How to Install Nextcloud on CentOS 7

April 24, 2021April 10, 2023 LinuxYogi

Nextcloud is an open source application for self hosted file sharing and syncing. It supports desktop apps and mobile clients (Android and iOS) for file sharing and store personal content like documents, pictures, videos, etc in a centralized location just like Dropbox.

It provides additional features like Calendar, Contacts, Streaming media, Schedule tasks, Browser-based text editor, URL shortening suite, Gallery, RSS feed reader, Document viewer tools from within Nextcloud, Connection to Dropbox, Google Drive and Amazon S3, etc.

Requirement

HTTP server running Apache
PHP version >= 7.2.5 (7.4 is recommended)
PHP Extensions - mysqli, gd, imap, json, mbstring, xml, curl, intl, zip, imagick, mcrypt
MariaDB database equivalent >= 10 (10.4 is recommended)

Update System

sudo yum update

Install Basic Packages

sudo yum install vim unzip wget

Change SELinux mode to Permissive

Edit the /etc/selinux/config file as follows and reboot the system

sudo vim /etc/selinux/config

# This file controls the state of SELinux on the system.
# SELINUX= can take one of these three values:
# enforcing - SELinux security policy is enforced.
# permissive - SELinux prints warnings instead of enforcing.
# disabled - No SELinux policy is loaded.
SELINUX=permissive
# SELINUXTYPE= can take one of these two values:
# targeted - Targeted processes are protected,
# minimum - Modification of targeted policy. Only selected processes are protected.
# mls - Multi Level Security protection.
SELINUXTYPE=targeted

Install PHP

For installing PHP 7, EPEL and Remi repository need to install and enable on CentOS 7 system with the below commands.

sudo yum install https://dl.fedoraproject.org/pub/epel/epel-release-latest-7.noarch.rpm
sudo yum install http://rpms.remirepo.net/enterprise/remi-release-7.rpm

Install yum-utils, it is a collection of tools and programs for managing yum repositories, installing debug packages, source packages, extended information from repositories and administration. Use the yum-config-manager program to enable Remi repository as the default repository for installing PHP 7.4 version.

sudo yum install yum-utils
sudo yum-config-manager --enable remi-php74

Install PHP and the required extensions.

sudo yum install php php-gd php-json php-mysql php-curl php-mbstring php-intl php-mcrypt php-imagick php-xml php-zip

Configure the timezone in php.ini file. Uncomment date.timezone = and enter the respective timezone.

sudo vim /etc/php.ini

date.timezone = Asia/Kolkata

Install Apache

sudo yum install httpd

Start and enable the Apache services at boot time.

sudo systemctl start httpd
sudo systemctl enable httpd

Install MariaDB Database

By default CentOS 7 base repository provides MariaDB 5.5 version, which will work for osTicket application. But in this tutorial, we will install the latest version of MariaDB 10.4

Create repo for MariaDB 10.4

sudo vim /etc/yum.repos.d/MariaDB.repo

[mariadb]
name = MariaDB
baseurl = http://yum.mariadb.org/10.4/centos7-amd64
gpgkey=https://yum.mariadb.org/RPM-GPG-KEY-MariaDB
gpgcheck=1

Install MariaDB and its dependencies

sudo yum install MariaDB-server

Start and enable the MariaDB Server services at boot time.

sudo systemctl start mariadb
sudo systemctl enable mariadb

Configure MariaDB

sudo mysql_secure_installation

Create Database and user account for Nextcloud

sudo mysql -u root -p

create database nextclouddb;
create user 'nextclouduser'@'localhost' identified BY 'Linuxyogi@123';
grant all privileges on nextclouddb.* to nextclouduser@localhost;
flush privileges;

Install Nextcloud

Download the latest stable release of Nextcloud to document root directory.

cd /var/www/html/
wget https://download.nextcloud.com/server/releases/latest.zip

Configuration

Unzip the downloaded file

cd /var/www/html/
unzip latest.zip

Install Dependencies

Create the directory to store data. Optionally we can use symlink this data directory to NAS, NFS or SAN mount point according to the requirement.

mkdir /var/www/html/nextcloud/data

Change the ownership and permission on support directory.

chown apache:apache -R /var/www/html/nextcloud

Allow http or https (in case of SSL use) services from Firewall for Nextcloud web installer and Dashboard access.

sudo firewall-cmd --zone=public --permanent --add-service=http
sudo firewall-cmd --reload

Open browser and navigate to "http://<server-ip>/nextcloud" and Click Next.

example - http://10.0.0.15/nextcloud

Create admin user and fill the database information like Database Name, Database Username, Database Password and Database Server Address.

Dashboard is ready for the use. Navigate to http://<server-ip>/nextcloud/index.php/apps/dashboard/

example - http://10.0.0.15/nextcloud/index.php/apps/dashboard/