Nextcloud
Nextcloud (wikipedia:en:Nextcloud) is a self-hosted web groupware and cloud software, offering collaboration on files, managing calendar events, contacts and tasks.
This article extends the documentation in the NixOS manual.
Installation
A minimal example to get the latest Nextcloud version (for your specific NixOS release) running on localhost should look like this, replacing PWD with a 10+ char password that meets Nextcloud's default password policy.
/etc/nixos/configuration.nix
environment.etc."nextcloud-admin-pass".text = "PWD";
services.nextcloud = {
enable = true;
hostName = "localhost";
config.adminpassFile = "/etc/nextcloud-admin-pass";
};
After that you will be able to login into your Nextcloud instance at http://localhost with user root and password PWD as configured above.
Configuration
Be sure to read the Nextcloud module's documentation in the NixOS Manual.
Apps
Some apps which are already packaged on NixOS can be installed directly with the following example configuration
/etc/nixos/configuration.nix
services.nextcloud = {
enable = true;
[...]
# Instead of using pkgs.nextcloud29Packages.apps or similar,
# we'll reference the package version specified in services.nextcloud.package
extraApps = {
inherit (config.services.nextcloud.package.packages.apps) news contacts calendar tasks;
};
extraAppsEnable = true;
};
The apps mail, news and contacts will be installed and enabled in your instance automatically. Note that the Nextcloud version specified in package and extraApps need to match one of the stable Nextcloud versions available in the NixOS repository.
To manually fetch and install packages, you need to add them via the helper script fetchNextcloudApp by specifing the release tarball as url, the correct checksum and the license. Additional apps can be found via Nextcloud app store, while the nc4nix provides an easy reference for the required variables. Note that the declarative specification of apps via this approach requires manual updating of package version (url) and checksum for a new release.
/etc/nixos/configuration.nix
services.nextcloud = {
enable = true;
[...]
extraApps = {
inherit (config.services.nextcloud.package.packages.apps) news contacts calendar tasks;
memories = pkgs.fetchNextcloudApp {
sha256 = "sha256-Xr1SRSmXo2r8yOGuoMyoXhD0oPVm/0/ISHlmNZpJYsg=";
url = "https://github.com/pulsejet/memories/releases/download/v6.2.2/memories.tar.gz";
license = "agpl3Only";
};
};
extraAppsEnable = true;
};
It is even possible to fetch and build an app from source, in this example the development app hmr_enabler.
/etc/nixos/configuration.nix
services.nextcloud = {
enable = true;
[...]
extraApps = {
hmr_enabler = pkgs.php.buildComposerProject (finalAttrs: {
pname = "hmr_enabler";
version = "1.0.0";
src = pkgs.fetchFromGitHub {
owner = "nextcloud";
repo = "hmr_enabler";
rev = "b8d3ad290bfa6fe407280587181a5167d71a2617";
hash = "sha256-yXFby5zlDiPdrw6HchmBoUdu9Zjfgp/bSu0G/isRpKg=";
};
composerNoDev = false;
vendorHash = "sha256-PCWWu/SqTUGnZXUnXyL8c72p8L14ZUqIxoa5i49XPH4=";
postInstall = ''
cp -r $out/share/php/hmr_enabler/* $out/
rm -r $out/share
'';
});
};
extraAppsEnable = true;
};
Alternatively apps can be manually installed via the app store integrated in your Nextcloud instance by navigating in the profile menu to the site "Apps".
TLS
If you would like to setup Nextcloud with Let's Encrypt TLS certificates (or certs from any other certificate authority) make sure to set services.nextcloud.https = true; and to enable it in the nginx-VirtualHost.
/etc/nixos/configuration.nix
services.nextcloud = {
enable = true;
[...]
hostName = "nextcloud.example.org";
https = true;
};
services.nginx.virtualHosts.${config.services.nextcloud.hostName} = {
forceSSL = true;
enableACME = true;
};
security.acme = {
acceptTerms = true;
certs = {
${config.services.nextcloud.hostName}.email = "your-letsencrypt-email@example.com";
};
};
Caching
Redis can be enabled as a performant caching backend using following configuration. This will bring faster page loads to your Nextcloud instance.
/etc/nixos/configuration.nix
services.nextcloud = {
enable = true;
configureRedis = true;
[...]
};
Note that APCu will still be used for local caching, as recommended by Nextcloud upstream.
Object store
In this example we'll configure a local S3-compatible object store using Minio and connect it to Nextcloud
/etc/nixos/configuration.nix
{ ... } let
accessKey = "nextcloud";
secretKey = "test12345";
rootCredentialsFile = pkgs.writeText "minio-credentials-full" ''
MINIO_ROOT_USER=nextcloud
MINIO_ROOT_PASSWORD=test12345
'';
in {
services.nextcloud = {
[...]
config.objectstore.s3 = {
enable = true;
bucket = "nextcloud";
autocreate = true;
key = accessKey;
secretFile = "${pkgs.writeText "secret" "test12345"}";
hostname = "localhost";
useSsl = false;
port = 9000;
usePathStyle = true;
region = "us-east-1";
};
};
services.minio = {
enable = true;
listenAddress = "127.0.0.1:9000";
consoleAddress = "127.0.0.1:9001";
inherit rootCredentialsFile;
};
environment.systemPackages = [ pkgs.minio-client ];
};
We'll need to run two commands to create the bucket nextcloud by using the access key nextcloud and the secret key test12345.
mc config host add minio http://localhost:9000 ${accessKey} ${secretKey} --api s3v4
mc mb minio/nextcloud
Mail delivery
Besides various mail delivery options and settings, mail clients like Msmtp can be used to configure mail delivery for Nextcloud. This can be useful for sending registration mails or system notifications etc. To configure Nextcloud to use a local mail delivery daemon, we configure mail_smtpmode to sendmail and a further sending mode.
services.nextcloud = {
[...]
extraOptions = {
mail_smtpmode = "sendmail";
mail_sendmailmode = "pipe";
};
};
Test mails can be send via administration interface in the menu section "Basic settings".
Max upload file size
To increase the maximum upload file size, for example to 1 GB, add following option
/etc/nixos/configuration.nix
services.nextcloud.maxUploadSize = "1G";
Secrets management
Do not suply passwords, hashes or keys via extraOptions option, since they will be copied into the world-readable Nix store. Instead reference a JSON file containing secrets using the secretFile option.
services.nextcloud = {
[...]
secretFile = "/etc/nextcloud-secrets.json";
};
environment.etc."nextcloud-secrets.json".text = ''
{
"passwordsalt": "12345678910",
"secret": "12345678910",
"instanceid": "10987654321",
"redis": {
"password": "secret"
}
}
'';
Consider using a secret management tool instead of referencing an unencrypted local secrets file.
Maintenance
Upgrade
As you can see on the package search, there is no default nextcloud package. Instead you have to set the current version in services.nextcloud.package. As soon a major version of Nextcloud gets unsupported, it will be removed from nixpkgs as well.
Upgrading then consists of these steps:
- Increment the version of
services.nextcloud.packagein your config by 1 (leaving out a major version is not supported) nixos-rebuild switch
In theory, your nextcloud has now been upgraded by one version. NixOS attempts nextcloud-occ upgrade, if this succeeds without problems you don't need to do anything. Check journalctl to make sure nothing horrible happened. Go to the /settings/admin/overview page in your nextcloud to see whether it recommends further processing, such as database reindexing or conversion.
Database
You can access the mysql database, for backup/restore, etc. like this:
sudo -u nextcloud -- mysql -u nextcloud <options>
No password is required.
Clients
Nextcloudcmd
nextcloudcmd is a terminal client performing only a single sync run and then exits. The following example command will synchronize the local folder /home/myuser/music with the remote folder /music of the Nextcloud server https://nextcloud.example.org.
# nix shell nixpkgs#nextcloud-client -h --user example --password test123 --path /music /home/myuser/music https://nextcloud.example.org
The argument -h will enable syncing hidden files. For demonstration purpose username and password are supplied as an argument. This is a security risk and shouldn't be used in production.
Using Home Manager we can create a systemd-timer which automatically runs the sync command every hour for the user myuser.
/etc/nixos/configuration.nix
home-manager.users.myuser = {
systemd.user = {
services.nextcloud-autosync = {
Unit = {
Description = "Auto sync Nextcloud";
After = "network-online.target";
};
Service = {
Type = "simple";
ExecStart= "${pkgs.nextcloud-client}/bin/nextcloudcmd -h -n --path /music /home/myuser/music https://nextcloud.example.org";
TimeoutStopSec = "180";
KillMode = "process";
KillSignal = "SIGINT";
};
Install.WantedBy = ["multi-user.target"];
};
timers.nextcloud-autosync = {
Unit.Description = "Automatic sync files with Nextcloud when booted up after 5 minutes then rerun every 60 minutes";
Timer.OnBootSec = "5min";
Timer.OnUnitActiveSec = "60min";
Install.WantedBy = ["multi-user.target" "timers.target"];
};
startServices = true;
};
};
The login credentials will be written to a file called .netrc used nextcloudcmd for authentication to the Nextcloud server.
Nextcloud Desktop
"nextcloud-client" is a nextcloud themed desktop client. It requires a keyring to store its login token. Without an active keyring, the user will be asked for to login on every application startup.
Tips and tricks
Change default listening port
In case port 80 is already used by a different application or you're using a different web server than Nginx, which is used by the Nextcloud module, you can change the listening port with the following option:
/etc/nixos/configuration.nix
services.nginx.virtualHosts."localhost".listen = [ { addr = "127.0.0.1"; port = 8080; } ];
Enable HEIC image preview
HEIC image preview needs to be explicitly enabled. This is done by adjusting the enabledPreviewProviders option. Beside the default list of supported formats, add an additional line "OC\\Preview\\HEIC" for HEIC image support.
/etc/nixos/configuration.nix
services.nextcloud = {
extraOptions.enabledPreviewProviders = [
"OC\\Preview\\BMP"
"OC\\Preview\\GIF"
"OC\\Preview\\JPEG"
"OC\\Preview\\Krita"
"OC\\Preview\\MarkDown"
"OC\\Preview\\MP3"
"OC\\Preview\\OpenDocument"
"OC\\Preview\\PNG"
"OC\\Preview\\TXT"
"OC\\Preview\\XBitmap"
"OC\\Preview\\HEIC"
];
};
Run nextcloud in a sub-directory
Say, you don't want to run nextcloud at your.site/ but in a sub-directory your.site/nextcloud/. To do so, we are going to add more configurations to nextcloud and to nginx to make it a reverse-proxy.
First, define some overwritings. Nextcloud uses them to write out all URLs as if it runs in a sub-directory (which it is not.)
/etc/nixos/configuration.nix
services.nextcloud = {
settings = let
prot = "http"; # or https
host = "127.0.0.1";
dir = "/nextcloud";
in {
overwriteprotocol = prot;
overwritehost = host;
overwritewebroot = dir;
overwrite.cli.url = "${prot}://${host}${dir}/";
htaccess.RewriteBase = dir;
};
};
Make sure your nginx doesn't host nextcloud on your exposed port:
/etc/nixos/configuration.nix
services.nginx.virtualHosts."${config.services.nextcloud.hostName}".listen = [ {
addr = "127.0.0.1";
port = 8080; # NOT an exposed port
} ];
Redirect some well-known URLs which have to be found at your.site/.well-known towards your new nextcloud URL:
/etc/nixos/configuration.nix
services.nginx.virtualHosts."localhost" = {
"^~ /.well-known" = {
priority = 9000;
extraConfig = ''
absolute_redirect off;
location ~ ^/\\.well-known/(?:carddav|caldav)$ {
return 301 /nextcloud/remote.php/dav;
}
location ~ ^/\\.well-known/host-meta(?:\\.json)?$ {
return 301 /nextcloud/public.php?service=host-meta-json;
}
location ~ ^/\\.well-known/(?!acme-challenge|pki-validation) {
return 301 /nextcloud/index.php$request_uri;
}
try_files $uri $uri/ =404;
'';
};
};
Finally, forward your.site/nextcloud/ (exposed port 80 or 443) to your unexposed nextcloud port 8080 (defined earlier):
/etc/nixos/configuration.nix
services.nginx.virtualHosts."localhost" = {
"/nextcloud/" = {
priority = 9999;
extraConfig = ''
proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
proxy_set_header X-NginX-Proxy true;
proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Proto http;
proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1:8080/; # tailing / is important!
proxy_set_header Host $host;
proxy_cache_bypass $http_upgrade;
proxy_redirect off;
'';
};
}
Note: If you have TLS (https) enabled, make sure nginx forwards to the correct port and nextcloud overwrites for the correct protocol.
Use Caddy as webserver
Using a third-party module extension, the webserver Caddy can be used as an alternative by adding following options
/etc/nixos/configuration.nix
imports = [
"${fetchTarball {
url = "https://github.com/onny/nixos-nextcloud-testumgebung/archive/fa6f062830b4bc3cedb9694c1dbf01d5fdf775ac.tar.gz";
sha256 = "0gzd0276b8da3ykapgqks2zhsqdv4jjvbv97dsxg0hgrhb74z0fs";}}/nextcloud-extras.nix"
];
services.nextcloud = {
webserver = "caddy";
};
Add users declaratively
Using a third-party module extension, additional users can be automatically configured using the ensureUsers option
/etc/nixos/configuration.nix
imports = [
"${fetchTarball {
url = "https://github.com/onny/nixos-nextcloud-testumgebung/archive/fa6f062830b4bc3cedb9694c1dbf01d5fdf775ac.tar.gz";
sha256 = "0gzd0276b8da3ykapgqks2zhsqdv4jjvbv97dsxg0hgrhb74z0fs";}}/nextcloud-extras.nix"
];
environment.etc."nextcloud-user-pass".text = "PWD";
services.nextcloud = {
ensureUsers = {
user1 = {
email = "user1@localhost";
passwordFile = "/etc/nextcloud-user-pass";
};
user2 = {
email = "user2@localhost";
passwordFile = "/etc/nextcloud-user-pass";
};
};
};
Troubleshooting
Reading php logs
The default Nextcloud setting is to log to syslog. To read php logs simply run
# journalctl -t Nextcloud
Plugins
Rich document editing
The main options for Rich Document Editing are ONLYOFFICE and Collabora Online (aka Nextcloud Office aka CODE aka richdocuments).
ONLYOFFICE
You need to install both a document server and the ONLYOFFICE Nextcloud plug-in.
For the document server, you can either install "services.onlyoffice" or https://apps.nextcloud.com/apps/documentserver_community. I have only tried the former.
Unfortunately this currently does not appear to work due to https://github.com/ONLYOFFICE/onlyoffice-nextcloud/issues/931. You can edit files but they're not successfully saved back to Nextcloud.
Then point the app to the document server from within the Nextcloud UI ("Administration Settings" -> Administration -> ONLYOFFICE)
Collabora Online
(not tried)