'htaccess.RewriteBase' => '/',
'dbname' => 'db',
'dbhost' => 'postgresql-lxc.localdomain',
'dbport' => '',
'dbtableprefix' => 'oc_',
'mysql.utf8mb4' => true,
'dbuser' => 'user',
'dbpassword' => 'password',
'installed' => true,
'maintenance' => false,
'maintenance_window_start' => 1,
'memcache.local' => '\\OC\\Memcache\\Redis',
'memcache.distributed' => '\\OC\\Memcache\\Redis',
'memcache.locking' => '\\OC\\Memcache\\Redis',
'redis' =>
array (
'host' => '/run/redis/redis-server.sock',
'port' => 0,
'timeout' => 0.0,
),
'oidc_login_provider_url' => 'https://auth.mydomain.com',
'oidc_login_client_id' => 'nextcloud',
'oidc_login_client_secret' => 'secret',
'oidc_login_auto_redirect' => true,
'oidc_login_end_session_redirect' => false,
'oidc_login_button_text' => 'Log in with Authelia',
'oidc_login_hide_password_form' => false,
'oidc_login_use_id_token' => false,
'oidc_login_attributes' =>
array (
'id' => 'preferred_username',
'name' => 'name',
'mail' => 'email',
),
'oidc_login_default_group' => 'oidc',
'oidc_login_use_external_storage' => false,
'oidc_login_scope' => 'openid profile email',
'oidc_login_proxy_ldap' => false,
'oidc_login_disable_registration' => true,
'oidc_login_redir_fallback' => false,
'oidc_login_tls_verify' => true,
'oidc_create_groups' => false,
'oidc_login_webdav_enabled' => false,
'oidc_login_password_authentication' => false,
'oidc_login_public_key_caching_time' => 86400,
'oidc_login_min_time_between_jwks_requests' => 10,
'oidc_login_well_known_caching_time' => 86400,
'oidc_login_update_avatar' => false,
'oidc_login_code_challenge_method' => 'S256',
'memories.db.triggers.fcu' => true,
'memories.exiftool' => '/var/www/nextcloud/apps/memories/bin-ext/exiftool-amd64-glibc',
'memories.vod.path' => '/var/www/nextcloud/apps/memories/bin-ext/go-vod-amd64',
'enabledPreviewProviders' =>
array (
0 => 'OC\\Preview\\Image',
1 => 'OC\\Preview\\HEIC',
2 => 'OC\\Preview\\TIFF',
3 => 'OC\\Preview\\Movie',
),
'preview_max_x' => 1024,
'preview_max_y' => 1024,
'memories.vod.disable' => false,
'memories.vod.ffmpeg' => '/usr/bin/ffmpeg',
'memories.vod.ffprobe' => '/usr/bin/ffprobe',
'memories.vod.vaapi' => true,
'memories.vod.use_transpose' => true,
'memories.index.mode' => '1',
'mail_smtpmode' => 'smtp',
'mail_smtpsecure' => 'ssl',
'mail_sendmailmode' => 'smtp',
'mail_from_address' => 'internal',
'mail_domain' => 'mydomain.com',
'mail_smtphost' => 'mail.mydomain.com',
'mail_smtpport' => '25',
'mail_smtpauth' => true,
'mail_smtpname' => '[email protected]',
'mail_smtppassword' => 'password',
'default_phone_region' => 'AU',
'filelocking.enabled' => true,
'loglevel' => 3,
'theme' => '',
'defaultapp' => 'notes',
);
Redis
I am using redis for my setup. Set it up with:
You can use either a Linux socket or TCP.