Nextcloud is one of the most popular free and open source self-hosted file sync and sharing application. You can use it to store your personal files, contacts, pictures, music and much more and it allows you to access them or share them with your friends at any time. It is a popular alternative to another widely used file hosting application called ownCloud. In this tutorial, we will show you how to install the latest version 14 of Nextcloud on CentOS.

Prerequisite

CentOS 7

SSH access with root privileges

PHP 7 or above

Step 1: Log in to your server via SSH:

Before starting, enter the command below to check whether you have the proper version of CentOS installed on your machine:

# cat /etc/redhat-release

which should give you the underneath output:

CentOS Linux release 7.5.1804 (Core)

Step 2: Update the system

Make sure your server is fully up to date:

# yum update

If your system has not been updated for a while, it will take a few minutes to completed.

# yum install -y epel-release

Step 3: Install Web Server

In this step, you can choose whether you want to install Apache or nginx.

Install Nginx web server

# yum install nginx

Enable nginx to start on boot and start the service using:

# systemctl enable nginx # systemctl start nginx

Install Apache web server

If you would like to choose Apache instead of nginx, you can skip nginx installation above then install Apache.

# yum install httpd

Enable Apache to start on boot and start the service using:

# systemctl enable httpd # systemctl start httpd

Step 4: Install PHP 7

The default PHP version on CentOS 7 is PHP 5.4 and Nextcloud 14 requires PHP 7 or above, in this step we will install PHP version 7.

Install Remi and EPEL repository packages:

# rpm -Uvh http://rpms.remirepo.net/enterprise/remi-release-7.rpm

Enable Remi PHP 7 repo:

# yum-config-manager –enable remi-php70

and install PHP 7 and several PHP modules required by Nextcloud by executing the following command:

# yum install php php-mysql php-pecl-zip php-xml php-mbstring php-gd php-fpm php-intl

Now, let’s find the following strings in /etc/php-fpm.d/www.conf

user = apache group = apache

Replace the values with

user = nginx group = nginx

Then, change the permission for PHP session directory, you need to skip this step if you want to use Apache instead of nginx.

# chown -R root:nginx /var/lib/php/session/

Finally, restart php-fpm

# systemctl restart php-fpm

Step 5: Install MariaDB database server

# nano /etc/yum.repos.d/MariaDB.repo

# [mariadb] name = MariaDB baseurl = http://yum.mariadb.org/10.2/centos7-amd64 gpgkey=https://yum.mariadb.org/RPM-GPG-KEY-MariaDB gpgcheck=1

# yum install MariaDB-server MariaDB-client

# systemctl start mariadb # systemctl enable mariadb # systemctl status mariadb

At this point, MariaDB is running and we are now going to create a password for the root user. Run the following command to create a root password, remove the test database, remove the anonymous user then reload the privileges.

# mysql_secure_installation

Once created, you can test the password by invoking this command, you will be asked for the password:

# mysql -u root -p

Step 6: Create a database

# mysql -uroot -p -e "CREATE DATABASE nextcloud CHARACTER SET utf8mb4 COLLATE utf8mb4_general_ci" # mysql -uroot -p -e "GRANT ALL on nextcloud.* to [email protected] identified by 'M0d1fyth15" # mysql -uroot -p -e "FLUSH privileges"

Step 7: Configure Web Server

In the previous step, you chose a web server to install, now you will need to configure it.

Nginx configuration

If you want to use nginx, please create a configuration file for the nginx server block

nano /etc/nginx/conf.d/yourdomain.com.conf

upstream php { server 127.0.0.1:9000; } server { server_name yourdomain.com; add_header X-Content-Type-Options nosniff; add_header X-XSS-Protection “1; mode=block”; add_header X-Robots-Tag none; add_header X-Download-Options noopen; add_header X-Permitted-Cross-Domain-Policies none; # Path to the root of your installation root /var/www/nextcloud/; location = /robots.txt { allow all; log_not_found off; access_log off; } location = /.well-known/carddav { return 301 $scheme://$host/remote.php/dav; } location = /.well-known/caldav { return 301 $scheme://$host/remote.php/dav; } # set max upload size client_max_body_size 512M; fastcgi_buffers 64 4K; # Enable gzip but do not remove ETag headers gzip on; gzip_vary on; gzip_comp_level 4; gzip_min_length 256; gzip_proxied expired no-cache no-store private no_last_modified no_etag auth; gzip_types application/atom+xml application/javascript application/json application/ld+json application/manifest+json application/rss+xml application/vnd.geo+json application/vnd.ms-fontobject application/x-font-ttf application/x-web-app-manifest+json application/xhtml+xml application/xml font/opentype image/bmp image/svg+xml image/x-icon text/cache-manifest text/css text/plain text/vcard text/vnd.rim.location.xloc text/vtt text/x-component text/x-cross-domain-policy; location / { rewrite ^ /index.php$request_uri; } location ~ ^/(?:build|tests|config|lib|3rdparty|templates|data)/ { deny all; } location ~ ^/(?:\.|autotest|occ|issue|indie|db_|console) { deny all; } location ~ ^/(?:index|remote|public|cron|core/ajax/update|status|ocs/v[12]|updater/.+|ocs-provider/.+)\.php(?:$|/) { fastcgi_split_path_info ^(.+?\.php)(/.*)$; include fastcgi_params; fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $document_root$fastcgi_script_name; fastcgi_param PATH_INFO $fastcgi_path_info; fastcgi_param HTTPS on; #Avoid sending the security headers twice fastcgi_param modHeadersAvailable true; fastcgi_param front_controller_active true; fastcgi_pass php; fastcgi_intercept_errors on; fastcgi_request_buffering off; } location ~ ^/(?:updater|ocs-provider)(?:$|/) { try_files $uri/ =404; index index.php; } # Adding the cache control header for js and css files # Make sure it is BELOW the PHP block location ~ \.(?:css|js|woff|svg|gif)$ { try_files $uri /index.php$request_uri; add_header Cache-Control “public, max-age=15778463”; add_header X-Content-Type-Options nosniff; add_header X-XSS-Protection “1; mode=block”; add_header X-Robots-Tag none; add_header X-Download-Options noopen; add_header X-Permitted-Cross-Domain-Policies none; # Optional: Don’t log access to assets access_log off; } location ~ \.(?:png|html|ttf|ico|jpg|jpeg)$ { try_files $uri /index.php$request_uri; # Optional: Don’t log access to other assets access_log off; } }

Test nginx configuration file, then restart the service

nginx -t systemctl restart nginx

Apache configuration

Create a virtual host configuration file for the domain you want to use to host Nextcloud.

nano /etc/httpd/conf.d/yourdomain.com.conf

<VirtualHost *:80> ServerAdmin [email protected] DocumentRoot /var/www/nextcloud ServerName yourdomain.com ServerAlias www.yourdomain.com <Directory /var/www/html/nextcloud> Options +FollowSymlinks AllowOverride All <IfModule mod_dav.c> Dav off </IfModule> SetEnv HOME /var/www/nextcloud SetEnv HTTP_HOME /var/www/nextcloud </Directory> ErrorLog /var/log/httpd/nextcloud-error_log CustomLog /var/log/httpd/nextcloud-access_log common </VirtualHost>

Go to Nextcloud’s official website and download the latest stable release of the application

wget https://download.nextcloud.com/server/releases/nextcloud-14.0.0.zip

unpack the downloaded zip archive to the document root directory on your server

# unzip nextcloud-14.0.0.zip -d /var/www/ # mkdir /var/www/nextcloud/data # chown -R nginx: /var/www/nextcloud If you chose Apache, then you need to set the permission for Apache user # chown -R apache: /var/www/nextcloud You can now proceed with Nextcloud 14 installation via web installer at http://yourdomain.com, fill the blank as required, then click on the “Finish setup” button to finish it.

It is recommended to run the Nextcloud 14 in https mode. We will need to install an SSL certificate for this. In this step, we will show you how to install an SSL certificate from Letsencrypt.

# yum install certbot-nginx certbot-apache

# certbot

You will be asked for your email address then you need to agree with the ToS to proceed with the certificate installation.

If there is no issue when requesting the certificate, Certbot will automatically edit your existing nginx server block to install the certificate.

At this point, you can access your Nextcloud 14 installation on https://yourdomain.com

And that’s it, with the last step of this tutorial we have successfully installed Nextcloud 14 on your CentOs 7 and you can log in with the login credentials of your admin user. For more information, you can visit the official documentation of Nextcloud 14.

RoseHosting has been listed as a recommended Nextcloud hosting provider on the Nextcloud.com. If you want to try our fully managed Nextcloud VPS hosting, use the coupon code: 50FIRST to get 50% off your first-month invoice. We have 7 days money-back guarantee. If you are one of our clients, you don’t have to install Nextcloud 14 on CentOS 7, you can simply ask our system administrators to install and configure your Nextcloud instance on CentOS or any other Linux OS. They are available 24×7 and will take care of your request immediately.

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