Best way to install Nextcloud? (for a simple maintenance e.g. backup)

Hello,

I like Nextcloud and already after some months I do not want to miss what is possible with it!

Of course now the: BUT I do not want to become a sys admin to maintain it. My current installation is Nextcloud on Freenas. So far everything was working fine but the update to 20.0.3/ 20.0.5 created two issues. I have already opened a topic for this.

My question now is - what is the best installation of Nextcloud, which offers a simple maintenance e.g. standard backup config via GUI. Simple in the way that the time for maintenance is on a minimum and most tasks can be done in a nice GUI. Including getting regular updates without any issues. Similar as it is for over a year now with Freenas after the installation and configuration.

As server OS I prefer Linux. I have read about following possibilities:

  1. Freenas and Nextcloud (preferred because only one server is needed)
  2. Debian 10 with Nextcloud nativ installation
  3. Debian 10 with a Docker Nextcloud installation
  4. alternatives?

What do you think? Any experiences?

BR Martin

I would go for the first solution if you don’t have any problems with it in terms of performance. There are more and more people using it, so hopefully it will get more and more stable. I quickly checked your issue, in theory it is possible with all solutions that some bug in an app causes a problem for you. For minor upgrades that should not happen at all.

For major upgrades, this is more critical since some things for apps can change. A good backup which lets you quickly revert to the state before the upgrade is always helpful.

I agree, the first approach is the most attractive. Sadly currently only in theory.

So far I have not found an easy way to make a data backup or a full backup. In the worst case I have to copy the complete jail. Well, possible but not very effective.

And this will not solve the current situation for me, that in some weeks again I have a broken Nextcloud system. Restoring the last backup is fine but I will loose the data between the current (broken) installation and the complete backup.

Thank you for your feedback!

I use this.
https://www.howtoforge.com/tutorial/how-to-install-nextcloud-on-debian-10

But perhaps you like Docker, …

I prefer installing Nextcloud native, the howtoforge guide is a good starting point.

or do you mean: what are the best personal settings? tuning, hardening, whatsoever…

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I’ve been using NC mainly as a local repository to have a mirror of some files from my main pc. Very rarely is it access from the internet. It runs as a vm under esxi.

My backup strategy has been to veeam backup the entire vm periodically.

What I’d like to do is set up an actual file server (freenas?), point nextcloud to it for the file storage portion. Actual nextcloud disk usage should be minimal then as it’s just the nextcloud config/data.

For backing up I came across this - BernieO/ncupgrade: Bash script to create backups and perform manual upgrades of a local Nextcloud installation based on the Nextcloud documentation<br> - Codeberg.org . Works well for backing up, might be a bit challenging for restoring (depending how the underlying server is configured - see issues at that link). This generates backups of the database, nextcloud data folder, and nextcloud web files.

I think once the file server is set up, I will migrate my old config to it, then move (within the gui) all the files over to the file server storage (so metadata/comments is retained). Set up a cron job to at least backup daily, and maybe full appdata weekly?

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thank you for your input. After searching the net, I will make following:

a) FreeNas with Nextcloud is not an option anymore, I could not find anything what can help me with my installation. Even in this forum.

b) With the focus on an installation which requires a minimum of maintenance and runs stable, I will focus on a native installation. This is used in most cases and recommended.

c) My experiences with Debian in the last years for servers and clients is very good. That is why it will be a Debian installation.
I have found a howto which explains the steps necessary, which also provides a script for installation and another one for updates.

d) Furthermore it also offers a howto for backups. Backups will be stored on my FreeNas box and Nextcloud has a own box as well.

Status: So far I have installed Nextcloud with the script on Debian. It is up and running. Some details like SSL and sync have to be configured in detail now.

FreeNas is really good. Setup and configuration is straight forward and the system is running very stable - for me since over 6 months now.

I had a look at BernieO/ncupgrade which also looks interesting. If the backup howto I found is not working, I will try this one.

Freenas/nextcloud - Install Nextcloud on FreeNAS – Linux Hint Does something like that work for you? It looks like it’s installing nextcloud into a jail on the system.

I can see security being valid reasons to keeping the two separate. I wonder if there is a way of allowing only certain users of nextcloud access to certain shares based on file system ownership permission settings. Or perhaps use a different user/group on freenas for confidential files which should only be accessible on the lan.

thank you - I was able with my first installation to setup everything. I had a nextcloud jail which had access only to a certain path on my FreeNas. The problem was that after three regular upgrades, FreeNas could not sync with the FreeNas App anymore and the admin settings were not accessible anymore.

I found this howto which explains a very good setup but it takes a bit of your time I guess (that is why I do not use it):
https://www.samueldowling.com/2020/07/24/install-nextcloud-on-freenas-iocage-jail-with-hardened-security/