Hello everyone,
I apologize for posting something that is probably pilot error, but which hopefully can be quickly sorted out by someone with more expertise. I hope that this is a proper place to make this posting.
I have installed Nextcloud on a mac mini (2014 with 4 Gb memory, 1 TB SSD) running the latest version of Catalina 10.15.4. I first installed VirtualBox 6.1.6 and then installed Nextcloud 18.0.4 to run as a VM. I got a domain name from NoIP (bruceshouse==bruceshouse.sytes.net, for my dog Bruce! ) and set up the router to forward ports 80 and 443 to the IP I have chosen for the VM running Nextcloud (192.168.0.240). Using a web site like yougetsignal on the LAN confirms that the ports are open for bruceshouse, as did the Nextcloud installation script.
The installation (including running Let’sEncrypt) seems to complete without issues, I can access Nextcloud via the local IP, i.e. 192.168.0.240. But when using the domain name (bruceshouse, still on the LAN, it times out. The strange thing is that the browser says that the website 192.168.0.240 is not secure, and that there is an invalid certificate. When I check the certificate at the browser it shows that it is valid, but for bruceshouse (why bruceshouse is associated here with the VM IP I don’t understand). Checking with ssllabs ssltest also confirms that the certificate for bruceshouse is A+ okay for the WAN IP address, as expected.
Starting and stopping the Nextcloud VM made no difference. I removed and reinstalled Nextcloud and then a complete uninstall of VirtualBox also after various attempts to get the proper web access failed (actually VirtualBox crashed, every time, when directed to completely remove all files of the Nextcloud OVA). Perhaps I set something incorrectly during the first install (it might have been that Let’sEncrypt failed during the first installation - it’s been days ago…) and something (in Ubuntu or Apache?) that has been causing the problem wasn’t cleared out with the attempted removal of Nextcloud from VirtualBox, or from the removal of VirtualBox itself. But I have no idea of what or where the culprit might lurk.
A thing which puzzled me was that nslookup of bruceshouse on the VM after the install showed that the IP address was 127.0.1.1 and that the nameserver was 127.0.0.1, while nslookup on OSX gave the correct WAN IP for bruceshouse. So I as a last attempt I added additional nameservers on the VM using
sudo nano /etc/resolvconf/resolv.conf.d/head
adding the lines
nameserver 8.8.8.8
nameserver 8.8.4.4
and restarted the Nextcloud VM. Nslookup on the VM now shows that bruceshouse has the correct WAN IP address, but the behavior of the browser is the same with no access via the domain name. The behavior is and has been the same with both chrome and safari, and the Nextcloud client running on a macbook air can also only access via the Nextcloud VM LAN IP 192.168.0.240 after the security complaints. Finally, out of concern that particular LAN IP address had been mucked up, I made one more attempt at a clean install choosing a different Nextcloud VM IP address as 192.168.0.200 with port changes. The install completed successfully with new certificate but ending with the exact same final behavior. Now when I open the Nextcloud web page at 192.168.0.200 it says that it is insecure with an invalid certificate, while checking the certificate indicates that it is valid, but associated to bruceshouse, while 192.168.0.240 simply times out.
Probably this is some stupidity on my part, but I have now spent too much time on it and am about to give up on installing Nextcloud. Thanks for your attention.