iiab/roles/nextcloud

Nextcloud README

Students and teachers can store their documents, calendars, contacts and photos locally within Nextcloud, which is much like having a (local) version of Dropbox or Google Drive on your very own Internet-in-a-Box.

This Ansible playbook was derived from an earlier ownCloud playbook thanks to Josh Dennis in 2016/2017.

What's Included

The Nextcloud suite is divided into three main categories:

• Nextcloud Files – Enterprise File Sync and Share
• Nextcloud Talk – Calls, chat and web meetings
• Nextcloud Groupware – Calendar, Contacts & Mail

Install It

(1) Set these 2 variable in /etc/iiab/local_vars.yml prior to installing Internet-in-a-Box:

nextcloud_install: True
nextcloud_enabled: True

(2) If you want to access Nextcloud from IPv4 addresses across the public Internet, then also set:

nextcloud_allow_public_ips: True

To further refine Nextcloud access controls based on IPv4 addresses, you can edit /etc/apache2/sites-available/nextcloud.conf after it's created by this template: /opt/iiab/iiab/roles/nextcloud/templates/nextcloud.conf.j2

(3) Be aware of nginx_high_php_limits: True in your /etc/iiab/local_vars.yml, which allocates important RAM/resources to PHP, and is effectively auto-enabled for Nextcloud (PR #3624). Verify that your Internet-in-a-Box server has enough RAM and disk! And after Nextcloud is installed, verify and evaluate these 6 settings in /etc/php/[ACTUAL PHP VERSION]/fpm/php.ini to be sure:

• upload_max_filesize
• post_max_size
• memory_limit (Nextcloud recommends 512+ MB)
• max_execution_time
• max_input_time
• max_input_vars (Moodle 3.11+ requires 5000+ with PHP 8+)

FYI IIAB will also update /etc/php/[ACTUAL PHP VERSION]/cli/php.in (as Moodle requires).

Useful PHP recommendations for these settings (while largely tailored to WordPress, and aimed at very low-end hardware) can be found here: /opt/iiab/iiab/roles/www_options/tasks/php-settings.yml#L55-L110

(4) Verify system requirements and recommendations for the latest version Nextcloud:

• https://docs.nextcloud.com/server/latest/admin_manual/installation/system_requirements.html
• https://docs.nextcloud.com/server/latest/admin_manual/installation/source_installation.html#prerequisites-for-manual-installation
• https://docs.nextcloud.com/server/30/admin_manual/installation/source_installation.html#prerequisites-for-manual-installation
• https://github.com/iiab/iiab/blob/master/roles/nextcloud/tasks/install.yml

Using It

Log in to Nextcloud at http://box/nextcloud, http://box.lan/nextcloud, http://10.10.10.10/nextcloud (or similar) using:

Username: Admin
Password: changeme

Known Issues

Do not install the Nextcloud News app (an RSS/Atom Feed reader) if your OS is 32-bits: #3069

Future Directions

Going forward, should Internet-in-a-Box consider integrating optimizations (or more!) from these below?

• https://ownyourbits.com/nextcloudpi/
• https://ownyourbits.com/2017/02/13/nextcloud-ready-raspberry-pi-image/
• https://github.com/nextcloud/nextcloudpi

Please contact us if you can help!