Stuck in loop "Web install > (HTTP) 500 Internal Server Error > Web install > ..."

🚧 Installation
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1

Hi Nextcloud community,

I’ve been curious about Nextcloud for quite some time, and decided it was time to take the plunge and explore it on my own machine (= a rented, dedicated server). It runs:

  • CentOS 7.9
  • cPanel v96.0.14
  • PHP 7.4

I’ve tried to use the web installer by downloading “setup-nextcloud.php”, uploading that to the root directory of my newly created subdomain (e.g. “cloud.mydomain.com”), and then opening that file in a browser.

At first everything seems to work just fine… the setup wizard opens, I click “Next”, the dependency check tells me “All Nextcloud dependencies found”, I leave the default installation directory “nextcloud”, click in “Next” again…

Then, after a few seconds, the “Success, Nextcloud is now installed” page loads, I click “Next” again…

I create the admin account, choose “MySQL/MariaDB” under “Storage & Database”, provide my database credentials (I am 100% certain they are correct and not misspelled), add cPanel’s default port “:3306” after “localhost”… and finally click in “Finish Setup”…

A few seconds go by, and then I get “HTTP ERROR 500”.

Reloading the page then drops me back into the “Create an admin account” page.

I’ve tried deleting the downloaded files in the root directory, and re-download them, I’ve tried installing from a manually uploaded “nc.zip” archive, and I’ve repeatedly deleted the current MySQL database and create a new one.

All to no avail, I never get past the above stated loop.

Sub-optimal effort on my part, I’m sure - but I just can’t for the life of me figure out what it is I’m doing wrong. And my Google-Fu seems to have failed me as well.

I’d be super-grateful for any tips, hints, pointers any of you could provide - thanks much!!

2

After much trial and error, I was able to get Nextcloud up and running. For some reason, which I do not understand at all since I never got any error message beyond the dreaded “HTTP ERROR 500” above, the only way to get the Webinstall via Nextcloud’s “setup-nextcloud.php” to complete was to downgrade the server’s PHP version all the way back to 7.3, and even then the installation process initially ended with yet another “HTTP ERROR 500”, but following a few page reloads would then redirect me to Nextcloud’s “Dashboard” page.

I attempted the installation under PHP 7.4, PHP 8, and then finally 7.3, which ultimately worked. And yes, I did check if all required PHP extensions were installed with each version above, using:

php -m |egrep -I 'reqmodule_1| reqmodule_2| ... | reqmodule_n'

So, hopefully this might be a helpful pointer for someone else desperately looking to complete the installation process but stuck with the vague “HTTP ERROR 500”.

3

a) if you don’t mind change to ubuntu.
b) try my new playbook on a brand new vhost.

this will give a installation like this: Nextcloud 22 Installationsanleitung v. 3.2 – Carsten Rieger IT-Services

c) if you want to stick to centos use the master branch of my playbook. i’m not sure if it’s still working. but you may open a ticket in github.

btw: http error 500 means you have a problem with database and/or redis.