Arch Linux

kmsgli

Member

Registered: 2015-08-15

Posts: 28

Native Nextcloud install vs LAMP stack and web installation

Hey all,

While attempting to make the official arch nextcloud package work I was having a good bit of trouble. I then just setup the standard arch LAMP stack and put the latest nextcloud web installer in the http folder, created a database, and ran it with no issue.

What am I missing here? What disadvantage does running nextcloud via standard LAMP stack have vs using the official nextcloud Arch package and following the Wiki?

I will say that it seems to only allow desktop clients and android clients to connect if you use mpm prefork which has obvious disadvantages but for a personal nextcloud I do not think that will be to much of an issue.

I have tried setting up php-fpm as well as mod-fcgi and the web access works fine to the nextcloud but it breaks desktop sync ability.

Just looking for some insight into this topic before I decide to go one way or the other.

Thanks.

Awebb

Member

Registered: 2010-05-06

Posts: 6,311

Re: Native Nextcloud install vs LAMP stack and web installation

The advantage of the Arch package is that you get updates automatically. The disadvantage is, that you get updates automatically, even if manual intervention is required. Arch Nextcloud has broken catastrophically twice in the five years I've been using it after a "pacman -Syu". The maintainer(s) have since taken measures to prevent this from happening again, but with Nextcloud you never know what happens next. I personally had trouble getting the Arch package to work, too.

The advantage of managing your own Nextcloud instance is full control, The disadvantage is that you will not get updates and have to handle everything on your own. I generally don't use "web apps" from the Arch repos anymore, because I update the underlying system way more often than I want to update web services.

The advantage of a container solution like a docker image is that updates are easy and you don't have to configure everything by yourself. The disadvantages are additional overhead and seemingly complicated workarounds, should you need to customise something out of the ordinary.

I'm currently running a https://github.com/nextcloud/all-in-one behind an nginx reverse proxy, which is fine for one instance per server, but not if you need multiple instances on one host or try to run that thing on anything but a proper domain (eg. sub.domain.com/nextcloud instead of sub.domain.com), you should look for a more granular solution or write your own docker file.

kmsgli

Member

Registered: 2015-08-15

Posts: 28

Re: Native Nextcloud install vs LAMP stack and web installation

Hey, thanks for the write up.

I think I am going to switch to web application for stability. I use Arch for all my production web servers but not for Nexcloud's. Currently I use Manjaro with Snap packages for nextcloud. I find the snap packages to be unreliable as they stop every few weeks and require a system restart or a Snap restart command (I believe this to be due to the automatic update feature built into snap). Since my Apache web servers on Arch are so reliable and fast I think web install of Nextcoud on Arch is a good setup.

The only thing I am unsure of is having to use lib php  as described here;
https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Apache … ing_libphp

My regular web servers I setup using php-fpm which greatly increases heavy traffic ability. That being said generally nextcloud does not see heavy traffic so I think it will be a good solution.

Thanks for your input Awebb

drankinatty

Member

From: Nacogdoches, Texas

Registered: 2009-04-24

Posts: 70

Website

Re: Native Nextcloud install vs LAMP stack and web installation

I just setup Nextcloud with FPM on php-legacy. The only issues I have is enabling APCu or Redis caching kills Nextcloud. I have a forum post open here and at Nextcloud on it. There are also changes needed to how the .well-known/xxx links are setup that require modifying the web server ssl config that is not mentioned in the wiki. Let me know if you get caching working.

Also, Nextcloud puts a heavy load on the server, even for small installs with light load. At least that has been my experience. I've run eGroupware for years, and Nextcloud, while it looks better, demands 10X the resources.

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David C. Rankin, J.D.,P.E.

kmsgli

Member

Registered: 2015-08-15

Posts: 28

Re: Native Nextcloud install vs LAMP stack and web installation

While I agree nextcloud is heavy, I have switched to web based nextcloud on top of a standard arch web server setup and it honestly feels not slower or faster then the snap package. I know the snap package uses php-fpm because its listed as one of the modules inside the snap. It was not super fast before and it feels about the same now. I was unable to get php-fpm to work with the desktop client. It works fine to run the server and web access to nextcloud but an error occurs when you try to connect a desktop client and after a lot of fooling around I found it is due to php-fpm.

@drankinatty are you able to connect desktop clients with your setup on php-fpm and a standard web install not the arch package install?