NextCloudPi clean install issues

ℹ️ Support
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1

TL;DR freeDNS malformed server url, letsencrypt Timeout during connect, nc-scan Unknown user 1 media, raspi-config Locale Setting locale failed

I’m a relative n00b, but hopefully I can supply the relevant info and act on suggestions.
(My Unix skills are rudimentary at best, and network skills virtually non-existent.)
Mostly I’m using the web Control Panel, everything under System Info looks okay.
I don’t understand why a clean install would kick up all these issues.

Raspberry Pi 4 Model B Rev 1.5
Downloaded NextcloudPi_RaspberryPi 4+_v1.57.1.img from GitHub, flashed to SDcard with balenaEtcher
Ports 80 and 443 manually opened on router.
VPN paused.
SSH activated.
Updated to 1.58.0 with ncp-update
Formatted larger SDcard using nc-format-USB

NextcloudPi version v1.58.0
NextcloudPi image
OS Armbian-unofficial 25.8.1 bookworm. 6.12.41-current-bcm2711 (aarch64)
datadir /media/USBdrive/ncdata/data
dbdir /media/USBdrive/ncdatabase
Had to fix create manually due to permissions issue (sorry, didn’t record it.)

freeDNS
[ freeDNS ] (Fri Nov 6 09:30:06 UTC 2026)
/usr/local/bin/ncp/NETWORKING/freeDNS.sh: line 28: /usr/local/bin/freedns.sh: Read-only file system
chmod: cannot access ‘/usr/local/bin/freedns.sh’: No such file or directory
Cannot load Zend OPcache - it was already loaded
System config value trusted_domains => 3 set to string XXX.mooo.com
Cannot load Zend OPcache - it was already loaded
System config value overwrite.cli.url set to string XXX.mooo.com://XXX.mooo.com/
Cannot load Zend OPcache - it was already loaded
Cannot load Zend OPcache - it was already loaded
System config value trusted_proxies => 11 set to string 127.0.0.1
Cannot load Zend OPcache - it was already loaded
System config value trusted_proxies => 12 set to string ::1
Cannot load Zend OPcache - it was already loaded
System config value trusted_proxies => 14 set to string XXX
Setup notify_push (attempt 1/5)
Cannot load Zend OPcache - it was already loaded
✓ redis is configured
🗴 malformed server url
Setup notify_push (attempt 2/5)
Cannot load Zend OPcache - it was already loaded
✓ redis is configured
🗴 malformed server url
Setup notify_push (attempt 3/5)
Cannot load Zend OPcache - it was already loaded
✓ redis is configured
🗴 malformed server url
Setup notify_push (attempt 4/5)
Cannot load Zend OPcache - it was already loaded
✓ redis is configured
🗴 malformed server url
Setup notify_push (attempt 5/5)
Cannot load Zend OPcache - it was already loaded
✓ redis is configured
🗴 malformed server url
FreeDNS client is enabled

letsencrypt
Requesting a certificate for XXX.mooo.com
Certbot failed to authenticate some domains (authenticator: webroot). The Certificate Authority reported these problems:
Domain: XXX.mooo.com
Type: connection
Detail: XXX: Fetching http://XXX.mooo.com/.well-known/acme-challenge/XXX: Timeout during connect (likely firewall problem)

nc-scan Scan NC for externally modified files
/media/USBdrive
Cannot load Zend OPcache - it was already loaded
Cannot load Zend OPcache - it was already loaded
Unknown user 1 media

raspi-config Locale (via PuTTY)
Generating locales (this might take a while)…
en_GB.UTF-8… done
Generation complete.
*** update-locale: Error: invalid locale settings: LC_MESSAGES=en_US.UTF-8 LANGUAGE=en_US.UTF-8 LANG=en_GB.UTF-8
perl: warning: Setting locale failed.
perl: warning: Please check that your locale settings:
LANGUAGE = “en_US.UTF-8”,
LC_ALL = “en_US.UTF-8”,
LC_MESSAGES = “en_US.UTF-8”,
LANG = “en_US.UTF-8”
are supported and installed on your system.
perl: warning: Falling back to the standard locale (“C”).
locale: Cannot set LC_CTYPE to default locale: No such file or directory
locale: Cannot set LC_MESSAGES to default locale: No such file or directory
locale: Cannot set LC_ALL to default locale: No such file or directory

But setting time zone was okay:
Current default time zone: ‘Europe/London’
Local time is now: Fri Nov 6 09:56:36 GMT 2026.
Universal Time is now: Fri Nov 6 09:56:36 UTC 2026.

Any help would be most appreciated!

2

deleted - for specific reason

3

I’ve added a one line summary.
What would cause FreeDNS to issue that error, and how do I fix it?
Maybe there’s one fundamental cause behind all these issues?

4

Hey @Stefing welcome to the Nextcloud community :waving_hand:

that’s okay, we all started somewhere… :smiley:

sounds like you’re having DNS issues and you’re not getting a certificate, probably due to a typo somewhere…

be patient, there are a couple of clued-up folks here who will certainly make some suggestion to get you up and running.

so could you be more precise about that control panel please?

double check your connection type and your firewall settings

5

Start your troubleshooting there.

Unless your IP address is correctly mapped to your FQDN (Fully Qualified Domain Name), you will never be able to successfully request a Let’s Encrypt certificate.

6

Many thanks for your kind offer of help. (By “control panel” I mean the web interface at https://nextcloudpi:4443/)
To rule out as many factors as possible, I’ve downloaded the image again, used a different SD card etc. (I had NextCloudPi running happily for 5 years until an app required that I update - and then it had so many issues that I decided that it was better to start again from scratch.)
One mistake I spotted was that I’d failed to use the new IP address to generate a new hash on the FreeDNS website.
To rule out any possible issues with the browser, I ran freeDNS from ncp-config - this is the output:
Running freeDNS
Cannot load Zend OPcache - it was already loaded
System config value trusted_domains => 3 set to string XXX.mooo.com
Cannot load Zend OPcache - it was already loaded
System config value overwrite.cli.url set to string XXX.mooo.com://XXX.mooo.com/
Cannot load Zend OPcache - it was already loaded
Cannot load Zend OPcache - it was already loaded
System config value trusted_proxies => 11 set to string YYY
Cannot load Zend OPcache - it was already loaded
System config value trusted_proxies => 12 set to string ::1
Cannot load Zend OPcache - it was already loaded
System config value trusted_proxies => 14 set to string ZZZ
Setup notify_push (attempt 1/5)
Cannot load Zend OPcache - it was already loaded
✓ redis is configured
🗴 malformed server url and so on…
It seems that “Cannot load Zend OPcache - it was already loaded” comes up when I try to run anything from ncp-config, and a search on that returns results that are way beyond me.

7

I had indeed messed up - but there are still other issues (see above…)

8

Some considerations to your starting point.
Use raspi-imager(v1.9 I prefer) or use simple dd to flash your sd-card. No presets (hostname, ssh, wlan credential et.al.) they don’t work, images are now armbian-based.
Afteractivation configure only the passwords, setup ssh access.
Leave webui:4443 and use ssh cli and ncp-config instead, it is more reliable than web interfface. Before setting up your use-case, you should first do all updates possible, in short starting apt update && apt upgrade, ncp, nc, dist-upgrade, nc; than you configure your nc, storage, network and so on.

Edit: New images v.1.59 are available.