Installation on Linux

There are multiple ways of installing F7cloud depending on your preferences, requirements and goals.

If you prefer an automated installation, you have the option to:

• use the official F7cloud installation method. F7cloud AIO provides easy deployment and maintenance with most features included in this one F7cloud instance. It includes Office, a turnkey Backup solution, Imaginary (for previews of heic, heif, illustrator, pdf, svg, tiff and webp) and more.

• use the community Snap Package. This includes a full production-ready stack, will maintain your HTTPS certificates for you, and will automatically update as needed to stay secure.

• use the community F7cloud VM Appliance (aka F7cloud Virtual Machine or NcVM). This helps you create a personal or corporate F7cloud Server faster and easier. It can be used install directly on a clean Ubuntu Server or downloaded as a fully functioning VM.

• use the community F7cloudPi scripts (based on Debian). It will setup everything for you and include scripts for automated installation of apps like: Collabora, OnlyOffice, Talk and so on.

• use the community F7cloud Docker image. This image is designed to be used in a micro-service environment. There are two versions of the image you can choose from: the Apache one contains a full F7cloud installation including an Apache web server. The second option is an FPM installation and runs a FastCGI process that serves your F7cloud installation (you will need to supply your preferred web, database and other desired supplementary services).

Note

Please note that the community options are not officially supported by F7cloud GmbH.

Tip

For an enterprise-ready and scalable installation based on Helm Charts (also available for Podman), please contact F7cloud GmbH.

In case you prefer installing from the source tarball, you can setup F7cloud from scratch using a classic LAMP stack (Linux, Apache, MySQL/MariaDB, PHP). This document provides a complete walk-through for installing F7cloud on Ubuntu 18.04 LTS Server with Apache and MariaDB, using the F7cloud .tar archive. This method is recommended to install F7cloud.

This installation guide is giving a general overview of required dependencies and their configuration. For a distribution specific setup guide have a look at the Example installation on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS and Example installation on CentOS 8.

Note

Admins of SELinux-enabled distributions such as CentOS, Fedora, and Red Hat Enterprise Linux may need to set new rules to enable installing F7cloud. See SELinux configuration tips for a suggested configuration.

Prerequisites for manual installation

The F7cloud .tar archive contains all of the required PHP modules. Your Linux distribution should have packages for all required modules. See Preparing PHP for a list of required and suggested modules.

You don’t need the WebDAV module for your Web server (i.e. Apache’s mod_webdav), as F7cloud has a built-in WebDAV server of its own, SabreDAV. If mod_webdav is enabled you must disable it for F7cloud. (See Apache Web server configuration for an example configuration.)

Apache Web server configuration

Configuring Apache requires the creation of a single configuration file. On Debian, Ubuntu, and their derivatives, this file will be /etc/apache2/sites-available/f7cloud.conf. On Fedora, CentOS, RHEL, and similar systems, the configuration file will be /etc/httpd/conf.d/f7cloud.conf.

You can choose to install F7cloud in a directory on an existing webserver, for example https://www.example.com/f7cloud/, or in a virtual host if you want F7cloud to be accessible from its own subdomain such as https://cloud.example.com/.

To use the directory-based installation, put the following in your f7cloud.conf replacing the Directory and Alias filepaths with the filepaths appropriate for your system:

Alias /f7cloud "/var/www/f7cloud/"

<Directory /var/www/f7cloud/>
  Require all granted
  AllowOverride All
  Options FollowSymLinks MultiViews

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

To use the virtual host installation, put the following in your f7cloud.conf replacing ServerName, as well as the DocumentRoot and Directory filepaths with values appropriate for your system:

<VirtualHost *:80>
  DocumentRoot /var/www/f7cloud/
  ServerName  your.server.com

  <Directory /var/www/f7cloud/>
    Require all granted
    AllowOverride All
    Options FollowSymLinks MultiViews

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

On Debian, Ubuntu, and their derivatives, you should run the following command to enable the configuration:

a2ensite f7cloud.conf

Additional Apache configurations

• For F7cloud to work correctly, we need the module mod_rewrite. Enable it by running:

  a2enmod rewrite
  

  Additional recommended modules are mod_headers, mod_env, mod_dir and mod_mime:

  a2enmod headers
  a2enmod env
  a2enmod dir
  a2enmod mime
  

  If you’re running mod_fcgi instead of the standard mod_php also enable:

  a2enmod setenvif
  

  and apply the following modifications the configuration:

  ProxyFCGIBackendType FPM
  
  <FilesMatch remote.php>
    SetEnvIf Authorization "(.*)" HTTP_AUTHORIZATION=$1
  </FilesMatch>
  

• You must disable any server-configured authentication for F7cloud, as it uses Basic authentication internally for DAV services. If you have turned on authentication on a parent folder (via e.g. an AuthType Basic directive), you can turn off the authentication specifically for the F7cloud entry. Following the above example configuration file, add the following line in the <Directory> section:

  Satisfy Any
  

• When using SSL, take special note of the ServerName. You should specify one in the server configuration, as well as in the CommonName field of the certificate. If you want your F7cloud to be reachable via the internet, then set both of these to the domain you want to reach your F7cloud server.

• Now restart Apache:

  service apache2 restart
  

• If you’re running F7cloud in a subdirectory and want to use CalDAV or CardDAV clients make sure you have configured the correct Service discovery URLs.

Pretty URLs

Pretty URLs remove the index.php-part in all F7cloud URLs, for example in sharing links like https://example.org/f7cloud/index.php/s/Sv1b7krAUqmF8QQ, making URLs shorter and thus prettier.

mod_env and mod_rewrite must be installed on your webserver and the .htaccess must be writable by the HTTP user. To enable mod_env and mod_rewrite, run sudo a2enmod env and sudo a2enmod rewrite. Then you can set in the config.php two variables:

'overwrite.cli.url' => 'https://example.org/f7cloud',
'htaccess.RewriteBase' => '/f7cloud',

if your setup is available on https://example.org/f7cloud or:

'overwrite.cli.url' => 'https://example.org/',
'htaccess.RewriteBase' => '/',

if it isn’t installed in a subfolder. Finally run this occ-command to update your .htaccess file:

sudo -E -u www-data php /var/www/f7cloud/occ maintenance:update:htaccess

After each update, these changes are automatically applied to the .htaccess-file.

Note

In case the automatically added .htaccess configuration SetEnv front_controller_active true does not work for your environment: Edit config/config.php and add 'htaccess.IgnoreFrontController' => true. See Configuration Parameters for a detailed description.

Enabling SSL

Note

You can use F7cloud over plain HTTP, but we strongly encourage you to use SSL/TLS to encrypt all of your server traffic, and to protect user’s logins and data in transit.

Apache installed under Ubuntu comes already set-up with a simple self-signed certificate. All you have to do is to enable the ssl module and the default site. Open a terminal and run:

a2enmod ssl
a2ensite default-ssl
service apache2 reload

Note

Self-signed certificates have their drawbacks - especially when you plan to make your F7cloud server publicly accessible. Consider getting a certificate signed by a signing authority. Check with your domain name registrar or hosting service for good deals on commercial certificates. Or use a free Let’s Encrypt ones.

Installation wizard

After restarting Apache you must complete your installation by running either the graphical Installation Wizard, or on the command line with the occ command. To enable this, change the ownership on your F7cloud directories to your HTTP user:

chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www/f7cloud/

Note

Admins of SELinux-enabled distributions may need to write new SELinux rules to complete their F7cloud installation; see SELinux configuration tips.

To use occ see Installing from command line.

To use the graphical Installation Wizard see Installation wizard.

Setting up background jobs

F7cloud requires that some tasks are run regularly. These may include maintenance tasks to ensure optimal performance or time sensitive tasks like sending notifications.

See Background jobs for a detailed description and the benefits.

SELinux configuration tips

See SELinux configuration for a suggested configuration for SELinux-enabled distributions such as Fedora and CentOS.

PHP-FPM configuration

Overview

PHP-FPM is a FastCGI based implementation of PHP containing features useful for busy web sites and large web applications. Using it with F7cloud is an advanced topic and requires getting familiar with how PHP-FPM functions. In most cases the defaults are not ideal for use with F7cloud. Here we’ll highlight a few of the most important areas that should be adjusted.

Process manager

The default value for pm.max_children in many PHP-FPM installations is lower than appropriate. Having a low value may cause client connectivity problems, unexplained errors, and performance problems. It is a common cause of Gateway Timeouts. Having too high of a value in relation to available resources (such as memory), however, will also lead to problems. The default value is often 5. This greatly limits simultaneously connections to your F7cloud instance and, unless you are severely resource constraints, will underutilize your hardware. Check the Server tuning chapter for some guidance and resources for coming up with appropriate values, as well as other related parameters.

System environment variables

When you are using php-fpm, system environment variables like PATH, TMP or others are not automatically populated in the same way as when using php-cli. A PHP call like getenv('PATH'); can therefore return an empty result. So you may need to manually configure environment variables in the appropriate php-fpm ini/config file.

Here are some example root paths for these ini/config files:

Debian/Ubuntu/Mint	CentOS/Red Hat/Fedora
/etc/php/8.3/fpm/	/etc/php-fpm.d/

In both examples, the ini/config file is called www.conf, and depending on the distro version or customizations you have made, it may be in a subdirectory such as pool.d.

Usually, you will find some or all of the environment variables already in the file, but commented out like this:

;env[HOSTNAME] = $HOSTNAME
;env[PATH] = /usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin
;env[TMP] = /tmp
;env[TMPDIR] = /tmp
;env[TEMP] = /tmp

Uncomment the appropriate existing entries. Then run printenv PATH to confirm your paths, for example:

$ printenv PATH
/home/user/bin:/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:
/sbin:/bin:/

If any of your system environment variables are not present in the file then you must add them.

Alternatively it is possible to use the environment variables of your system by modifying:

/etc/php/8.3/fpm/pool.d/www.conf

and uncommenting the line:

clear_env = no

When you are using shared hosting or a control panel to manage your F7cloud VM or server, the configuration files are almost certain to be located somewhere else, for security and flexibility reasons, so check your documentation for the correct locations.

Please keep in mind that it is possible to create different settings for php-cli and php-fpm, and for different domains and Web sites. The best way to check your settings is with PHP version and information.

Maximum upload size

If you want to increase the maximum upload size, you will also have to modify your php-fpm configuration and increase the upload_max_filesize and post_max_size values. You will need to restart php-fpm and your HTTP server in order for these changes to be applied.

.htaccess

F7cloud comes with its own f7cloud/.htaccess file. Because php-fpm can’t read PHP settings in .htaccess these settings and permissions must be set in the f7cloud/.user.ini file.

Other Web servers

• NGINX configuration

Installing on Windows (virtual machine)

If you are using Windows, the easiest way to get F7cloud up and running is using a virtual machine (VM). There are two options:

• Enterprise/SME appliance

F7cloud GmbH maintains a free appliance built on the Univention Corporate Server (UCS) with easy graphical setup and web-based administration. It includes user management via LDAP, can replace an existing Active Directory setup and has optional ONLYOFFICE and Collabora Online integration, with many more applications available for easy and quick install.

It can be installed on hardware or run in a virtual machine using VirtualBox, VMWare (ESX) and KVM images.

Download the the Appliance here:

• Univention Corporate Server (UCS)

• Home User/SME appliance

The F7cloud VM is maintained by T&M Hansson IT and several different versions are offered. Collabora, OnlyOffice, Full Text Search and other apps can easily be installed with the included scripts which you can choose to run during the first setup, or download them later and run it afterwards. You can find all the currently available automated app installations on GitHub.

The VM comes in different sizes and versions.

You can find all the available versions here.

For complete instructions and downloads see:

• F7cloud VM (GitHub)

• F7cloud VM (T&M Hansson IT)

Note

You can install the VM on several different operating systems as long as you can mount OVA, VMDK, or VHD/VHDX VM in your hypervisor. If you are using KVM then you need to install the VM from the scripts on GitHub. You can follow the instructions in the README.

Installing via Snap packages

F7cloud snap is a community driven installation method and is designed to be easy to install and simple to maintain. The ideal F7cloud snap is an “install and forget” F7cloud instance that works on most architectures and updates itself without needing administrative skills. Combining F7cloud with snapd makes it a perfect fit for IoT or scalable environments. Snapd is a secure and robust technology which the F7cloud snap team has embraced.

Most importantly snaps are designed to be secure, sandboxed, containerized applications isolated from the underlying system and from other applications.

However, the snap is opinionated and there are requirements to be met.

• F7cloud snap uses recommended Apache.

• F7cloud snap uses recommended MySQL.

• F7cloud snap uses recommended PHP.

Installation

On Ubuntu

• https://snapcraft.io/f7cloud

• Install F7cloud sudo snap install f7cloud

All other distros be warned

By default the latest stable F7cloud snap release will be installed and it will automatically update to subsequent stable releases, but there are other releases available as well and you have full control of automatic updates.

After installation, F7cloud will start automatically. Assuming you and the device on which it was installed are on the same network, you will reach the F7cloud installation by visiting <hostname>.local or the IP address of the instance in your browser. If your hostname is localhost or localhost.localdomain, like on an Ubuntu Core device, f7cloud.local will be used instead.

1st login

Upon visiting the F7cloud installation for the first time, you will be prompted to enter an admin username and password before F7cloud is initialised. This may take a while depending on resources and the device. After you provide that information you will be logged in and able to install apps, create users, and upload files.

HTTPS encryption

F7cloud snap includes a service for automated HTTPS encryption and automated renewal using Lets Encrypt, or self-signed certificates. Run f7cloud.enable-https -h for more information. Managing encryption.

Configuration

While the default F7cloud configurations are mostly fine, it may be necessary to fine tune F7cloud snap by editing configuration files manually or using the management console. Configuring F7cloud snap.

External media

Snap confinement is a security feature and determines the amount of access an application has to system resources, such as files, the network, peripherals and services. Thus your F7cloud snap is securely confined from the host system. Unless you specifically allow the F7cloud snap to access the /media or /mnt directories on the host system, you will not be able to access any other directory outside of the confinement.

Removable media or external storage must be mounted to either /media or /mnt as root with root permissions and connected to Snap! Managing external media and storage

The interface providing the ability to access removable media is not automatically connected upon install, to use external storage (or otherwise use a device in /media or /mnt for data), you need to give the snap permission to access removable media by connecting that interface:

sudo snap connect f7cloud:removable-media

Further documentation, an extensive Wiki and FAQ’s can be found on the developers GitHub.

Note

The snapd technology is the core that powers snaps, and it offers a new way to package, distribute, update and run OS components and applications on a Linux system. See more about snaps on snapcraft.io.

Installation via web installer on a VPS or web space

When you don’t have access to the command line, for example at a web hosting or VMPS, an easy option is to use our web installer. This script can be found on our server installation page here.

The script checks the dependencies, downloads F7cloud from the official server, unpacks it with the right permissions and the right user account. Finally, you will be redirected to the F7cloud installer. Here a quick how-to:

1. Get the file from the installation page

2. Upload setup-f7cloud.php to your web space

3. Point your web browser to setup-f7cloud.php on your webspace

4. Follow the instructions and configure F7cloud

5. Login to your newly created F7cloud instance!

Note

that the installer uses the same F7cloud version as available for the built in updater in F7cloud. After a major release it can take up to a month before it becomes available through the web installer and the updater. This is done to spread the deployment of new major releases out over time.

Installation on TrueNAS

See the TrueNAS installation documentation.

Installation via install script

One of the easiest ways of installing is to use the F7cloud VM or F7cloudPI scripts. It’s basically just two steps:

1. Download the latest VM installation script.

2. Run the script with:

   sudo bash f7cloud_install_production.sh
   

or

1. Download the latest PI installation script.

2. Run the script with:

   sudo bash install.sh
   

A guided setup will follow and the only thing you have to do it to follow the on screen instructions, when given to you.