From the course: Linux Tips

Host a personal cloud with Nextcloud - Linux Tutorial

From the course: Linux Tips

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Host a personal cloud with Nextcloud

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- [Instructor] There's a lot of useful cloud services out there for file synchronization. But if you don't want to pay for a service or you want to host your own, Nextcloud offers a self-hosted web application to do this. The Nextcloud platform offers file synchronization between desktop and laptop devices and the server, as well as a selection of other apps you can host. And it has apps for mobile devices as well. A Nextcloud server should have a static IP address. To make a Nextcloud server accessible outside of a local network, we need to forward some ports through the network's firewall. And it's a good idea to have a registered domain name and certificate for it. We'll leave those things aside for now and focus on the software itself. I should note though the server that I'm using has a static IP and it doesn't already have a web service running. We can go about installing Nextcloud in two ways, either by setting it up manually and configuring the services that it requires like a web server and a database server or we can use the snap version, which takes care of all of that for us. In this episode, I'll use the snap installer on Ubuntu to keep things quick. All right, snap install Nextcloud. And when that's done, I'll make sure my web port is open on the server's firewall. We can configure this to use TLS later on. But for this overview, we'll speak with regular port 80. Now I'll open up a browser and navigate to the server's address. Here, I can set up an administrative user and password. Generally, you'll want to make a separate user to use on a day-to-day basis and only use the admin user for admin tasks. So don't use the username you want to have as your real account name for this account. I'll call my admin user nc-admin and set a strong password. And then I'll click finish setup. When I first log in, I see some information about where to get mobile apps and how to connect Desktop apps to various services Nextcloud offers. I'll close that for now. Here I see a listing of files for this user. Remember, this is the administrative user and we'll set up a normal user for day-to-day use later on. Here on the left side of the files panel I see some shortcuts to my files, recent files, deleted files, and so on. And below that, there's a settings option with a couple of options. Across the top, there's a bar showing my files, my activity, and my photo gallery. Back here in the file view, over on the right side of the screen, I have a search capability. And following that, there's a notifications indicator, a contact search, and the menu. Within the menu, there's a settings option where I can edit my user information and also configure the server because this user is an administrator. Here on the right side of the screen, I could upload a profile photo, change my full name, add some information, and change my language. Here under security, I can change my password if I need to. Under mobile and desktop, I can find links to the sync clients. And further down, I can see the settings for this Nextcloud instance. Back up here in the menu because I'm an administrator I can click on users to create and administer users. Up here in the top left, I'll click new user and create a new user for myself. Once I'm done, I'll press the checkmark button. I'll enter the administrative user's password and now I have a user for myself. I can log out of this administrative user and log back in as my new user. When I do, I can go through the welcome screens where I'm encouraged to download a sync client. I'll switch over to my Windows computer and set up the sync client there. To find the link to the sync clients, I'll click here on the menu, choose settings, go to mobile and desktop, and then click on desktop app. I'll download the Windows version and I'll install it. I'll click through the installer and then I'll continue through the wizard. I'll click login and provide my server address. When I'm prompted to, I'll log in, grant myself access, and then I can choose my sync settings. I'll sync everything from the server. And this path looks fine for my local folder. Then in the bottom right, I'll click connect. All right, my files have been synchronized. Here in my Nextcloud folder, I see the files that were there on my server. And if I make a change, like renaming this file here, I can go back to my web view, refresh, and see that change reflect on the server. Now my files will sync automatically between my Nextcloud server and any devices that I have the client installed on. Nextcloud offers a huge amount of features and add-ons that are useful both to individual users and large organizations who use Nextcloud to host their files. If you have the knowhow and the interest to put in place what Nextcloud needs and secure it properly it can be a great choice for your personal or business file syncing and other needs.

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