Install Nextcloud on CentOS 7 – This guide will walk you through the installation of Nextcloud on CentOS 7 with PHP 7.3, Apache and MariaDB 10.4. You can optionally configure SSL encryption with Let’s Encrypt to ensure that access and data is being transferred through a secure tunnel. Nextcloud is an open-source seft-hosted syncing and file sharing server forked from ownCloud. It is written in PHP and JavaScript and has support for MySQL, PostgreSQL, SQLite and Oracle Database.
Install Nextcloud on CentOS 7 + Setting Let’s Encrypt SSL
Disable SELinux or Put in in Permissive mode
Disabling SELinux for smooth operations:
sudo setenforce 0
sudo sed -i 's/^SELINUX=.*/SELINUX=permissive/g' /etc/selinux/config
Install PHP and httpd
sudo yum -y install epel-release yum-utils
sudo yum -y install http://rpms.remirepo.net/enterprise/remi-release-7.rpm
Disable default PHP 5.x enabled repository and enable one for PHP 7.3:
sudo yum-config-manager --disable remi-php54
sudo yum-config-manager --enable remi-php73
Install and Configure MariaDB / MySQL
Install MariaDB / MySQL database server on CentOS 7 using our previous guides. Choose one, recommended is MariaDB.
Read this : Install MariaDB 10.4 on CentOS 7 : Easy Steps
After the installation, login as a root user to MySQL console and create a new database for Nextcloud.
$ mysql -u root -p
CREATE USER 'nextcloud'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY "StrongPassword";
CREATE DATABASE nextcloud;
GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON nextcloud.* TO 'nextcloud'@'localhost';
FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
QUIT
Download and Install Nextcloud on CentOS 7
sudo yum -y install wget unzip
wget https://download.nextcloud.com/server/releases/latest.zip
Unzip the downloaded file & remove source file:
unzip latest.zip
rm -f latest.zip
Move the resulting nextcloud
folder to /var/www/html
directory
sudo mv nextcloud/ /var/www/html/
Create data directory to store Nextcloud uploaded files. This can be any path e.g NFS mount point, SAN mount point e.t.c.
sudo mkdir /var/www/html/nextcloud/data
sudo chown apache:apache -R /var/www/html/nextcloud/data
Give apache user and group the ownership of nextcloud folder.
sudo chown apache:apache -R /var/www/html/nextcloud
Configure Apache VirtualHost – Without SSL
Create an Apache configuration file for Nextcloud
sudo vim /etc/httpd/conf.d/nextcloud.conf
Paste code below to file
<VirtualHost *:80>
ServerName files.example.com
ServerAdmin [email protected]
DocumentRoot /var/www/html/nextcloud
<directory /var/www/html/nextcloud>
Require all granted
AllowOverride All
Options FollowSymLinks MultiViews
SetEnv HOME /var/www/html/nextcloud
SetEnv HTTP_HOME /var/www/html/nextcloud
</directory>
</VirtualHost>
Set correct ServerName
and change other settings to suit your use.
When done, save the file and start httpd service.
sudo systemctl enable --now httpd
sudo semanage fcontext -a -t httpd_sys_content_t "/var/www/html(/.*)?"
sudo sudo restorecon -Rv /var/www/html
If you have an active firewalld service, allow http and https ports.
sudo firewall-cmd --add-service={http,https} --permanent
sudo firewall-cmd --reload
Configure Apache With Let’s Encrypt SSL
To use Let’s Encrypt SSL certificate, first install certbot
wget https://dl.eff.org/certbot-auto
chmod a+x certbot-auto
sudo mv certbot-auto /usr/local/bin
Then request for SSL certificate.
export DOMAIN="files.example.com"
export EMAIL="[email protected]"
certbot-auto certonly --standalone -d $DOMAIN --preferred-challenges http --agree-tos -n -m $EMAIL --keep-until-expiring
Don’t forget to change domain name & email above with yours
Modify your VirtualHost configuration file to look like below.
<VirtualHost *:80>
ServerName files.example.com
ServerAdmin [email protected]
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTPS} off
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ https://%{HTTP_HOST}$1 [R=301,L]
</VirtualHost>
<IfModule mod_ssl.c>
<VirtualHost *:443>
ServerName files.example.com
ServerAdmin [email protected]
DocumentRoot /var/www/html/nextcloud
<directory /var/www/html/nextcloud>
Require all granted
AllowOverride All
Options FollowSymLinks MultiViews
SetEnv HOME /var/www/html/nextcloud
SetEnv HTTP_HOME /var/www/html/nextcloud
</directory>
SSLEngine on
SSLCertificateFile /etc/letsencrypt/live/files.example.com/fullchain.pem
SSLCertificateKeyFile /etc/letsencrypt/live/files.example.com/privkey.pem
</VirtualHost>
</IfModule>
Access Nextcloud UI and finish installation
Open your nextcloud server URL as configured on Apache: http://files.example.com
Setup admin password
Setup Database, don’t forget to using MariaDB and set credentials
When done click the “Finish Setup” button. You should get the Files dashboard of Nextcloud. Now install Nextcloud Agent on your end device to start syncing files.
Thanks for using our guide to install Nextcloud on CentOS 7.