mash-playbook/docs/services/nextcloud.md
brush 5d8e5d1146
Add nextcloud_container_image_customizations_smb_enabled: true to co… (#123)
* Add nextcloud_container_image_customizations_smb_enabled: true  to configuration options

* revised variable to use "samba" not "smb"

* Move Samba for Nextcloud instructions into their own section

This keeps the initial vars.yml sample for installing Nextcloud minimal.

Samba is a rarely used optional feature and has no business being in the initial minimal configuration sample.

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Co-authored-by: Slavi Pantaleev <slavi@devture.com>
2023-12-03 12:50:20 +02:00

14 KiB

Nextcloud

Nextcloud is the most popular self-hosted collaboration solution for tens of millions of users at thousands of organizations across the globe.

Dependencies

This service requires the following other services:

Configuration

To enable this service, add the following configuration to your vars.yml file and re-run the installation process:

########################################################################
#                                                                      #
# nextcloud                                                            #
#                                                                      #
########################################################################

nextcloud_enabled: true

nextcloud_hostname: mash.example.com
nextcloud_path_prefix: /nextcloud

# Redis configuration, as described below

########################################################################
#                                                                      #
# /nextcloud                                                           #
#                                                                      #
########################################################################

In the example configuration above, we configure the service to be hosted at https://mash.example.com/nextcloud.

You can remove the nextcloud_path_prefix variable definition, to make it default to /, so that the service is served at https://mash.example.com/.

Redis

Redis can optionally be enabled to improve Nextcloud performance. It's dubious whether using using Redis helps much, so we recommend that you start without it, for a simpler deployment.

To learn more, read the Memory caching section of the Nextcloud documentation.

As described on the Redis documentation page, if you're hosting additional services which require Redis on the same server, you'd better go for installing a separate Redis instance for each service. See Creating a Redis instance dedicated to Nextcloud.

If you're only running Nextcloud on this server and don't need to use Redis for anything else, you can use a single Redis instance.

Regardless of the method of installing Redis, you may need to adjust your Nextcloud configuration file (e.g. /mash/nextcloud/data/config/config.php) to add this:

  'memcache.distributed' => '\OC\Memcache\Redis',
  'memcache.locking' => '\OC\Memcache\Redis',
  'redis' => [
     'host' => 'REDIS_HOSTNAME_HERE',
     'port' => 6379,
  ],

Where REDIS_HOSTNAME_HERE is to be replaced with:

Using the shared Redis instance for Nextcloud

To install a single (non-dedicated) Redis instance (mash-redis) and hook Nextcloud to it, add the following additional configuration:

########################################################################
#                                                                      #
# redis                                                                #
#                                                                      #
########################################################################

redis_enabled: true

########################################################################
#                                                                      #
# /redis                                                               #
#                                                                      #
########################################################################


########################################################################
#                                                                      #
# nextcloud                                                            #
#                                                                      #
########################################################################

# Base configuration as shown above

# Point Nextcloud to the shared Redis instance
nextcloud_redis_hostname: "{{ redis_identifier }}"

# Make sure the Nextcloud service (mash-nextcloud.service) starts after the shared Redis service (mash-redis.service)
nextcloud_systemd_required_services_list_custom:
  - "{{ redis_identifier }}.service"

# Make sure the Nextcloud container is connected to the container network of the shared Redis service (mash-redis)
nextcloud_container_additional_networks_custom:
  - "{{ redis_identifier }}"

########################################################################
#                                                                      #
# /nextcloud                                                           #
#                                                                      #
########################################################################

This will create a mash-redis Redis instance on this host.

This is only recommended if you won't be installing other services which require Redis. Alternatively, go for Creating a Redis instance dedicated to Nextcloud.

Creating a Redis instance dedicated to Nextcloud

The following instructions are based on the Running multiple instances of the same service on the same host documentation.

Adjust your inventory/hosts file as described in Re-do your inventory to add supplementary hosts, adding a new supplementary host (e.g. if nextcloud.example.com is your main one, create nectcloud.example.com-deps).

Then, create a new vars.yml file for the

inventory/host_vars/nextcloud.example.com-deps/vars.yml:

---

########################################################################
#                                                                      #
# Playbook                                                             #
#                                                                      #
########################################################################

# Put a strong secret below, generated with `pwgen -s 64 1` or in another way
# Various other secrets will be derived from this secret automatically.
mash_playbook_generic_secret_key: ''

# Override service names and directory path prefixes
mash_playbook_service_identifier_prefix: 'mash-nextcloud-'
mash_playbook_service_base_directory_name_prefix: 'nextcloud-'

########################################################################
#                                                                      #
# /Playbook                                                            #
#                                                                      #
########################################################################


########################################################################
#                                                                      #
# redis                                                                #
#                                                                      #
########################################################################

redis_enabled: true

########################################################################
#                                                                      #
# /redis                                                               #
#                                                                      #
########################################################################

This will create a mash-nextcloud-redis instance on this host with its data in /mash/nextcloud-redis.

Then, adjust your main inventory host's variables file (inventory/host_vars/nextcloud.example.com/vars.yml) like this:

########################################################################
#                                                                      #
# nextcloud                                                            #
#                                                                      #
########################################################################

# Base configuration as shown above

# Point Nextcloud to its dedicated Redis instance
nextcloud_redis_hostname: mash-nextcloud-redis

# Make sure the Nextcloud service (mash-nextcloud.service) starts after its dedicated Redis service (mash-nextcloud-redis.service)
nextcloud_systemd_required_services_list_custom:
  - "mash-nextcloud-redis.service"

# Make sure the Nextcloud container is connected to the container network of its dedicated Redis service (mash-nextcloud-redis)
nextcloud_container_additional_networks_custom:
  - "mash-nextcloud-redis"

########################################################################
#                                                                      #
# /nextcloud                                                           #
#                                                                      #
########################################################################

Single-Sign-On / Authentik

Nextcloud supports Single-Sign-On (SSO) via LDAP, SAML, and OIDC. To make use of this you'll need a Identity Provider like authentik or Keycloak. The following assumes you use authentik.

The official documentation of authentik to connect nextcloud via SAML seems broken

MASH can connect Nextcloud with authentik via OIDC. The setup is quite straightforward, refer to this blogpost by Jack for a full explanation.

In short you should:

  • Create a new provider in authentik and trim the client secret to <64 characters
  • Create an application in authentik using this provider
  • Install the app user_oidc in Nextcloud
  • Fill in the details from authentik in the app settings

Troubleshooting

If you encounter problems during login check (error message containes SHA1 mismatch) that

  • Nextcloud users and authentik users do not have the same name -> if they do check Use unique user ID in the OIDC App settings

Samba

To enable Samba external Windows fileshares using smbclient, add the following additional configuration to your vars.yml file:

nextcloud_container_image_customizations_samba_enabled: true

Installation

If you've decided to install a dedicated Redis instance for Nextcloud, make sure to first do installation for the supplementary inventory host (e.g. nextcloud.example.com-deps), before running installation for the main one (e.g. nextcloud.example.com).

Usage

After installation, you should follow Nextcloud's setup wizard at the URL you've chosen.

You can choose any username/password for your account.

In Storage & database, you should choose PostgreSQL (changing the default SQLite choice), with the credentials you see after running just run-tags print-nextcloud-db-credentials

Once you've fully installed Nextcloud, you'd better adjust its default configuration (URL paths, trusted reverse-proxies, etc.) by running: just run-tags adjust-nextcloud-config

Collabora Online

To integrate the Collabora Online office suite, first install it by following its dedicated documentation page.

Then add the following additional Nextcloud configuration:

nextcloud_collabora_app_wopi_url: "{{ collabora_online_url }}"

# By default, various private IPv4 networks are whitelited to connect to the WOPI API (document serving API).
# If your Collabora Online installation does not live on the same server as Nextcloud,
# you may need to adjust the list of networks.
# If necessary, redefined the `nextcloud_collabora_app_wopi_allowlist` environment variable here.

There's no need to re-run the playbook after adjusting your vars.yml file. You should, however run: just run-tags install-nextcloud-app-collabora

This will install and configure the Office app for Nextcloud.

You should then be able to click any document (.doc, .odt, .pdf, etc.) in Nextcloud Files and it should automatically open a Collabora Online editor.

You can also create new documents via the "plus" button.

Preview Generator

It is possible to setup preview generation, using this playbook.

First modify your vars.yml file by adding at least the following line (other options are also present, check the corresponding defaults/main.yml file):

nextcloud_preview_enabled: true

then install Nextcloud (or rerun the playbook if already installed).

Next, from the Settings/Application menu in your Nextcloud instance install the preview generator app (https://apps.nextcloud.com/apps/previewgenerator).

After the application is installed run just run-tags adjust-nextcloud-config that will start the original preview-generation and when finished, enables the periodic generation of new images.

The original generation may take a long time, but a continuous prompt is presented by ansible as some visual feedback (it is being run as an async task), however it will timeout after approximately 27 hours.

On 60GBs, most of the data being images, it took about 10 minutes to finish.

If it takes more time to run than a day, you may want to start it from the host by calling

/usr/bin/env docker exec mash-nextcloud-server php /var/www/html/occ preview:generate-all

Also, please note: every time Nextcloud version is updated, you should rerun: just run-tags adjust-nextcloud-config.