How do you set up and self-host Nextcloud?

Questions
1

I’m wanting to self-host Nextcloud as I’ve heard that it is the best solution for privacy and owning your data.

So my goal is to completely own my data.

I am completely new to self-hosting and I don’t know where to start. I don’t have any knowledge about self-hosting or Linux servers. I’ve tried looking for guides online but I can’t seem to find a clear cut guide on how to self-host, starting from no knowledge on how to do it.

How can I get started?

Are there any easy to follow guides out there that are geared towards privacy and owning your data?

Also, are there any drawbacks to self-hosting that I should be aware of? Do I need to maintain it regularly or does it “just work” once it’s all set up?

Thanks in advance.

2

I would recommend checking out yunohost. It for the most part just works after you have it setup. All you need to do is update apps every now and then.

However, if you want to try the old fashioned way (where you’re manually upgrading and making sure things migrate alright) then doublebastion has a great guide. It’s still useful to have these skills since if things go wrong on your deployment system (docker or in the case of yunohost, fancy bash scripts) then you’ll know how to spot the error in the logs and troubleshoot.

Other all-in-one self-hosting projects include:

3

I am just going to crush your dreams a little. It’s not going to be amazing. Nextcloud has it’s fair share of issues, it’s generally not very fast and if you maintain it yourself you will get occasional data loss problems, broken upgrades etc. I am also running quite a few large nextcloud setups out of lack for better options. I would at least recommend to stay far away from the e2ee module, its very experimental and you can check yourself on the github issues page how often things go wrong there.

4

How does it compare to Umbrel?

What are the benefits of doing it the old-fashioned way vs doing it an easier way like the first thing you mentioned?

5

What’s the point of even doing it then? Now that Proton Drive is out?

Once Proton Drive has desktop clients, wouldn’t that replace self-hosted Nextcloud?

6

Once Proton Drive has desktop clients, wouldn’t that replace self-hosted Nextcloud?

This is the point @Hello, they are not out. But I’ll surely migrate once that happens.

7

Are you still using your Nextcloud setups? Why do you have multiple?

8

Yes, clients.

9

Some other solutions I’ve come across since my last visit here:

  • Cloudron (requires a domain, but uses major dns provider APIs to make things easier for you; whereas yunohost can use mDNS for local network access only if so desired)
  • joingardens.com (provides a subscription model to host for you)
  • coolify.io (don’t know much about this, but it was mentioned in this year’s fossdem talks)
10

Umbrel doesn’t use tls encryption so it’s not as secure as yunohost which automates orders from Let’s Encrypt, but otherwise I believe they’re very similar.

Doing it the old fashioned way will increase your knowledge of server admin work and may even give you hirable skills if you become a wiz at the command line.

Sorry for the late reply. I’m not used to social media.

11

The data loss might be due to using sqlite since the production database (I think it’s mysql?) is fairly robust. The selfhosted podcast mentioned an upgrade problem because of sqlite. Looks like episode 93 from a show notes search. And I don’t think nextcloud officially tests sqlite or recommends it for anything other then testing purposes. However, if you use the production database then I stand corrected.

12

Bruh. Maybe you should refrain from commenting things you don’t have any idea about. Nextcloud does not even support sqlite and I obviously don’t use a document based database for a cloud instance. :man_facepalming:

13

I’m actually not too familiar with the term “document based” database. Would that be like mongodb? If so then I think mysql is different.