Simple Nextcloud Installation on Raspberry Pi

This article explains how to install Nextcloud on the Raspberry Pi. It has been tested with the latest version of Nextcloud (20.1 at the time of writing), but should work for future versions too.  It has also been successfully tested on the latest Pi hardware, the Raspberry Pi 4, and on earlier Pi versions, and on the latest OS, Raspbian/Raspberry Pi OS 10 “Buster”.  Article last updated 21/6/2021.

Nextcloud is an open source software package providing remote file sharing services, similar to Dropbox. But with Nextcloud, you retain ownership, security and control of the shared data. Nextcloud works well on a Pi 2, Pi 3 and especially a Pi 4 but will run very slowly on a Pi 1.

Note: This is a manual, step-by-step procedure. If you would rather do the installation automatically, please see my recent article Automatic Nextcloud Installation on Raspberry Pi, which explains how to install Nextcloud with 3 commands. It is the quickest and easiest way to get Nextcloud running. Both procedures achieve the same overall result, however.
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Simple Owncloud Installation on Raspberry Pi 2

The Raspberry Pi’s low power consumption makes it well suited to the role of always-on server. This post describes how to install Owncloud onto the Pi. Owncloud is an open source software package providing remote file sharing services, similar to Dropbox. But with Owncloud, you retain ownership, security and control of the shared data. Owncloud works well on a Pi 2 and Pi 3 but will run very slowly on a Pi 1.

Update 20th November 2016 – There is a newer version of this article. Please see Simple Nextcloud Installation on Raspberry Pi. Nextcloud was forked from ownCloud in June 2016. It now seems to have become the natural successor to Owncloud. I recommend using Nextcloud rather than Owncloud. This article remains on line because it might be helpful to existing Owncloud users, particularly the parts about upgrading and using external USB media.

UPDATE 16th July 2016 – Nextcloud was forked from Owncloud in June 2016. The procedure below can be used both for Owncloud and the initial release of Nextcloud (version 9.0.52). Thanks to Dan for this information.

My Raspberry Pi 2 was purchased from RS Components in the UK. It was installed with Raspbian “Jessie” (Debian 8) by applying the image “2016-02-09-raspbian-jessie.img” downloaded from the raspberrypi.org downloads page. The following procedure was then performed without any further pre-work (other than enabling ssh in the basic setup). Continue reading