Nextcloud Docker AIO Initial Setup Fails with NAS Mount - Working Solution

ℹ️ Support 📦 Appliances (Docker, Snappy, VM, NCP, AIO)
, ,
1

Issue Description

When trying to set up Nextcloud AIO with an external mount according to

NAS mount (/mnt/nas/nextcloud) as the data directory, the initial installation fails repeatedly with:

flo@homeserver:~/docker-projects/nextcloud$ docker logs nextcloud-aio-nextcloud
Connection to nextcloud-aio-database (172.21.0.3) 5432 port [tcp/postgresql] succeeded!
+ '[' -f /dev-dri-group-was-added ']'
++ find /dev -maxdepth 1 -mindepth 1 -name dri
+ '[' -n '' ']'
+ set +x
Enabling Imagick...
WARNING: opening from cache https://dl-cdn.alpinelinux.org/alpine/v3.20/main: No such file or directory
WARNING: opening from cache https://dl-cdn.alpinelinux.org/alpine/v3.20/community: No such file or directory
Connection to nextcloud-aio-redis (172.21.0.4) 6379 port [tcp/redis] succeeded!
The initial Nextcloud installation failed.
Please reset AIO properly and try again. For further clues what went wrong, check the logs above.
See https://github.com/nextcloud/all-in-one#how-to-properly-reset-the-instance

The container goes into a restart loop when trying to use:

environment:
  - NEXTCLOUD_DATADIR=/mnt/ncdata
  - NEXTCLOUD_MOUNT=/mnt
volumes:
  - /mnt/nas/nextcloud:/mnt/ncdata

even with

sudo chown -R www-data:www-data /mnt/nas/nextcloud
sudo chmod -R 750 /mnt/nas/nextcloud

Working Solution

The installation works when using the default configuration without external mounts:

services:
  nextcloud-aio:
    image: nextcloud/all-in-one:latest
    container_name: nextcloud-aio-mastercontainer
    restart: always
    ports:
      - "127.0.0.1:8080:8080"
    environment:
      - APACHE_PORT=11000
      - APACHE_IP_BINDING=0.0.0.0
      #- NEXTCLOUD_DATADIR=/mnt/ncdata
      #- NEXTCLOUD_MOUNT=/mnt
      - PHP_MEMORY_LIMIT=4G
      - PHP_UPLOAD_LIMIT=16G
      - SKIP_DOMAIN_VALIDATION=true
    volumes:
      - nextcloud_aio_mastercontainer:/mnt/docker-aio-config
      - /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock:ro
      #- /mnt/nas/nextcloud:/mnt/ncdata
    networks:
      - proxy-network

volumes:
  nextcloud_aio_mastercontainer:
    name: nextcloud_aio_mastercontainer

networks:
  proxy-network:
    external: true

Steps Taken for Clean Reset

  1. Stopped all containers:
docker stop $(docker ps -a | grep 'nextcloud-aio' | awk '{print $1}')
  1. Removed all Nextcloud containers:
docker rm $(docker ps -a | grep 'nextcloud-aio' | awk '{print $1}')
  1. Removed all Nextcloud volumes:
docker volume rm $(docker volume ls -q | grep nextcloud)
  1. Removed the network:
docker network rm nextcloud-aio
  1. Cleaned up NAS directory:
sudo rm -rf /mnt/nas/nextcloud

Question

Is there a recommended way to set up Nextcloud AIO with an external NAS mount? The documentation suggests it should be possible, but the initial setup fails when attempting to use NEXTCLOUD_DATADIR and NEXTCLOUD_MOUNT.

System Details

  • Docker version 27.3.1, build ce12230
  • OS: Ubuntu 24.04
  • Nextcloud AIO version: latest
  • Mount type: NFS mount at /mnt/nas/nextcloud

Any help or guidance would be greatly appreciated!

Would you like me to add any additional details to the forum post?

2

I don’t know if it will help or not, but I think there’s some confusion around the data folder and how this AIO instance is using it. I had a folder structure from a previous OwnCloud install that looked something like:

/mnt/tank/cloud

Under that folder were all of the user folders, e.g.,

/mnt/tank/cloud/user1
/mnt/tank/cloud/user2

In my mind, the configuration would look like this:

NEXTCLOUD_DATADIR=/mnt/tank/cloud
NEXTCLOUD_MOUNT=/mnt/tank

However, I could not get that to work at all since Nextcloud, for some reason, wanted write access to /mnt/tank. My assumption would have been that if I gave it a data folder, it would only write to that folder and subfolders beneath that, not the parent. So you might check the permissions on /mnt or try creating a system that is one folder deeper like:

NEXTCLOUD_DATADIR=/mnt/ncdata/data
NEXTCLOUD_MOUNT=/mnt/ncdata

and see if that works. That solved my problem initially, but on the upgrade last night everything is broken again so I’m back to the drawing board.