Setup Process

Consider getting a domain

The video shows the process of setting up a domain. This is optional, but recommended.

Install Ubuntu Server

To get started, install Ubuntu Server on a VPS, physical server, virtual machine, or whatever you have. You can support the channel by setting up a server on Linode with <URL HERE>(this link) but that’s optional, any Ubuntu Server installation should be fine.

Adding a user

After setting up Ubuntu Server, create a user for yourself if you don’t already have one:

sudo adduser jdoe

Adding a user to the sudo group

sudo usermod -aG sudo jdoe

Update packages

sudo apt update
sudo apt dist-upgrade

Clean up orphan packages

There may or may not be some orphaned packages. You can clean them up with the following command:

 sudo apt autoremove

Set the hostname

sudo nano /etc/hostname
sudo nano /etc/hosts

Reboot to save all changes so far

sudo reboot

Install tmux (optional)

This is an optional step, but running within tmux helps you avoid a situation where your SSH session disconnects in the middle of installing packages, which can cause package corruption.

Install the tmux package:

 sudo apt install tmux

Activate tmux with:

 tmux

Download Nextcloud

Go to: https://nextcloud.com/install/ Click “Download for server” and copy the link address.

On the server, download the Nextcloud zip file:

 wget https://download.nextcloud.com/server/releases/nextcloud-20.0.6.zip

Note: Change the URL in the command above to whatever the current download URL is for Nextcloud, this changes from time to time. Just grab the URL from the Nextcloud site.

Set up database server

Install the mariadb-server package:

 sudo apt install mariadb-server

Secure the installation with:

 sudo mysql_secure_installation

Follow the prompts to set up some very basic security defaults for the database server.

Create Nextcloud Database

sudo mariadb
CREATE DATABASE nextcloud;
SHOW DATABASES;
GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON nextcloud.* TO 'nextcloud'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'mypassword';
FLUSH PRIVILEGES;

CTRL+D to exit

Install required packages

sudo apt install php php-apcu php-bcmath php-cli php-common php-curl php-gd php-gmp php-imagick php-intl php-mbstring php-mysql php-zip php-xml

Make sure apache2 is listed as a package in the list to be installed

Check status with systemctl

systemctl status apache2
systemctl status mariadb

Enable recommended PHP extensions

 sudo phpenmod bcmath gmp imagick intl

Install zip and unzip nextcloud

sudo apt install unzip
unzip nextcloud-<version>.zip

Organize Apache files

mv nextcloud nc.learnlinux.tv
sudo chown -R www-data:www-data nc.learnlinux.tv
sudo mv nc.learnlinux.tv /var/www
sudo a2dissite 000-default.conf
sudo systemctl reload apache2

Add Apache virtual host for Nextcloud

sudo nano /etc/apache2/sites-available/nc.learnlinux.tv.conf

 <VirtualHost *:80>
     DocumentRoot "/var/www/nc.learnlinux.tv"
     ServerName nc.learnlinux.tv

     <Directory "/var/www/nc.learnlinux.tv/">
         Options MultiViews FollowSymlinks
         AllowOverride All
         Order allow,deny
         Allow from all
    </Directory>

    TransferLog /var/log/apache2/nc.learnlinux.tv_access.log
    ErrorLog /var/log/apache2/nc.learnlinux.tv_error.log

 </VirtualHost>

Enable the site

sudo a2ensite nc.learnlinux.tv.conf

Configure PHP

Ubuntu 20.04:

 sudo nano /etc/php/7.4/apache2/php.ini

Debian 10:

 sudo nano /etc/php/7.3/apache2/php.ini

Parameters to adjust:

 memory_limit = 512M
 upload_max_filesize = 200M
 max_execution_time = 360
 post_max_size = 200M
 date.timezone = America/Detroit
 opcache.enable=1
 opcache.interned_strings_buffer=8
 opcache.max_accelerated_files=10000
 opcache.memory_consumption=128
 opcache.save_comments=1
 opcache.revalidate_freq=1

Enable required Apache mods

 sudo a2enmod dir env headers mime rewrite ssl
 sudo systemctl restart apache2

Configure Nextcloud

Browse to the Nextcloud server in your browser, and update the configuration to match the database info you’ve used earlier.

Enable memory caching

Edit the Nextcloud config file:

 sudo vim /var/www/nc.learnlinux.tv/config/config.php

Add the following line to the end:

 'memcache.local' => '\OC\Memcache\APCu',

Correct permissions of config.php

sudo chmod 660 /var/www/nc.learnlinux.tv/config/config.php
sudo chown root:www-data /var/www/nc.learnlinux.tv/config/config.php

Fix database indexes

 You may have to run the following to fix database indexes, if you see an error:
 sudo php /var/www/nc.learnlinux.tv/occ db:add-missing-indices

Create an SSL certificate

 sudo add-apt-repository ppa:certbot/certbot
 sudo certbot --apache -d nc.learnlinux.tv