I create a basic installation of Centos 8 stream from iso: CentOS-Stream-8-x86_64-20191219-boot.iso

During installation I choose minimal applications and standard utilities. Please, enable, network time and set lvm for virtio disk. I set password for root and create a new user, which have root privileges.

After instalation, I create and LVM encrypted partition, to store encrypted data of nextcloud on it. I will not use nextcloud data encryption. Command below creates encrypted disk. We must enter a passphrase twice

 cryptsetup -y -v luksFormat /dev/vdb

Now, we open this partition and look at status:

cryptsetup luksOpen /dev/vdb vdb_crypt
cryptsetup -v status vdb_crypt

/dev/mapper/vdb_crypt is active.
   type:    LUKS2
   cipher:  aes-xts-plain64
   keysize: 512 bits
   key location: keyring
   device:  /dev/vdb
   sector size:  512
   offset:  32768 sectors
   size:    209682432 sectors
   mode:    read/write
 Command successful.

Now, I write 4GB zeros to this device to see, if everything is OK. It is possible, to full-up tho whole device, but it can take a long time. But the true reason is, that this will allocate block data with zeros. This ensures that outside world will see this as random data i.e. it protect against disclosure of usage patterns.

dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/mapper/vdb_crypt bs=4M count=1000
4194304000 bytes (4.2 GB, 3.9 GiB) copied, 130.273 s, 32.2 MB/s

Now try close and open this encrypted device. And then, I create an lvm above the luks encrypted disk:

cryptsetup luksClose vdb_crypt
cryptsetup luksOpen /dev/vdb vdb_crypt
cryptsetup -v status vdb_crypt
pvcreate /dev/mapper/vdb_crypt
vgcreate nextcloud /dev/mapper/vdb_crypt
lvcreate -n data -L+30G nextcloud
mkdir /mnt/test
mkfs.xfs /dev/mapper/nextcloud-data
mount /dev/mapper/nextcloud-data /mnt/test/
touch /mnt/test/hello 
ll /mnt/test/hello
umount /mnt/test/

Installing nextcloud and prerequisites

And now, we can start with preparing our Centos for nextcloud

At first, update system. Via dnf (DNF is the next upcoming major version of YUM, a package manager for RPM-based Linux distributions. It roughly maintains CLI compatibility with YUM and defines a strict API for extensions and plugins.)

dnf update -y

Next, we install and create empty database for our nextcloud. Then we start it and enable for autostart after boot.
If you wish, you can skip installations of MariaDB and you can use built-in SQLite. Then you can continue with installing apache web server.

dnf -y install mariadb-server
...
systemctl start mariadb
systemctl enable mariadb

Now, we run post installation script to finish setting up mariaDB server:

mysql_secure_installation
Set root password? [Y/n] y
Remove anonymous users? [Y/n] y
Disallow root login remotely? [Y/n] y
Remove test database and access to it? [Y/n] y
Reload privilege tables now? [Y/n] y

Now, we can create a database for nextcloud.

mysql -u root -p
...
CREATE DATABASE nextcloud;
GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON nextcloud.* TO 'nextclouduser'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'YOURPASSWORD';
FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
exit;

Now, we install Apache web server, and we start it and enable for autostart after boot:

dnf install httpd -y
systemctl start httpd.service
systemctl enable httpd.service

And set up firewall fow port http/80 and ssh/20 only:

systemctl status httpd
firewall-cmd --list-all
firewall-cmd --zone=public --permanent --remove-service=dhcpv6-client
firewall-cmd --zone=public --permanent --add-service=http
firewall-cmd --reload

Now point your browser to this server and look, if you see a Apache test page.

Now we can install php. Nextcloud (at this time is version 18.0.1) and support PHP (7.1, 7.2 or 7.3). So I use remi repositories and install php 7.3:

dnf -y install dnf-utils http://rpms.remirepo.net/enterprise/remi-release-8.rpm
dnf module list php
dnf module reset php
dnf module enable php:remi-7.3
dnf info php
dnf install php php-gd php-mbstring php-intl php-pecl-apcu php-mysqlnd php-pecl-imagick.x86_64 php-ldap php-pecl-zip.x86_64 php-process.x86_64
php -v
php --ini |grep Loaded
sed -i "s/post_max_size = 8M/post_max_size = 500M/" /etc/php.ini
sed -i "s/upload_max_filesize = 2M/upload_max_filesize = 500M/" /etc/php.ini
sed -i "s/memory_limit = 128M/memory_limit = 512M/" /etc/php.ini
systemctl start php-fpm.service
systemctl enable php-fpm.service

And now, we can install nextcloud:

mkdir -p /var/www/html/nextcloud/data
cd /var/www/html/nextcloud/
mount /dev/mapper/nextcloud-data /var/www/html/nextcloud/data/
wget https://download.nextcloud.com/server/releases/nextcloud-18.0.1.zip
unzip nextcloud-18.0.1.zip
rm nextcloud-18.0.1.zip
mv nextcloud/* .
mv nextcloud/.htaccess .
mv nextcloud/.user.ini .
rmdir nextcloud/
mkdir /var/www/html/nextcloud/data
chown -R apache:apache /var/www/html/nextcloud/
find /var/www/html/nextcloud/ -type d -exec chmod 750 {} \; 
find /var/www/html/nextcloud/ -type f -exec chmod 640 {} \;

Now create configuration file for nextcloud in httpd:

vim /etc/httpd/conf.d/nextcloud.conf

<VirtualHost *:80>
  DocumentRoot /var/www/html/nextcloud/
  ServerName  your.server.com

  <Directory /var/www/html/nextcloud/>
    Require all granted
    AllowOverride All
    Options FollowSymLinks MultiViews

    <IfModule mod_dav.c>
      Dav off
    </IfModule>

  </Directory>
</VirtualHost>

apachectl graceful

Refer to nextcloud admin manual, you can run into permissions problems. Run these commands as root to adjust permissions:

semanage fcontext -a -t httpd_sys_rw_content_t '/var/www/html/nextcloud/data(/.*)?'
semanage fcontext -a -t httpd_sys_rw_content_t '/var/www/html/nextcloud/config(/.*)?'
semanage fcontext -a -t httpd_sys_rw_content_t '/var/www/html/nextcloud/apps(/.*)?'
semanage fcontext -a -t httpd_sys_rw_content_t '/var/www/html/nextcloud/.htaccess'
semanage fcontext -a -t httpd_sys_rw_content_t '/var/www/html/nextcloud/.user.ini'
restorecon -Rv '/var/www/html/nextcloud/'

If you see error “-bash: semanage: command not found”, install packages:

dnf provides /usr/sbin/semanage
dnf install policycoreutils-python-utils-2.9-3.el8_1.1.noarch

Now, we can check via built-in php scripts, in what state we are:

cd /var/www/html/nextcloud/
sudo -u apache php occ -h
sudo -u apache php occ -V
sudo -u apache php occ status

And finally, we can access our nextcloud and set up administrators password via our web: http://you-ip/

If you see default httpd welcome page, disable all lines in: /etc/httpd/conf.d/welcome.conf
Now you must complete the installation via web interface. Set Administrator’s password and locate to MariaDB with used credentials:

Database user: nextclouduser
Database password: YOURPASSWORD
Database name: nextcloud
host: localhost

In settings of nextcloud, go to section Administration > Overview. You can see some problems. If so, try to fix it. I had three problems. No apcu memory cache configured. So add at nextcloud config.php:

'memcache.local' => '\OC\Memcache\APCu',

Then I must edit som php variables, to set properly opcache: edit and adjust:

vim /etc/php.d/10-opcache.ini

Then I must edit httpd setting, because .htaccess wont working. So change apache config:

vim /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf

section: Directory "/var/www/html"
AllowOverride None
change to: 
AllowOverride All

And gracefuly restart apache:

apachectl graceful

Next, I find out, that my nextcloud instance cannot connect to internet and checks for update. I think, that this is on selinux (enforcing mode). So run check and find out, what is happening:

sealert -a /var/log/audit/audit.log

And the result:

SELinux is preventing /usr/sbin/php-fpm from name_connect access on the tcp_socket port 80
Additional Information:
Source Context                system_u:system_r:httpd_t:s0
Source Path                   /usr/sbin/php-fpm
Port                          80
Selinux Enabled               True
Policy Type                   targeted
Enforcing Mode                Enforcing
---------
If you believe that php-fpm should be allowed name_connect access on the port 80 tcp_socket by default.
If you want to allow httpd to can network connect
Then you must tell SELinux about this by enabling the 'httpd_can_network_connect' boolean.

So I allow httpd to can network connect via:

setsebool -P httpd_can_network_connect 1

And that is complete. If you wont secure http (https), try to find out another post on this page.

Have fun