TL,DR: beginner tries to set up NextCloud via docker components without having a domain. Trying to access via IP doesn’t work. Probably made a few mistakes/missed some important stuff along the way
Hi everyone,
I am completely new to self hosting. Like many others I want to move away from Google, Apple, Microsoft... for my Calendar, Tasks and Contacts, and I thought I would try self hosting all that in NextCloud. I have already tried a 3rd-party hosted NextCloud instance and I feel comfortable with it, so now I want to do the next step and host it myself on a RaspBerry Pi 4 (4GB) that I recently purchased.
I have read around and searched for tutorials, and although I am still a bit lost I decided I would start working on it and see what problems I find along the way, and learn from this. Once I’m done I hope to have learned properly, and I plan to wipe everything and do it again, this time knowing better what I’m doing.
So, to begin with I decided to do it using Docker Compose, as I’ve read it makes setup and troubleshooting easier. I found 2 tutorials that looked good to me: tutorial 1 and tutorial 2, but going through them I see the most frequent case they require that I have my own domain (tutorial 1 has only that option, tutorial 2 offers that option or using an IP address). Do I need to have my own domain to have NextCloud calendar, tasks and contacts shared between my computer and my smartphone? If both options are possible, is one of them more secure than the other? is there some strong reason to avoid one of them?
Since I don’t have a domain (I’m completely new to this), I opted to try tutorial 2 with IP address, but I got stuck in the end, where I am supposed to access my NextCloud Web Interface. Tutorial 2 suggests getting my Raspberry Pi IP address with hostname -I (step 17), but this way I get five different IP addresses (4 IPv4 and one IPv6), not just one. When I try any of those IPs on a browser (step 18) none of them work. I guess I am missing something basic here, so I’d be grateful if someone can point me in the right direction.
Searching for an answer I found a comment on reddit saying that I can skip getting a domain and host locally (no domain) and set up a VPN.
Would it be necessary in my case to get a domain? If I skip the domain, what steps am I missing to be able to access my current NextCloud docker installation? What mistakes have I made so far, and what resources can I use to learn about what I’m missing? Do you have any other tips for an absolute beginner (who is comfortable around the linux command line)?
Thank you, the
ip acommand helped me get the IP clear, however I am still not sure about the port. I tried with :80, :8080 and :443 (because 80 and 443 are the ones mentioned in the compose.yaml file, and I saw online that 8080 is also a common one?) but none of them worked :(.I think I will try zerotier, but first I need to be able to access NextCloud from my home network via the IP, which I'm currently unable to do. The tutorial I followed says
However, it doesn't explain where that certificate will be stored nor how I can manually install it in the browser I want to use to access NextCloud. Could that help with my issue?
You would be given a safety risk warning page by your browser if you did the self signed certificate that you’d need to tell it to connect anyway, so that likely isn’t the issue. Looking at ports, how are you trying to connect to the server? If you did not assign a certificate at all, you would want to use port 80, port 443 if you did install a certificate.
For instance, my Nextcloud is on ip 192.168.50.30 With that in mind I would be using:
No certificate: http://192.168.50.30:80 Certificate: https://192.168.50.30:443
Does this look like what you are typing in?
As two additional questions, what is the output of “docker container ls” typed into the terminal? And what operating system did you install on the pi, was it raspbian?
Thanks for your answer. I am indeed getting no warning on my browser, just "Unable to connect" on LibreWolf and "This site can't be reached" on Chromium. I tried the same format (https://192.168.50.30:80) with ports 80, 8080 and 443. The only difference is it was always https:// (since I think my browsers are configured to force https everywhere).
The out put of
docker container lslooks like this:I notice that the "PORTS" column is empty. I am running Raspbian GNU/Linux 11 (bullseye) on my Raspberry Pi, yes.
If you are on the raspberry pi with a physical screen/keyboard and mouse you can also try accessing with the ip address "localhost:80" and see if there's a connection that way as well.