I wanted to share some knowlege that I was able to change the user used by Nextcloud by changing the apache default user.
This is something that Ive been wanting to try because I use Unraid for NAS and the www-data user:group has a default ID of 33. In Unraid the 33 id is used for the sshd user and I feel like there is a permission issue persisting in my setup.
These are the steps I followed to accomplish the change and I have seen no negative effects… yet.
Part1: Nextcloud CLI
create user www-nc
create group www-nc
Change id's to 5555
Add www-nc to www-nc group
Add www-nc to redis group
Usermod default home directory of the www-nc user to /var/www
Usermod shell to /usr/sbin/nologin
administrator@nextcloud:~$ cat /etc/group | grep www
www-data:x:33:administrator
redis:x:120:www-data,www-nc
www-nc:x:5555:administrator
administrator@nextcloud:~$ cat /etc/passwd | grep www-nc
www-data:x:33:33:www-data:/var/www:/usr/sbin/nologin
www-nc:x:5555:5555:www-nc:/var/www:/usr/sbin/nologin
Part2: Unraid CLI
create user www-nc
create group www-nc
Change both id's to 5555
Add www-nc to www-nc group
root@NAS:~# cat /etc/group | grep www
www-nc:x:5555:www-nc
root@NAS:~# cat /etc/passwd | grep www
www-nc:x:5555:5555:www-nc:/mnt/user/nextcloud/:/bin/false
Part3: Nextcloud CLI
Put nextcloud into maintenance mode
Stop Apache service
Stop MySql service
Change Apache default user to www-nc
Change ownership of /var/www -R to www-nc:www-nc
CHnage cron job from www-data to www-nc
Part4: Unraid CLI
(GUI) Change NFS share to private and add the rule "192.168.1.1(sec=sys,rw,sync,no_root_squash)"
Change ownership of Nextcloud storage to www-nc:www-nc
Chnage file permissions "find /mnt/user/nextcloud/ -type f -print0 | xargs -0 chmod 640"
Change folder permissions "find /mnt/user/nextcloud/ -type d -print0 | xargs -0 chmod 750"
Part5: Nextcloud CLI
Start MySql service
Start Apache service
Take nextcloud out of maintenance mode
Test filesystem access from nextcloud to NAS storage
Id also like to report that even after all the work the permission issues that prompted me to do this did not change unfortunately. But it was fun trying it out.
Id love to hear some feedback from a developer on this.