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Self-host Nextcloud with Docker Compose

The better Microsoft 365 for private clouds.

nextcloud

postgres

postgres:18.3-alpine3.23

The steps below take a few minutes end to end.

  1. Docker compose setup and file
    save the generated compose and env files.
  2. Secret generation
    create the random passwords Nextcloud needs.
  3. Start Nextcloud with Docker Compose
    bring the stack up and check it's healthy.

Requirements

You'll need these installed on the machine you're deploying to:

Docker

Packages Nextcloud and everything it depends on into an isolated container, so it runs the same way on your machine as it does everywhere else.

Install guide

Docker Compose

Reads docker-compose.ymland starts everything in it together. Ships with Docker Desktop. On Linux servers it's usually a separate install.

Install guide

1. Docker compose setup and file

Create a folder for Nextcloud and save the file below into it as docker-compose.yml. It describes every container the stack needs — Nextclouditself and any supporting services, such as its database — along with the ports, volumes and environment variables each one uses. You'll also need an empty .env file in the same folder; Docker Compose reads it automatically and uses it to fill in the ${VARIABLE}references you'll see in the file below.

docker-compose.yml

version: "3.9"
services:
  nextcloud:
    image: nextcloud:latest
    restart: unless-stopped
    ports:
      - 80:80
    environment:
      NEXTCLOUD_ADMIN_PASSWORD: admin
      NEXTCLOUD_ADMIN_USER: admin
      NEXTCLOUD_TRUSTED_DOMAINS: localhost
      OVERWRITEPROTOCOL: https
      POSTGRES_DB: app
      POSTGRES_HOST: localhost
      POSTGRES_PASSWORD: ${RANDOM_PG_PASSWORD}
      POSTGRES_USER: app
    volumes:
      - data:/var/www/html
      - apache-run:/var/run/apache2
      - apache-log:/var/log/apache2
    healthcheck:
      test:
        - CMD
        - curl
        - -f
        - http://localhost:80/status.php
      interval: 10s
      timeout: 5s
      retries: 5
  postgres:
    image: postgres:18.3-alpine3.23
    restart: unless-stopped
    network_mode: service:nextcloud
    environment:
      POSTGRES_PASSWORD: ${RANDOM_PG_PASSWORD}
      POSTGRES_USER: app
volumes:
  apache-log: null
  apache-run: null
  data: null

Volumes

Nextcloud stores its data in named Docker volumes, so it survives container restarts and updates:

  • data mounted at /var/www/html
  • apache-run mounted at /var/run/apache2: Apache's runtime dir where apache2-foreground writes apache2.pid. On the read-only root filesystem Apache fails to start with "cannot create /var/run/apache2/apache2.pid: Read-only file system" unless this is a writable volume.
  • apache-log mounted at /var/log/apache2: Apache error/access log dir, opened for writing at startup and not writable on the read-only root filesystem.

2. Secret generation

Nextcloud needs a few randomly generated secrets — for example, database passwords or an internal session key — before it can start. These are referenced from docker-compose.ymlabove but don't live in it, so they need to end up in your .env file. Pick one of the two options below.

Generating secrets…

3. Start Nextcloud with Docker Compose

From the folder with docker-compose.yml and .env, run:

Terminal

Start Nextcloud and all its supporting services in the background.

docker compose up -d

The -d flag runs the stack in the background so it keeps running after you close the terminal. Docker will pull the images the first time, which can take a minute or two.

To check on it afterwards: docker compose ps shows whether containers are healthy, and docker compose logs -f follows their logs if something looks wrong. Once it's running, open http://localhost:80 in your browser.