Getting started with NextCloud?

I’m very happy with Nextcloud so far. I run the AIO container on an old intel MacMini. I use files and photos. None of the other stuff.

Virtual files work ok on Linux desktop but you will lose the preview capability for non local files. Be careful with photos, it can preview and download them in a lower resolution than what you saved them as.

I use Jellyfin for my music but use nextcloud to upload and maintain the library. Huge pain in the beginning when I realized some folders with residual hidden files from a MacOS file system were being skipped and not shown in Nextcloud! Other than that, works great!

I found the LearnLinuxTV tutorial on installing Nextcloud to be really good, and it’s been running great! It’s excellent if you want drive and has all the different other bits like notes, calendar, forms, office, etc.

However, you might also want to look at some other services too for specific tasks. I use Radicale for calendar, mostly because it was my first self-hosted service and I never bothered moving to the NC offering, but it’s very simple to setup and works well for me. Etherpad is good if you want shareable MD notes (but isn’t as great if you want private notes, for that local programs like Joplin, Marktext, and Markor are your best bet). For image hosting, Immich is always nice and has excellent mobile clients too (even on Linux mobile, you have the third-party Mimick!)

I am hosting a NC container in docker with collabora behind traefik. Works nice, but collabora sometimes breaks due to updates (e.g. forbidden characters). NC itself is smooth though.

Nextcloud has worked wonderfully for pretty much everything except for the office suite, which almost never works, I’ve heard AIO runs it fine. I’ve just had more useful luck with collabora on my phone and libreoffice on desktop that I’m not willing to fuss about to try and get it to work for the fifth time just for it to break again.

As for installation, I went the nextcloudpi route on a normal PC and haven’t really had any issues that weren’t my own fault. The biggest struggle I had was figuring out what packages I needed to install on a minimal Debian install before I could successfully run the installer.

I did spin up a nextcloudpi lxc container on proxmox since I’m expecting to containerize it in the future and it just started up perfectly along with the normal office suite issues.

I run nextcloud in a podman pod because I’m coocoo bananas that way. It uses authentik as an SSO provider using the nextcloud OIDC plugin. And I use the linuxserver.io container rather than the official nextcloud one because gosh darn it , it actually works

[Pod]
PodName=nextcloud
PublishPort=10443:443
PublishPort=9980:9980

Nextcloud-db.container

Description=db
Wants=network-online.target
After=network-online.target

[Service]
Restart=always

[Container]
Pod=nextcloud.pod
ContainerName=nextcloud-db
Image=docker.io/library/mariadb:11
AutoUpdate=registry
Volume=nextcloud-db.volume:/var/lib/mysql:Z
Environment=MARIADB_HOST=nextcloud
Environment=MARIADB_DATABASE=nextcloud
Environment=MARIADB_USER=nextcloud
Environment=MARIADB_PASSWORD=nextcloud
Environment=MARIADB_ROOT_PASSWORD=nextcloud

[Install]
WantedBy=default.target

Nextcloud-app.container

[Unit]
Description=Nextcloud
Wants=network-online.target
After=network-online.target

[Service]
Restart=always

[Container]
#Label=app=nextcloud
ContainerName=nextcloud-app
Pod=nextcloud.pod
Image=lscr.io/linuxserver/nextcloud:latest
AutoUpdate=registry
Volume=nextcloud-config.volume:/config:Z
#Volume=nextcloud-data.volume:/data:Z
Volume=/home/nextcloud/:/data:Z
Environment=TZ=America/New_York
Environment=PUID=1000
Environment=PGID=1000
#PublishPort=10443:443

[Install]
WantedBy=default.target

Nextcloud-office.container

[Unit]
Description=Nextcloud-office
Wants=network-online.target
After=network-online.target

[Service]
Restart=always

[Container]
#Label=app=nextcloud
ContainerName=nextcloud-office
Pod=nextcloud.pod
Image=docker.io/collabora/code:latest
AutoUpdate=registry
Environment=server_name=office.app.myserver.org
Environment=aliasgroup1="https://nextcloud.app.myserver.org/"
[Install]
WantedBy=default.target

I found Nextcloud all in one pretty easy to install, and it’s been very stable and simple to keep running. Been up for about a year now.

It’s the nextcloud ux that I find kinda frustrating for a family use case. It’s got a hundred features you don’t want, and the ones you want don’t work as well as you’d expect them to. For example, calendar cannot subscribe to external calendars, which is oddly limiting. I don’t uses photos, I don’t use talk, and I don’t use it for mail, presence, messaging, or or most of the other stuff bundled into it. I use files, Collabora office, and notes. And while collabora is reasonably functional on desktop, it’s pretty bad on mobile. if she’s used to gdocs, and expects something similar, she’s probably not gonna like it.

I feel like I’ve never heard anything but complaints about the all-in-one image.

On the other hand, I’ve been using the community maintained docker image for a few years with minimal issues.

I ran it manually installed for years in a vm, then an LXC. It broke…a lot.

Then I ran it as docker containers with MySQL for a few years. It broke…less-ish.

Then I ran the AIO container. It was (and is) quite irritating because it’s so opinionated compared to regular docker containers. However, it hasn’t broken. It works pretty well. It’s faster than my old install and the office stuff seems to work better. However…want to do something different to the way Nextcloud AIO recommends? Nah, fuck you go kludge something together. You kinda have to do stuff their way, including things like backups.

It’s annoying to have all my other compose containers work with volumes and similar settings and Nextcloud be kinda its own thing, but I’m sticking with the AIO container. Takes a while to set up, but at least the documentation can’t be accused of being sparse.

That’s been my experience anyway. I’m sure smarter people than me have managed to bend it to their will a bit more.

I use Docker Compose to run my Nextcloud server using the community image, which in turn lives inside an unprivileged LXC container.

volumes:
  db:

services:
  db:
    image: mariadb:lts
    container_name: mariadb
    restart: always
    command: --transaction-isolation=READ-COMMITTED --log-bin=binlog --binlog-format=ROW
    volumes:
      - db:/var/lib/mysql
    secrets:
      - mysql_root_password
      - mysql_nextcloud_password
    environment:
      - MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD_FILE=/run/secrets/mysql_root_password
      - MYSQL_PASSWORD_FILE=/run/secrets/mysql_nextcloud_password
      - MYSQL_DATABASE=nextcloud
      - MYSQL_USER=nextcloud

  nextcloud:
    image: nextcloud:latest
    container_name: nextcloud
    restart: always
    ports:
      - 8080:80
    depends_on:
      - db
    volumes:
      - /var/www/html:/var/www/html
      - /srv/nextcloud:/srv
    environment:
      - MYSQL_PASSWORD_FILE=/run/secrets/mysql_nextcloud_password
      - MYSQL_DATABASE=nextcloud
      - MYSQL_USER=nextcloud
      - MYSQL_HOST=db

secrets:
  mysql_root_password:
    file: ./secrets/mysql_root_password.txt
  mysql_nextcloud_password:
    file: ./secrets/mysql_nextcloud_password.txt

Nextcloud’s file storage is a mount point at /srv/nextcloud, which is backed by a ZRAID pool. The secrets are stored in files with 600 permissions. The web server is initially exposed on port 8080.

When you run the container for the first time, it will show a first time setup dialog. You’ll have to fill it out manually, using mariadb for the database type and db for the database hostname.

If Nextcloud works through HTTP, you can then set up a proxy for HTTPS. I used Nginx running on the same LXC. I can’t guarantee that my config is adequately secure, use it at your own risk.

upstream php-handler {
	server 127.0.0.1:9000;
}

server {
	listen 80;
	listen [::]:80;
	server_name nextcloud.your.domain;
	return 301 https://$host$request_uri;
}

server {
	listen 443 ssl http2;
	listen [::]:443 ssl http2;
	server_name nextcloud.your.domain;
	keepalive_timeout 70;
	client_max_body_size 32G;

	ssl_certificate /etc/nginx/ssl/ssl.crt;
	ssl_certificate_key /etc/nginx/ssl/ssl.key;
	ssl_protocols TLSv1 TLSv1.1 TLSv1.2 TLSv1.3;
	ssl_ciphers HIGH:!aNULL:!MD5;

	add_header Referrer-Policy "no-referrer" always;
	add_header X-Content-Type-Options "nosniff" always;
	add_header X-Download-Options "noopen" always;
	add_header X-Frame-Options "SAMEORIGIN" always;
	add_header X-Permitted-Cross-Domain-Policies "none" always;
	add_header X-Robots-Tag "none" always;
	add_header X-XSS-Protection "1; mode=block" always;

	fastcgi_hide_header X-Powered-By;

	location / {
		proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1:8080/;
	}
}

To allow the web app to work using the DNS name, you’ll have to edit /var/www/html/config/config.php and change/add these values:

'trusted_domains' => array(
    0 => '127.0.0.1:8080',
    1 => 'nextcloud.your.domain',
    // 2 => whatever other addresses you want to use
),
'overwrite.cli.url' => 'https://nextcloud.your.domain/',
'overwriteprotocol' => 'https',
'overwritehost' => 'nextcloud.ng.local'

If at any point you need to start over, remember to delete the contents of /var/www/html.

(edit) Forgot to mention: the web server will accept connections from all addresses, you’ll need to set up a strict firewall to only allow 443 (maybe 80) and 22.

Nextcloud AIO container runs pretty much without fuss on my VPS, but I don’t use the office features, just file syncing/sharing, contacts and calendar

Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I’ve seen in this thread:

[Thread #25 for this comm, first seen 23rd Jun 2026, 21:00] [FAQ] [Full list] [Contact] [Source code]

I run nextcloud in a collection of vms, nginx with SSL offloading, php-fpm, mariaDB and a docker host. Its rock solid and is a full google replacment, with office and even an RSS reader.

https://homelab.horwood.biz/?nextcloud

Please let me know if you need more words

J love next cloud with onlyoffice but man, onlyoffice is a huge pain in the ass to get it working stable with next cloud.

It was a pain in the ass when I set that up 10 or so years ago, and it still is today. I just set it up a few weeks ago, took me days with all the problems I had and a single reboot later again it’s broken

I think only office is probably the best web based office suite out there but they seriously need to look into fixing this connection crap

From what I’ve gathered about Nextcloud, they seem to be a fast paced rolling release model, which breaks often due to their pace.

Since I didn’t want to handhold it constantly, their forks — upstream and fork — drew my attention, OwnCloud and OpenCloud — fork from OwnCloud infinitescale — I went with OpenCloud, due to the smaller footprint required.

I’m currently using systemd container services built from the “full” docker compose version. The services I’m hosting are: OpenCloud server, Caddy as a reverse proxy and automatic cert renew, Keycloak for IDM, Collabora office, Apache Tika full version for text search and extraction and Radicale for contacts and calendar. They also recently updated to support EuroOffice.

While it has less features than NextCloud, it runs fine on a 4-core 8GB VPS, though it needs swap when starting for the first time or updating.

they don’t go out of their way to make the self hosted option easy

Just follow the docs https://docs.nextcloud.com/server/stable/admin_manual/installation/source_installation.html ? The manual install is a simple webserver + PHP-FPM + postgres setup

I have automated it with an ansible role [1], there’s nothing complicated about it, really.