What is Nextcloud?

A safe home for all your data. Access & share your files, calendars, contacts, mail & more from any device, on your terms.

⚠️⚠️⚠️ This image is maintained by community volunteers and designed for expert use. For quick and easy deployment that supports the full set of Nextcloud Hub features, use the Nextcloud All-in-One docker container maintained by Nextcloud GmbH.

How to use this image

This image is designed to be used in a micro-service environment. There are two versions of the image you can choose from.

The apache tag contains a full Nextcloud installation including an apache web server. It is designed to be easy to use and gets you running pretty fast. This is also the default for the latest tag and version tags that are not further specified.

The second option is a fpm container. It is based on the php-fpm image and runs a fastCGI-Process that serves your Nextcloud page. To use this image it must be combined with any webserver that can proxy the http requests to the FastCGI-port of the container.

Using the apache image

The apache image contains a webserver and exposes port 80. To start the container type:

$ docker run -d -p 8080:80 nextcloud

Now you can access Nextcloud at http://localhost:8080/ from your host system.

Using the fpm image

To use the fpm image, you need an additional web server, such as nginx, that can proxy http-request to the fpm-port of the container. For fpm connection this container exposes port 9000. In most cases, you might want to use another container or your host as proxy. If you use your host you can address your Nextcloud container directly on port 9000. If you use another container, make sure that you add them to the same docker network (via docker run --network <NAME> ... or a docker-compose file). In both cases you don't want to map the fpm port to your host.

$ docker run -d nextcloud:fpm

As the fastCGI-Process is not capable of serving static files (style sheets, images, ...), the webserver needs access to these files. This can be achieved with the volumes-from option. You can find more information in the docker-compose section.

Using an external database

By default, this container uses SQLite for data storage but the Nextcloud setup wizard (appears on first run) allows connecting to an existing MySQL/MariaDB or PostgreSQL database. You can also link a database container, e. g. --link my-mysql:mysql, and then use mysql as the database host on setup. More info is in the docker-compose section.

Persistent data

The Nextcloud installation and all data beyond what lives in the database (file uploads, etc.) are stored in the unnamed docker volume volume /var/www/html. The docker daemon will store that data within the docker directory /var/lib/docker/volumes/.... That means your data is saved even if the container crashes, is stopped or deleted.

A named Docker volume or a mounted host directory should be used for upgrades and backups. To achieve this, you need one volume for your database container and one for Nextcloud.

Nextcloud:

/var/www/html/ folder where all Nextcloud data lives

$ docker run -d \
-v nextcloud:/var/www/html \
nextcloud

Database:

/var/lib/mysql MySQL / MariaDB Data
/var/lib/postgresql/data PostgreSQL Data

$ docker run -d \
-v db:/var/lib/mysql \
mariadb:10.6

Additional volumes

If you want to get fine grained access to your individual files, you can mount additional volumes for data, config, your theme and custom apps. The data, config files are stored in respective subfolders inside /var/www/html/. The apps are split into core apps (which are shipped with Nextcloud and you don't need to take care of) and a custom_apps folder. If you use a custom theme it would go into the themes subfolder.

Overview of the folders that can be mounted as volumes:

/var/www/html Main folder, needed for updating
/var/www/html/custom_apps installed / modified apps
/var/www/html/config local configuration
/var/www/html/data the actual data of your Nextcloud
/var/www/html/themes/<YOUR_CUSTOM_THEME> theming/branding

If you want to use named volumes for all of these, it would look like this:

$ docker run -d \
-v nextcloud:/var/www/html \
-v apps:/var/www/html/custom_apps \
-v config:/var/www/html/config \
-v data:/var/www/html/data \
-v theme:/var/www/html/themes/<YOUR_CUSTOM_THEME> \
nextcloud

Custom volumes

If mounting additional volumes under /var/www/html, you should consider:

Confirming that upgrade.exclude contains the files and folders that should persist during installation and upgrades; or
Mounting storage volumes to locations outside of /var/www/html.

[!WARNING] You should note that data inside the main folder (/var/www/html) will be overridden/removed during installation and upgrades, unless listed in upgrade.exclude. The additional volumes officially supported are already in that list, but custom volumes will need to be added by you. We suggest mounting custom storage volumes outside of /var/www/html and if possible read-only so that making this adjustment is unnecessary. If you must do so, however, you may build a custom image with a modified /upgrade.exclude file that incorporates your custom volume(s).

Using the Nextcloud command-line interface

To use the Nextcloud command-line interface (aka. occ command):

$ docker exec --user www-data CONTAINER_ID php occ

or for docker-compose:

$ docker-compose exec --user www-data app php occ

Auto configuration via environment variables

The Nextcloud image supports auto configuration via environment variables. You can preconfigure everything that is asked on the install page on first run. To enable auto configuration, set your database connection via the following environment variables. You must specify all of the environment variables for a given database or the database environment variables defaults to SQLITE. ONLY use one database type!

SQLite:

SQLITE_DATABASE Name of the database using sqlite

MYSQL/MariaDB:

MYSQL_DATABASE Name of the database using mysql / mariadb.
MYSQL_USER Username for the database using mysql / mariadb.
MYSQL_PASSWORD Password for the database user using mysql / mariadb.
MYSQL_HOST Hostname of the database server using mysql / mariadb.

PostgreSQL:

POSTGRES_DB Name of the database using postgres.
POSTGRES_USER Username for the database using postgres.
POSTGRES_PASSWORD Password for the database user using postgres.
POSTGRES_HOST Hostname of the database server using postgres.

As an alternative to passing sensitive information via environment variables, _FILE may be appended to the previously listed environment variables, causing the initialization script to load the values for those variables from files present in the container. See Docker secrets section below.

If you set any group of values (i.e. all of MYSQL_DATABASE, MYSQL_USER, MYSQL_PASSWORD, MYSQL_HOST), they will not be asked in the install page on first run. With a complete configuration by using all variables for your database type, you can additionally configure your Nextcloud instance by setting admin user and password (only works if you set both):

NEXTCLOUD_ADMIN_USER Name of the Nextcloud admin user.
NEXTCLOUD_ADMIN_PASSWORD Password for the Nextcloud admin user.

If you want, you can set the data directory, otherwise default value will be used.

NEXTCLOUD_DATA_DIR (default: /var/www/html/data) Configures the data directory where nextcloud stores all files from the users.

One or more trusted domains can be set through environment variable, too. They will be added to the configuration after install.

NEXTCLOUD_TRUSTED_DOMAINS (not set by default) Optional space-separated list of domains

The install and update script is only triggered when a default command is used (apache-foreground or php-fpm). If you use a custom command you have to enable the install / update with

NEXTCLOUD_UPDATE (default: 0)

You might want to make sure the htaccess is up to date after each container update. Especially on multiple swarm nodes as any discrepancy will make your server unusable.

NEXTCLOUD_INIT_HTACCESS (not set by default) Set it to true to enable run occ maintenance:update:htaccess after container initialization.

If you want to use Redis you have to create a separate Redis container in your setup / in your docker-compose file. To inform Nextcloud about the Redis container, pass in the following parameters:

REDIS_HOST (not set by default) Name of Redis container
REDIS_HOST_PORT (default: 6379) Optional port for Redis, only use for external Redis servers that run on non-standard ports.
REDIS_HOST_PASSWORD (not set by default) Redis password

The use of Redis is recommended to prevent file locking problems. See the examples for further instructions.

To use an external SMTP server, you have to provide the connection details. Note that if you configure these values via Docker, you should not use the Nexcloud Web UI to configure external SMTP server parameters. Conversely, if you prefer to use the Web UI, do not set these variables here (because these variables will override whatever you attempt to set in the Web UI for these parameters). To configure Nextcloud to use SMTP add:

SMTP_HOST (not set by default): The hostname of the SMTP server.
SMTP_SECURE (empty by default): Set to ssl to use SSL, or tls to use STARTTLS.
SMTP_PORT (default: 465 for SSL and 25 for non-secure connections): Optional port for the SMTP connection. Use 587 for an alternative port for STARTTLS.
SMTP_AUTHTYPE (default: LOGIN): The method used for authentication. Use PLAIN if no authentication is required.
SMTP_NAME (empty by default): The username for the authentication.
SMTP_PASSWORD (empty by default): The password for the authentication.
MAIL_FROM_ADDRESS (not set by default): Set the local-part for the 'from' field in the emails sent by Nextcloud.
MAIL_DOMAIN (not set by default): Set a different domain for the emails than the domain where Nextcloud is installed.

At least SMTP_HOST, MAIL_FROM_ADDRESS and MAIL_DOMAIN must be set for the configurations to be applied.

Check the Nextcloud documentation for other values to configure SMTP.

To use an external S3 compatible object store as primary storage, set the following variables:

OBJECTSTORE_S3_BUCKET: The name of the bucket that Nextcloud should store the data in
OBJECTSTORE_S3_REGION: The region that the S3 bucket resides in
OBJECTSTORE_S3_HOST: The hostname of the object storage server
OBJECTSTORE_S3_PORT: The port that the object storage server is being served over
OBJECTSTORE_S3_KEY: AWS style access key
OBJECTSTORE_S3_SECRET: AWS style secret access key
OBJECTSTORE_S3_STORAGE_CLASS: The storage class to use when adding objects to the bucket
OBJECTSTORE_S3_SSL (default: true): Whether or not SSL/TLS should be used to communicate with object storage server
OBJECTSTORE_S3_USEPATH_STYLE (default: false): Not required for AWS S3
OBJECTSTORE_S3_LEGACYAUTH (default: false): Not required for AWS S3
OBJECTSTORE_S3_OBJECT_PREFIX (default: urn:oid:): Prefix to prepend to the fileid
OBJECTSTORE_S3_AUTOCREATE (default: true): Create the container if it does not exist
OBJECTSTORE_S3_SSE_C_KEY (not set by default): Base64 encoded key with a maximum length of 32 bytes for server side encryption (SSE-C)

Check the Nextcloud documentation for more information.

To use an external OpenStack Swift object store as primary storage, set the following variables:

OBJECTSTORE_SWIFT_URL: The Swift identity (Keystone) endpoint
OBJECTSTORE_SWIFT_AUTOCREATE (default: false): Whether or not Nextcloud should automatically create the Swift container
OBJECTSTORE_SWIFT_USER_NAME: Swift username
OBJECTSTORE_SWIFT_USER_PASSWORD: Swift user password
OBJECTSTORE_SWIFT_USER_DOMAIN (default: Default): Swift user domain
OBJECTSTORE_SWIFT_PROJECT_NAME: OpenStack project name
OBJECTSTORE_SWIFT_PROJECT_DOMAIN (default: Default): OpenStack project domain
OBJECTSTORE_SWIFT_SERVICE_NAME (default: swift): Swift service name
OBJECTSTORE_SWIFT_REGION: Swift endpoint region
OBJECTSTORE_SWIFT_CONTAINER_NAME: Swift container (bucket) that Nextcloud should store the data in