NextCloud on home server

gucurich · December 5, 2018, 3:45pm

Hi
I have a NextCloud server on shared hosting space and this works fine as long as I don’t put a massive drain on it. What I would now like to do is to run a NextCloud instance on a home computer. The computer has a 240gb ssd and 2 x 2tb hard drives. It also runs as my main computer. I want it to connect to the web server to sync address books and calendars. I then need it to allow other computers to connect to it at home to watch movies, listen to music, look at photos and update docs.
Is it possible to build NextCloud to do this please? I need to use the second 2 tb drive as a backup to the first. It won’t need to have access outside of home other than to sync with the address books and calendars.
Many thanks
Rich

tflidd · December 10, 2018, 6:45pm

You can do that, easiest is probably to use a virtual machine on your windows, there are already images for it: https://www.hanssonit.se/nextcloud-vm/

Instead of running on your main computer, you could use a dedicated device, for low power the rapsberry pi, if you need more speed there are better ARM boards (for all of these you can use the nextcloud-pi images). Or you use a small computer like the intel nuc (or similar) with native linux. Advantage is these devices consume less energy than your main computer. But you can also start with a virtual machine on your computer and migrate to a dedicated device later.

Reiner_Nippes · December 10, 2018, 9:27pm

i would also advice to run nextcloud in a virtual machine rather on the pc’s os itself. easier to maintain. so you may want to have look at virtualbox.org

if you want to use my playbook (link below) you could mount that drive (or parts of it or put a volume file there) and adjust line 70 in the inventory file to get a working backup.

github.com

ReinerNippes/nextcloud/blob/6626aa68713056c03d7b1b36017d7915321c466d/inventory#L70


      
          nc_mail_smtppwd      = 
          
          # Install turn server for Nextcloud Talk
          talk_install         = true
          
          # Allways get the latest version of Nextcloud
          next_archive         = https://download.nextcloud.com/server/releases/latest.tar.bz2
          
          # Install restic backup tool if backup_folder is not empty
          # more info about restic: https://restic.readthedocs.io/en/latest/
          backup_folder        = '' # e.g. /var/nc-backup
          # crontab settings restic for restic
          backup_day           = *
          backup_hour          = 4
          backup_minute        = 0
          
          # Install Collabra Online
          # more info about collabora office: https://www.collaboraoffice.com/
          install_collabora     = false
          
          # Install Online Office

what is “it” and what is the “web server”?

depends on your internet connection. i heard here funny stories about providers blocking ports. or the bandwidth might be to low.

what is the bottle neck? bandwidth, disk, cpu/ram?

gucurich · December 11, 2018, 7:36pm

Thanks for that. I should have thought of a pi. Good idea. Thanks. And thanks for the link to the nextcloud vm. Very useful.

gucurich · December 11, 2018, 7:40pm

I’m not sure. It is a shared server and so at peak times it seems to go slow for anything other than straight forward website hosting. I did try to contact some companies to take it to another provider but I didn’t get any replies to my emails.

Thanks for the Virtual Box link - that is a good call.