How to install Nextcloud server on Windows 10

NextCloud, a perfect alternative to Owncloud cloud storage software. It has both opensource community edition plus enterprise edition, needless to say, paid. The NextCloud also provides a server-client architecture exactly like OwnCloud and why not, it is a fork of it but with wide extensions support. Users can install the NextCloud community server edition on their PC or server to create their own personal in-house local cloud storage.

The NextCloud client is available for Windows, Linux, MacOS and smartphone platform iOS and Android. So, it is cross-platform cloud storage with modular architecture that’s capabilities can be extended using the plugins or extension provide by the NextCloud. There are more than 200 extensions such as calendars (CalDAV), contacts (CardDAV), URL shortening suite, streaming media (Ampache), bookmarking service, image gallery, RSS feed reader, document viewer tools, browser-based text editor, connection to Dropbox, Google Drive & Amazon S3 and more…

The interface is quite easy to use and friendly. Here in this tutorial, we will see how to install NextCloud on Windows 10 without using XAMMP, WAMP, IIS server or a Virtualization software like VirtualBox/Vmware player. We will use the Windows’ 10 WSL (windows subsystem Linux) feature. It allows us to run Linux environment apps natively on Windows 10 with a high degree of performance just like any native Linux server. That’s why the NextCloud also runs on it very smoothly without any glitches.

Install NextCloud server on Windows 10 using WSL (windows subsystem Linux) Ubuntu

Step 1: Install the WSL feature on Windows 10.

The WSL (Windows subsystem Linux) is already there on Windows 10 and we just need to activate it. For that, the user has to go to Control Panel->Programs->Turn Windows feature On or off. For a more deep tutorial on WSL installation see: Activate Windows 10 subsystem for Linux

Step 2: Get Linux environment app from the Microsoft store

To install NextCloud on Windows 10, first, we need a Linux app from Microsoft store. Go to Windows search box and type Microsoft store as it appears, click on it and search for Ubuntu 18.

The store will show the Ubuntu 18 app, select and install it. and then use the launch button.

When you Launch the Ubuntu Linux environment it will take some time to get set up.

Step 3: Install Apache+PHP+MySQL/MariaDB for NextCloud

Run the following commands to install the Apache along with MySQL and PHP 7.2

sudo apt install apache2
sudo apt install mysql-server
sudo apt-get install php7.2 apache2 libapache2-mod-php7.2
sudo apt-get install php7.2-gd php7.2-json php7.2-mysql php7.2-curl php7.2-mbstring
sudo apt-get install php7.2-intl php-imagick php7.2-xml php7.2-zip php7.2-dom

Step 3: Download & Install NextCloud server on Windows 10

To download the latest version of NextCloud, we need to visit the official download page

As the NextCloud doesn’t offer repository like Owncloud to directly download the server files, so we have two options either via SNAP or directly from the website.

Unfortunately, the SNAP (Snapcraft) is still not workable on Windows subsystem Linux systems, so we can’t use that. Thus, the option which left is via their download page.

On the Next cloud page right click on the Download button and copy the link address.

Now come to Ubuntu (WSL) window and type wget and then press right click of the mouse to paste the link.

wget https://download.nextcloud.com/server/releases/nextcloud-15.0.5.zip

Step 4: Extract NextCloud server files

Extract the zipped file of the Next Cloud and then move that to the web directory

sudo apt install unzip

See the downloaded files

ls

Extract the files…

unzip downloaded_file name

In our case, the downloaded files name was: nextcloud-15.0.5.zip so the command was

unzip nextcloud-15.0.5.zip

Exactly in the same way you have to use your downloaded NextCloud zipped file name.

Step 5: Copy the Nextcloud files to Apache web directory

After extracting its time to move the nextcloud folder to /var/www/html. The command is:

sudo mv nextcloud /var/www/html/nextcloud/
or

sudo cp -R nextcloud/ /var/www/html/

Create a data folder inside the copied folder

sudo mkdir /var/www/html/nextcloud/data

Set the permission to the nextcloud directory

sudo chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www/html/nextcloud/
sudo chmod -R 755 /var/www/html/nextcloud/

Step 6: Create a new configuration file called nextcloud.conf

Now, we will create an Apache configuration file for NextCloud to tell Apache how to let users access our cloud storage. For this purpose, manually create a configuration file named nextcloud.conf.

The command is:

sudo nano /etc/apache2/sites-available/nextcloud.conf

After the above step adds the following lines in the configuration file:

<VirtualHost *:80>

DocumentRoot /var/www/html/nextcloud/

Alias /nextcloud "/var/www/html/nextcloud/"

<Directory /var/www/html/nextcloud/>
Options +FollowSymlinks
AllowOverride All
Require all granted
<IfModule mod_dav.c>
Dav off
</IfModule>
SetEnv HOME /var/www/html/nextcloud
SetEnv HTTP_HOME /var/www/html/nextcloud
</Directory>

ErrorLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/error.log
CustomLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/access.log combined

</VirtualHost>

To save and exit the files first press CTRL+O and then CTRL+X.

Enable the newly created site:

sudo service apache2 reload

sudo a2ensite nextcloud.conf
sudo apt update

Step 7: Commands for Additional Apache configurations

Enable the following modules for proper Nextcloud working…

sudo a2enmod rewrite
sudo a2enmod headers
sudo a2enmod env
sudo a2enmod dir
sudo a2enmod setenvif
sudo a2enmod mime

Restart Apache to make the installed modules effective:

sudo service apache2 stop
sudo service apache2 start

Step 8: Create MySQL/MariaDB database for NextCloud

We have done almost everything related to web server setting for the Next cloud and its time to create a database plus user for the same.

The commands are as following:

sudo mysql

Create a database, we are giving it a name nextdb you can give whatever you would like…

CREATE DATABASE nextdb;

Create a Database user along with password and assigned all the right or above-created database to it.

Note: h2smedia is username and next@123 is the password. You can change them with your choice. Whereas the nextdb is the above-created database name.

GRANT ALL ON nextdb.* to 'h2smedia'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'next@123';

Flush the privileges so that MySQL can recognize the changes and then exit.

FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
exit

Step 9 – Setup and Configuring NetCloud server on Windows 10

Finally, go to your browser and type http://localhost/nextcloud or http://127.0.01/nextcloud. It will guide to open an account creation and database setup page of NextCloud.

Enter the username and password which you want to assign to the Admin account for Next cloud. And then below that enter the details of the database we have created above and click on the Finish Setup button. That’s it.

This is the way to install NextCloud server cloud storage in Windows 10 without the installation of any software like WAMP or XAMMP.

Other Resources to read:

Hi Jester,
Tim this side, I am also playing around WSL to learn its curves…

What I understand that you want to start MySQL automatically every time during the system boot. However, in WSL it would be a problem but on the real system, it will start automatically without any problem, as far as I know. Still, here is the link to a script for MySQL available on Ubuntu forum you can try it out:
http://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/bionic/man1/mysql.server.1.html

Other Question of yours which is cloning of Ubuntu system:

You should not clone the WSL running system because it would not be feasible. As it is a kind of virtual machine and when you try to clone it to other hardware it will create problem. Just copy all the data and packa all the installed service in a package file which later we can run on the new Ubuntu system to install all the packages and services which were there on old one. Below I am giving the commands:

However, if you are using the Ubuntu on some PC or other hardware then you can use the Clonezilla or bare metal backup software those will clone your system and deploy it exactly on new ones.
Coming to the point:
If you want to transfer old machine to a brand new machine but you won’t like to spend hours tuning it to get the same configuration as the one you have used for years?

Let’s transfer your Ubuntu configuration and applications to your new computer in three simple steps.

Note: The same version of Ubuntu should be installed on both machines. The architecture (32/64 bit) can be different.

Step 1: Store the list of installed packages

Run the following command on the source machine to store the installed packages names in ~/pkglist:

sudo dpkg –get-selections | sed “s/.*deinstall//” | sed “s/install$//g” > ~/pkglist

Step 2: Transfer your config

Use scp or rsync or even a flash drive to transfer your home directory (~/*, ~/.*), the source list (/etc/apt/sources.list) and any other files you customized or installed (like apache config under /etc or softwares on /opt) from the source machine to the target one.

Step 3: Install packages

On the target machine run the following command in a failsafe terminal session to install your packages:

sudo aptitude update && cat pkglist | xargs sudo aptitude install -y

Let me know if it works for you!!!!

42 COMMENTS

DigitalJester88 March 12, 2019 At 11:16 pm
This post saved me from giving up until I got this right when I ran
sudo mysql
The output was as follows
ERROR 2002 (HY000): Can’t connect to local MySQL server through socket ‘/var/run/mysqld/mysqld.sock’ (2 “No such file or directory”)
I have spent hours trying to fix this with no change in the outcome I am very lost if you or anyone have a idea I’m all ears. Thanks.
- H2S Media Team March 13, 2019 At 1:39 pm
  Actually, we need to start the mysql service. Use the command sudo service mysql start
  - DigitalJester88 March 13, 2019 At 6:57 pm
    Sir I promise you I did that more times then I care to count never fixed it, even tried it again with no result. However and I don’t know why I installed Synaptic and Xserver and rolled through php, apache, and mariadb installs in full. Then restarted my PC and the server as well as ran [sudo service mysql start]….. Now it works! I have a question that I feel should be covered in this for good reason. When I restart the PC at any point will commands need to be run to restart the server and if so is there a way to setup a single script icon for it to do so in a batch action? O yes and one more, I plan to move this to a server after testing do I have a option to clone this as it will all be the same info as current?
    - Tim master March 14, 2019 At 5:07 am
      Hi Jester,
      Tim this side, I am also playing around WSL to learn its curves…
      What I understand that you want to start MySQL automatically every time during the system boot. However, in WSL it would be a problem but on the real system, it will start automatically without any problem, as far as I know. Still, here is the link to a script for MySQL available on Ubuntu forum you can try it out:
      http://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/bionic/man1/mysql.server.1.html
      Other Question of yours which is cloning of Ubuntu system:
      You should not clone the WSL running system because it would not be feasible. As it is a kind of virtual machine and when you try to clone it to other hardware it will create problem. Just copy all the data and packa all the installed service in a package file which later we can run on the new Ubuntu system to install all the packages and services which were there on old one. Below I am giving the commands:
      However, if you are using the Ubuntu on some PC or other hardware then you can use the Clonezilla or bare metal backup software those will clone your system and deploy it exactly on new ones.
      Coming to the point:
      If you want to transfer old machine to a brand new machine but you won’t like to spend hours tuning it to get the same configuration as the one you have used for years?
      Let’s transfer your Ubuntu configuration and applications to your new computer in three simple steps.
      Note: The same version of Ubuntu should be installed on both machines. The architecture (32/64 bit) can be different.
      Step 1: Store the list of installed packages
      Run the following command on the source machine to store the installed packages names in ~/pkglist:
      sudo dpkg –get-selections | sed “s/.*deinstall//” | sed “s/install$//g” > ~/pkglist
      Step 2: Transfer your config
      Use scp or rsync or even a flash drive to transfer your home directory (~/*, ~/.*), the source list (/etc/apt/sources.list) and any other files you customized or installed (like apache config under /etc or softwares on /opt) from the source machine to the target one.
      Step 3: Install packages
      On the target machine run the following command in a failsafe terminal session to install your packages:
      sudo aptitude update && cat pkglist | xargs sudo aptitude install -y
      Let me know if it works for you!!!!
DigitalJester88 March 18, 2019 At 8:23 pm
Sorry Been very busy I have many questions about this and would like to try and perfect this method of install. I’m would like to get in to much deeper detail about the goal I have and the outcome that I seem to be getting. However I don’t feel the comments section on this post is the correct place to be posting a book of details and plans but you guys have been very helpful. The main goal here is for a 100% free Nextcloud server that can be run on a windows 10 enterprise pc that is a daily driver I have a NAS/Server but this is for the people that don’t have the ability or money. I would like to know where would be best that this guide can be perfected and hopefully worked on with as may people as possible for the maximum stability. This guide made my idea come alive and I want it to grow in the best way without the troll input that I have seen on some sites please give me the best input you can without hurting your own traffic. Thank you for the help so far!
Eric Hamby April 14, 2019 At 5:09 am
STEP 3…
Cant install any of them, error said files not found.
- H2S Media Team April 16, 2019 At 1:22 pm
  Try sudo apt-get install apache2 mysql-server libapache2-mod-php7.2
  - abuke May 3, 2019 At 6:39 am
    Does not work
    - abuke May 3, 2019 At 7:00 am
      Nevermind…ran sudo apt update
Steven Webber April 24, 2019 At 12:35 pm
Forgot this Right before installing anything
sudo apt update
Paulianick June 6, 2019 At 3:02 am
Hey Having trouble on Step 6. I get into the GNU nano 2.9.3 and it gives me a [ Error Writing /etc/apache2/sites-avaible/nextcloud.conf: no such file or directory ]
Mark Ramsay July 6, 2019 At 11:16 am
Failed on the first step (sudo apt-get install apache2 mysql-server libapache2-mod-php7.2
) with following errors:
Cannot open /proc/net/unix: No such file or directory
Cannot stat file /proc/1/fd/5: Operation not permitted
Cannot stat file /proc/3/fd/7: Operation not permitted
- Mark Ramsay October 7, 2019 At 6:52 am
  I found out “/proc is an interface that needs to be implemented by Microsoft, since it needs to be implemented using Windows API calls.”
  If /proc is not implemented, how are you managing to install on WSL?
Marcus July 23, 2019 At 7:24 pm
Hey guys,
First thanks for the tutorial. After starting nextcloud (http://127.0.0.1/nextcloud/index.php) I get the following messages:
Error
No database drivers (sqlite, mysql, or postgresql) installed.
PHP module GD not installed.
Please ask your server administrator to install the module.
PHP module cURL not installed.
Please ask your server administrator to install the module.
PHP modules have been installed, but they are still listed as missing?
Please ask your server administrator to restart the web server.
Can you help?
Thx Marcus
- H2S Media Team July 23, 2019 At 7:48 pm
  On Your Ubuntu WSL, again run these commands one by one and see all of them are installed properly.
  sudo apt-get install php7.2-gd sudo apt-get install php7.2-curl sudo apt-get install php7.2-mysql
  If yes, then restart the Apache
  sudo service apache2 stop sudo service apache2 start
  Also make sure the Mysql service is up and running
  sudo service mysql start
  - Hirak Desai November 20, 2019 At 11:10 am
    This didnt work for me. I endup getting back on the http://localhost/nextcloud/index.php page and even if I did what you said it ends up giving the same result. PLS HELPP
Marcus July 23, 2019 At 8:10 pm
So easy…I could swear that I did this before ;). Thank you
Trever July 26, 2019 At 8:25 pm
Step 5: sudo mv nextcloud /var/www/html/nextcloud/
it says mv: cannot move ‘nextcloud’ to ‘/var/www/html/nextcloud/’: No such file or directory
What do I do?
- Paul August 22, 2019 At 8:06 am
  Have you found any solution? Im stuck here too~
  - H2S Media Team August 22, 2019 At 10:36 am
    Try either of these commands
    For copy Nextcloud folder
    sudo cp -R nextcloud/ /var/www/html/
    or
    For completely moving it.
    sudo mv nextcloud /var/www/html/
  - Trever September 9, 2019 At 2:10 pm
    For some reason if I did sudo mkdir /var/www/
    and then sudo mkdir /var/www/html
    then do the sudo mv (or create the nextcloud folder then do it)
    It worked…no idea why
Terry August 26, 2019 At 1:20 am
I can access local host so how do I access from outside my network?
Yes, I’m a dummy.
- H2S Media Team August 26, 2019 At 10:25 am
  You just have to forward your local IP-address of PC in your router for port 80 to access it remotely via the internet.
  In the below-given article’s second part, you will see the author has forwarded the router port for FTP server, instead of FTP select the HTTP or 80 port of a router for NextCloud. Note: the interface of your router and location of the options would be different.
  https://www.how2shout.com/how-to/setup-ftp-server-windows-10-87-locally-internet.html
dazzil August 29, 2019 At 5:48 am
Thank you very much for this tutorial.
One very important question: Since I want to use nextcloud from anywhere I definitely want to use an encrypted connection. How can I enable ssl with this type of setup? Many thanks in advance!
- H2S Media Team September 4, 2019 At 6:20 am
  Are you planning to use some FUll Qualified domain or naked public Ipaddress? Most SSL certificates are bound to the hostname of the machine and not the IP address. Thus, it is recommended to buy a domain and an SSL certificated from the same place and after that point that domain to your Next cloud IP address using DNS section of DOMAIN.
dazzil August 29, 2019 At 5:01 pm
Another question: Is it possible to change the data folder to a different windows drive? As far as I understand, in this tutorial data would be stored on drive c, right?
- H2S Media Team September 4, 2019 At 7:19 am
  Yes, it is possible to change the default drive for storing the NextCloud Data.
  For example you want to move your Nextcloud data location D: drive
  sudo mkdir -p /mnt/d/new
  sudo cp -a /var/www/html/nextcloud/data/ . /mnt/d/new
  sudo chown -R www-data:www-data /mnt/d/new/data
  sudo nano /path/to/nextcloud/config/config.php
  Find line:
  ‘datadirectory’ and change its path with new one i.e /mnt/d/new/data
  - dazzil September 4, 2019 At 7:37 pm
    Thanks a lot!
    Unfortunately, after trying this nextcloud says that my folder is not valid and that I should make sure that .ocdata is there, but the file exists.
    Before you answered, I tried it with different tutorials but this did also not work, getting permissions to work outside of the ubuntu win10 folder seems to be very difficult. Do you have any tipps to get it work?
    - H2S Media Team September 5, 2019 At 5:53 am
      Which folder you are trying to access within the WSL, is that folder outside the Windows filesystem? I mean any remote folder.
DMTwo September 1, 2019 At 12:00 am
Hi There!
I followed your guide and my NextCloud server is running nicely!
I managed to access external storage, but I can’t write or delete to the external folders.
Do you guys how could we manage to make it work?
Ilan September 20, 2019 At 12:24 pm
Dear friends,
After doing “sudo apt install mysql” I received this messages:
Reading package lists… Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information… Done
E: Unable to locate package mysql
I already did “sudo apt update”.
Any ideas?
Thank you!
- H2S Media Team September 20, 2019 At 12:29 pm
  Use: sudo apt install mysql-server
GabeW September 29, 2019 At 4:16 am
Noob here, but I’ve made it nearly to step 7, but I’m having issues enabling the newly created site. It appears as though Apache2 cannot start. when I try to just run sudo service apache2 start, I get a permission denied error that looks like a port access issue.
When I run sudo lsof -i:80 I see no response. Any tips???
gwaller@Home-PC:~$ sudo service apache2 reload
* Reloading Apache httpd web server apache2 *
* Apache2 is not running
gwaller@Home-PC:~$ sudo service apache2 start
* Starting Apache httpd web server apache2 (13)Permission denied: AH00072: make_sock: could not bind to address [::]:80
(13)Permission denied: AH00072: make_sock: could not bind to address 0.0.0.0:80
no listening sockets available, shutting down
AH00015: Unable to open logs
Action ‘start’ failed.
The Apache error log may have more information.
*
gwaller@Home-PC:~$ sudo lsof -i:80
gwaller@Home-PC:~$
- Taapan September 30, 2019 At 2:03 pm
  I have got the same error…
  Simply edit apache ports confgiruation file and change Listen 80 to Listen port: 8080
  sudo nano /etc/apache2/ports.conf
  Then type:
  sudo service apache2 stop
  sudo service apache2 start
  if you get same error; start apache2 again using the above command.
  Once it get started. You can access the server at 8080 port.
  Now again edit port configuration file ports.conf and change the Listen 8080 to Listen 80
  Again
  stop and start the server, if get error; fire the Apache2 service start command one or two times given above to flush cache in case is there.
  - GabeW September 30, 2019 At 3:59 pm
    I got it to listen to 8080, but would never go back to 80.
    Also in order for it to work with 8080, I also had to add “AcceptFilter http none” to the end of apache2/ports.conf
    I was getting a (92)Protocol not available: AH00076: Failed to enable APR_TCP_DEFER_ACCEPT.
    Even though I never got it back to port 80, I was able to log in via local web browser to http://127.0.01:8080/nextcloud (specifically calling out to use port 8080).
    Is there any issue with leaving it at port 8080?
    (Nextcloud is fully up and running and functional)
Rogelio October 3, 2019 At 9:18 pm
Step 9, problem loading page
- Samuel October 12, 2019 At 4:01 pm
  Same
  - Samuel October 12, 2019 At 4:02 pm
    my bad, should be :8080
James October 20, 2019 At 8:43 pm
how to get server to start when the computer boots?
- Simon October 25, 2019 At 12:13 pm
  Try this answer’s steps: https://superuser.com/questions/1112007/how-to-run-ubuntu-service-on-windows-at-startup
Caleb October 28, 2019 At 2:16 am
Be aware that you may have problems in filenames with special characters, when you install Nextcloud on WSL For example, I had a test folder with “&” character and couldn’t delete it even from web interface. If you sync a lot files, the desktop client will complain about them constantly, the client will not upload some random files. That’s probably because some incompatibility with Windows file system and PHP.
I ended up installing Nextcloud on a Virtualbox VM over real Ubuntu Server. All of the filename problems gone.
JAY November 14, 2019 At 9:11 pm
HOW TO INSTALL SSL?