Set up ownCloud on Ubuntu with NGINX and MariaDB for self-hosted file storage and sharing.

Prerequisites

• Ubuntu 20.04+ server
• NGINX installed and running
• MariaDB or MySQL installed
• Domain name pointing to your server

Install PHP

sudo apt update
sudo apt install -y php8.1 php8.1-fpm php8.1-gd php8.1-json php8.1-mysql   php8.1-curl php8.1-mbstring php8.1-intl php8.1-imagick   php8.1-xml php8.1-zip php8.1-bcmath php8.1-gmp

Create the Database

sudo mysql -u root -p
CREATE DATABASE owncloud CHARACTER SET utf8mb4 COLLATE utf8mb4_general_ci;
CREATE USER 'owncloud'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'StrongPassword!';
GRANT ALL ON owncloud.* TO 'owncloud'@'localhost';
FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
EXIT;

Download ownCloud

cd /var/www
sudo wget https://download.owncloud.com/server/stable/owncloud-complete-latest.tar.bz2
sudo tar -xjf owncloud-complete-latest.tar.bz2
sudo chown -R www-data:www-data owncloud/

NGINX Configuration

sudo nano /etc/nginx/sites-available/owncloud

server {
    listen 80;
    server_name files.yourdomain.com;
    root /var/www/owncloud;
    index index.php;

    location / {
        try_files $uri $uri/ /index.php$is_args$args;
    }

    location ~ \.php$ {
        include snippets/fastcgi-php.conf;
        fastcgi_pass unix:/run/php/php8.1-fpm.sock;
    }

    location ~* \.(js|css|png|jpg|jpeg|gif|ico|svg)$ {
        expires 30d;
        add_header Cache-Control "public, no-transform";
    }
}

sudo ln -s /etc/nginx/sites-available/owncloud /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/
sudo nginx -t && sudo systemctl reload nginx

Add SSL with Let’s Encrypt

sudo apt install -y certbot python3-certbot-nginx
sudo certbot --nginx -d files.yourdomain.com

Finish Installation

Browse to https://files.yourdomain.com and complete the web installer by entering your database credentials and admin user details.