Nextcloud

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This is our procedure for installing LibreOffice Online on a Debian-based server. LibreOffice has included a component to allow it to be served over HTTP since version 5.3.

I'm following the instructions created by Collabora and NextCloud from here, and more specifically the Nginx variation here. I'm documenting here my specific configuration to include the LetsEncrypt and other specific configuration aspects that are out of the scope of those instructions so that we have a more easily reproducible procedure.

I'm using two domains here which you'll need to change for your own purposes, office.organicdesign.host for the main LibreOffice Online entry point, and files.organicdesign.host for the NextCloud web-application which is an open-source "drop-box" style system with built-in integrations for LibreOffice Online.

Set up the server

apt install git net-tools nginx php7.0-fpm php7.0-mysqlnd php7.0-zip php7.0-gd php7.0-curl php7.0-simplexml php7.0-mbstring

Set up MariaDB from their repositories here, and create a database and user ready for NextCloud.

Configuring the web-server and SSL certificates

In the Nginx configuration for this site, add a basic block for handling non-HTTP requests as follows. This will allow the LetsEncrypt domain validation requests to pass, but all other requests will be bounced to their respective HTTPS counterparts.

server {
	listen 80;
	listen [::]:80;
	server_name ~^;
	rewrite ^/\.well-known $uri last;
	return 301 https://$server_name$request_uri;
}

We can now install LetsEncrypt.

cd /var/www
git clone https://github.com/certbot/certbot.git letsencrypt

And then run it to make our certificates, after it has successfully created them add the command to be called from crontab daily.

letsencrypt/letsencrypt-auto certonly -q --keep --renew-with-new-domains --expand --webroot -w /var/www --agree-tos \
    --email "admin@organicdesign.host" -d office.organicdesign.host -d files.organicdesign.host

Now create /var/www/nginx.ssl.conf with the following content that will be included from all SSL blocks.

ssl on;
ssl_protocols SSLv3 TLSv1 TLSv1.1 TLSv1.2;
ssl_ciphers EECDH+ECDSA+AESGCM:EECDH+aRSA+AESGCM:EECDH+ECDSA+SHA256:EDH+aRSA:EECDH:!RC4:!aNULL:!eNULL:!LOW:!3DES:!MD5:!EXP:!PSK:!SRP:!DSS; # SSLlabs recommended set
ssl_prefer_server_ciphers on;
ssl_session_timeout 5m;
ssl_session_cache shared:SSL:10m;
ssl_dhparam /var/www/dhparams.pem;
ssl_certificate /etc/letsencrypt/live/office.organicdesign.host/fullchain.pem;
ssl_client_certificate /etc/letsencrypt/live/office.organicdesign.host/chain.pem;
ssl_certificate_key /etc/letsencrypt/live/office.organicdesign.host/privkey.pem;
add_header Strict-Transport-Security "max-age=31536000; includeSubDomains" always;

Don't forget to create the strong Diffi-Hellman parameters which we referred to in nginx.ssl.conf.

openssl dhparam -out /var/www/dhparams.pem 2048

Install and configure NextCloud

NextCloud is a "drop-box" style web-application which is completely open-source so you can install it on your own server, and it has built-in integration for working with LibreOffice Online. NextCloud is PHP so first download the source and unpack it into /var/www/nextcloud, ensure it's accessible by www-data, and then add the Nginx configuration recommended here. In this configuration we need to adjust the domain names and delete the port 80 block since we have an existing one described above to handle LetsEncrypt domain validation requests. Also remove the SSL lines and replace them with an include of the nginx.ssl.conf we made above.

A database and user will need to be created and then you can run through the install by going to the files.organicdesign.host domain. After you've successfully installed NextCloud, go to the admin updater to check for any problems or optimisations and upgrade to the latest stable version.

Install Docker and the Docker image

Bring the machine up to date and run through the Docker installation.

docker pull collabora/code
docker run -t -d -p 127.0.0.1:9980:9980 -e 'domain=files\\.organicdesign\\.host' --restart always --cap-add MKNOD collabora/code

Now you can enable the Collabora Online application in your NextCloud from settings/apps and test it out!