TUTORIALS Host Nextcloud

NEXTCLOUD

Nextcloud 20 is here and Jonni Bidwell shows you how to get it running on a Raspberry Pi, possibly one hosted by Mythic Beasts

The welcome animation is plenty reward for getting Nextcloud set up. Subsequent screens have links to handy documentation.

OUR EXPERT

Jonni Bidwell and his Pi Zero single-handedly caused the great Google outage of December 14, 2020. Who knows what he’ll get up to this year?.

QUICK TIP

Don’t forget to do the Nextcloud security scan, which will ensure your server is kept safe. It’ll warn you about potential issues with your SSL configuration and more.

Nary an issue of Linux Format goes by without us mentioning Nextcloud, the open source private cloud. And that’s because it’s fantastic, and there’s a lot that you can do with it. Now Nextcloud 20 is here and we’re going to talk about it again.

Out of the box it makes it possible for you to securely host your own Dropbox-like storage for you and your friends’ files and photos. Even better, it’s light enough that you can comfortably provide for a handful of users (as long as they don’t all use it at the same time) on a Raspberry Pi 3.

There are FOSS mobile applications, a desktop client and a lovely web interface, so accessing and synchronising your data is easy. Add the News app and you’ll finally solve the problem of how best to collate your RSS feeds since Google Reader expired, Odin rest its soul. Add the Notes app in case Google Keep goes the same way. If you’re willing to brave some extra configuration (and perhaps some beefier hosting), you can access a collaborative, web-based LibreOffice install in the form of Collabora Online Development Edition. The latest incarnation of Nextcloud brings yet more collaboration tools and further develops its federation features, whereby users of different Nextcloud instances can interact with one another.

Storage alternatives

This is all well and good, but perhaps you don’t want to rely on your Pi’s SD card to store your precious files, or maybe you don’t want to be relying on your home internet connection (because home ISPs, like technical editors, are agents of mischief and chaos). No problem, with the ISP Mythic Beasts you can rent a Pi 3 (for around £5/month or, for a fraction more on a commitment-free per second basis) which netboots and has its root filesystem hooked into its own data platters. Then if you want to pay for a vanity domain name you can, and if you don’t it’s simple to get set up with a free subdomain from the likes of DuckDNS, our favourite dynamic DNS provider.