Install Nextcloud on CentOS 7 + Setting Let’s Encrypt SSL

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.