Finally, after all the hard work of installing basic infrastructure services and supporting applications, it’s time to install NextCloud and Samba. These two applications are configured together in one docker-compose.yml. And like Gitea, there are a pre-deployment and post-deployment tasks.
By the end of this step, you will have:
You don’t have to run Nextcloud or Samba. If you’re only interested in home automation or one of the other applications, fell free to skip it.
Running these applicaitons involves the same procedure as Gitea. First, download the files locally, and then follow these steps.
Where you store the Ansible and Docker Compose files is up to you, but it’s easiest to group them together in a single subdirectory. You can use Portainer or docker-compose to deploy the application stack.
The output from the pre-deploy.yml playbook is shown below.
pi@mypi:~/cloudpi/file-sharing $ ansible-playbook pre-deploy.yml
PLAY [Run NextCloud pre-deployment tasks] ***************************************
TASK [Gathering Facts] **********************************************************
ok: [localhost]
TASK [Install SQLite client] ****************************************************
changed: [localhost]
TASK [Create Nextcloud configuration data directory] ****************************
changed: [localhost]
TASK [Create directory for Samba media share] ***********************************
changed: [localhost]
TASK [Create directory for Samba public share] **********************************
changed: [localhost]
TASK [Create directory for samba shared share] **********************************
changed: [localhost]
PLAY RECAP **********************************************************************
localhost : ok=6 changed=5 unreachable=0 failed=0 skipped=0 rescued=0 ignored=0
The docker-compose.yml file was deployed with Portainer and is not shown.
The post-deploy.yml playbook output looks like this:
pi@anubis:~/cloudpi/file-sharing $ ansible-playbook post-deploy.yml
PLAY [Run NextCloud post-deployment tasks] **************************************
TASK [Gathering Facts] **********************************************************
ok: [localhost]
TASK [Scheduling background jobs] ***********************************************
changed: [localhost]
TASK [Checking for Nginx installation] ******************************************
ok: [localhost]
TASK [Creating Nextcloud reverse proxy config] **********************************
changed: [localhost]
RUNNING HANDLER [Reloading Nginx config] ****************************************
changed: [localhost]
PLAY RECAP **********************************************************************
localhost : ok=5 changed=3 unreachable=0 failed=0 skipped=0 rescued=0 ignored=0
The Nextcloud documentation has a guide for configuring LDAP. The configuration tool has plenty of ways to test the connection and settings along the way.
There is also an LDAP Hints file that gives guidance on the parameters for applications used in this projects.
You’ll find clients for desktop and mobile on the NextCloud Client web page. Installation is straight-forward and Nextcloud provides a very comprehensive Client Manual.
One thing to look out for is how the files will sync from the server to the PC. The default is to use what’s called virtual file support. This mode display file names, but only transfers the actual contents when the file is first accessed. Virtual file support speeds things up by only transferring on demand, but it hinders off-line access for self-hosted installations. (If you’re not connected to your home network, you can’t sync.)
One way to approach this feature is to virtual file support for mobile devices with minimal external storage, and change disable virtual file support on desktops with plenty of hard drive space.
You can use the point and click features of your OS to map drives to your Raspberry Pi’s Samba shares, or you can use a batch file to automate it. A command like the following shows how.
net use m: \\mypi\media /persistent:yes
There’s also a map-drives.bat batch file you can download and customize.
Now that you have file sharing running on your Raspberry Pi, there are very few tasks left in the project. If all you wanted was a file sharing cloud, you can stop here. If you want to take things a step further, there’s another step for deploying home automation.
The good thing about standards is that there are so many to choose from. —Andrew Tanenbaum