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FreedomBox for Communities/Digital Library

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A community digital library might host files of various types like documents, books, audio, video, software etc. Hence a generic cloud solution must be used instead of specialized library software like Calibre which only manages ebooks.

A NextCloud server on the FreedomBox can be used to host the files for a community digital library. NextCloud does not have an official Debian package and must be installed manually.

Installation instructions

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Installing dependencies

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Install the necessary Debian packages required for NextCloud. The following installation instructions are for NextCloud 16.

  sudo apt-get install libapache2-mod-php
  sudo apt-get install postgresql
  sudo apt-get install php-gd php-json php-pgsql php-curl php-mbstring php-intl php-imagick php-xml php-zip

Check whether all the required dependencies are installed against this checklist

Database setup

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Setup PostgreSQL database. The following instructions are for PostgreSQL 11.

Open the psql console as user postgres

sudo -u postgres psql

Create a new user and database for nextcloud. Please use a strong password.

CREATE USER nextcloud WITH PASSWORD 'some$trongPW';
CREATE DATABASE nextcloud TEMPLATE template0 ENCODING 'UNICODE';
ALTER DATABASE nextcloud OWNER TO nextcloud;
GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON DATABASE nextcloud TO nextcloud;

Exit the console by pressing Ctrl+D or by typing \q and enter.

Web installer

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The easiest way to install NextCloud is using its web installer.

Add the web installer script to your Apache server root and set the permissions as follows:

wget https://download.nextcloud.com/server/installer/setup-nextcloud.php
sudo mv setup-nextcloud.php /var/www/html/
chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www/html/
sudo systemctl restart apache2

Access the web installer at the path https://<freedombox-url>/setup-nextcloud.php from a web browser. If the installer says that any dependencies are missing, install the corresponding Debian packages.

After the nextcloud files are setup, you will be prompted with a screen to enter admin credentials and database credentials.

Database Credentials
property value
username nextcloud
password some$trongPW
database name nextcloud
database url localhost:5432


After submitting the above details, the NextCloud installer will finish installation and log you in as the administrator user.