Path to edit DNS in NextCloud config to Solve DNS Issue

I apologize in advance if this is a simple question but I have been looking everywhere and I can seem to find the path to edit the interface configuration on Nextcloud 12. I have been really enjoying using my NextCloud but this evening for some reason I started getting a DNS error from external connections. I received a NXDomain error and also a connection was reset error in my web browser. I started testing on the local network to make sure NextCloud was up and running and everything was fine. This issue only happens from external connections so I did a NSlookup to see if the hostname could be resolved and for my domain name everything is fine but if i ask for nextcloud.mydomain.com it also gives me a NXdomain error. I can also ping and traceroute to my domain name.com. So I thought maybe ISP DNS servers were having a issue so I changed everything to Google DNS same result. So my last thought is to change the DNS of the NextCloud server to point to the name servers of my domain registrar and see if that helps. If anyone else has any thoughts all suggestions are welcome.

Thanks,
Nick

Could you provide your ssl and nextcloud vhost and /nextcloud/config/config.php?

This sounds more like a webbrowser issue to me, but lets see.

Below is the output of /var/www/nextcloud/config/config.php, all passwords were changed and mention of my domain was replaced with example.com. I have also placed the other files below. I also thought it was a web browser but I get a error when trying to connect from my mobile phone browser as well that says cannot open page network connection lost with every other page loading just fine on both platforms.

$CONFIG = array (
‘passwordsalt’ => ‘password’,
‘secret’ => ‘password’,
‘trusted_domains’ =>
array (
0 => ‘localhost’,
1 => ‘192.168.3.xxx’,
2 => ‘example.com’,
3 => ‘example.com’,
),
‘datadirectory’ => ‘/var/ncdata’,
‘overwrite.cli.url’ => ‘https://nextcloud.example.com/’,
‘dbtype’ => ‘mysql’,
‘version’ => ‘12.0.2.0’,
‘dbname’ => ‘nextcloud_db’,
‘dbhost’ => ‘localhost’,
‘dbport’ => ‘’,
‘dbtableprefix’ => ‘oc_’,
‘mysql.utf8mb4’ => true,
‘dbuser’ => ‘oc_ncadmin’,
‘dbpassword’ => ‘password’,
‘installed’ => true,
‘instanceid’ => ‘occ0in9kxj9v’,
‘maintenance’ => false,
‘mail_smtpmode’ => ‘smtp’,
‘memcache.local’ => ‘\OC\Memcache\Redis’,
‘filelocking.enabled’ => true,
‘memcache.distributed’ => ‘\OC\Memcache\Redis’,
‘memcache.locking’ => ‘\OC\Memcache\Redis’,
‘redis’ =>
array (
‘host’ => ‘/var/run/redis/redis.sock’,
‘port’ => 0,
‘timeout’ => 0,
‘dbindex’ => 0,
‘password’ => ‘password’,
),
‘htaccess.RewriteBase’ => ‘/’,
‘loglevel’ => 0,
‘log_type’ => ‘file’,
‘logfile’ => ‘/var/ncdata/nextcloud.log’,
‘logtimezone’ => ‘America/Indiana/Indianapolis’,
‘mail_smtpauthtype’ => ‘LOGIN’,
‘mail_domain’ => ‘example.com’,
‘mail_from_address’ => ‘example.com’,
‘mail_smtpauth’ => 1,
‘mail_smtphost’ => ‘smtp.example’,
‘mail_smtpport’ => ‘25’,
‘mail_smtpname’ => ‘root’,
‘mail_smtppassword’ => ‘xxxxxxxxxx’,
‘mail_smtpsecure’ => ‘tls’,
);

<VirtualHost *80
YOUR SERVER ADDRESS
ServerAdmin admin@example.com
#ServerName example.com
#ServerAlias subdomain.example.com

SETTINGS

DocumentRoot /var/www/nextcloud

<Directory /var/www/nextcloud>
Options Indexes FollowSymLinks
AllowOverride All
Require all granted
Satisfy Any
</Directory>

<IfModule mod_dav.c>
Dav off
</IfModule>

<Directory "/var/ncdata">
# just in case if .htaccess gets disabled
Require all denied
</Directory>

SetEnv HOME /var/www/nextcloud
SetEnv HTTP_HOME /var/www/nextcloud

<VirtualHost *:443>
Header add Strict-Transport-Security: "max-age=15768000;includeSubdomains"
SSLEngine on

YOUR SERVER ADDRESS

#ServerAdmin admin@example.com
#ServerName example.com
#ServerAlias subdomain.example.com

SETTINGS

DocumentRoot /var/www/nextcloud

<Directory /var/www/nextcloud>
Options Indexes FollowSymLinks
AllowOverride All
Require all granted
Satisfy Any
</Directory>

<IfModule mod_dav.c>
Dav off
</IfModule>

<Directory "/var/ncdata">
# just in case if .htaccess gets disabled
Require all denied
</Directory>

SetEnv HOME /var/www/nextcloud
SetEnv HTTP_HOME /var/www/nextcloud

LOCATION OF CERT FILES

SSLCertificateFile /etc/ssl/certs/ssl-cert-snakeoil.pem
SSLCertificateKeyFile /etc/ssl/private/ssl-cert-snakeoil.key

<VirtualHost *:80>
ServerName nextcloud.example.com
Redirect / https://nextcloud.example.com

<VirtualHost *:443>

Header add Strict-Transport-Security: "max-age=15768000;includeSubdomains"
SSLEngine on
SSLCompression off
SSLProtocol all -SSLv2 -SSLv3
SSLCipherSuite ECDHE-RSA-AES128-GCM-SHA256:ECDHE-ECDSA-AES128-GCM-SHA256:ECDHE-RSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384:ECDHE-ECDSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384:DHE-RSA-AES128-GCM-SHA256:DHE-DSS-AES128-GCM-SHA256:kEDH+AESGCM:ECDHE-RSA-AES128-SHA256:ECDHE-ECDSA-AES128-SHA256:ECDHE-RSA-AES128-SHA:ECDHE-ECDSA-AES128-SHA:ECDHE-RSA-AES256-SHA384:ECDHE-ECDSA-AES256-SHA384:ECDHE-RSA-AES256-SHA:ECDHE-ECDSA-AES256-SHA:DHE-RSA-AES128-SHA256:DHE-RSA-AES128-SHA:DHE-DSS-AES128-SHA256:DHE-RSA-AES256-SHA256:DHE-DSS-AES256-SHA:DHE-RSA-AES256-SHA:AES128-GCM-SHA256:AES256-GCM-SHA384:AES128-SHA256:AES256-SHA256:AES128-SHA:AES256-SHA:AES:CAMELLIA:DES-CBC3-SHA:!aNULL:!eNULL:!EXPORT:!DES:!RC4:!MD5:!PSK:!aECDH:!EDH-DSS-DES-CBC3-SHA:!EDH-RSA-DES-CBC3-SHA:!KRB5-DES-CBC3-SHA
SSLHonorCipherOrder on

YOUR SERVER ADDRESS

ServerAdmin admin@nextcloud.examle.com
ServerName nextcloud.example.com

SETTINGS

DocumentRoot /var/www/nextcloud

<Directory /var/www/nextcloud>
Options Indexes FollowSymLinks
AllowOverride All
Require all granted
Satisfy Any
</Directory>

<IfModule mod_dav.c>
Dav off
</IfModule>

SetEnv HOME /var/www/nextcloud
SetEnv HTTP_HOME /var/www/nextcloud

LOCATION OF CERT FILES

SSLCertificateChainFile /etc/letsencrypt/live/example.com/chain.pem
SSLCertificateFile /etc/letsencrypt/live/example.com/cert.pem
SSLCertificateKeyFile /etc/letsencrypt/live/example.com/privkey.pem
SSLOpenSSLConfCmd DHParameters /etc/letsencrypt/live/nextcloud.example.com/dhparam.pem

This can be closed, I have resolved the issue.

Thanks
Nick

Hello @NJL88 thanks for posting this. I’m not sure if this is the same issue as you, but I’m also having issues from time to time when it comes to accessing my Nextcloud instance using a DNS address (subdomain.domain.com) under a Let’s Encrypt secure connection. When I try to access my Nextcloud instance externally, I get the DNS error issue. But, I’m able to access the server using the internal IP address, so the server is up. When it occurs, it last for about 5-10 minutes then it comes back up automatically. Can you please provide what you did to resolve it. My configuration file(s) are sort of similar to yours and I never changed anything on it since the initial installation except for when I upgrade Nextcloud on my Ubuntu Server. Please advise.

@goldfingers Are you using dynamic DNS?

Also, check out your existing DNS delegation setup to make sure it’s reasonable. If you’re not familiar with how to do this from the command-line, use a web-based tool like: