Introduction to Nextcloud Talk

Nextcloud 14 is a cloud storage platform that offers users the ability to self-host a video and text chat platform called Talk, featuring end-to-end encryption. This guide will walk you through setting up Nextcloud, and show how to use the video chat platform built-into the latest release.

You will need a Linode with Docker CE installed to follow along with the steps in this guide.

To install Docker CE (Community Edition), follow the instructions within one of the guides below:

• Installing and Using Docker on Ubuntu and Debian

• Installing and Using Docker on CentOS and Fedora

For complete instructions on even more Linux distributions, reference the Install Docker Engine section of Docker’s official documentation.

1. Pull and run the Nextcloud image:

    docker run -d -p 8080:80 nextcloud
   

2. In a browser, navigate to port 8080 of your Linode (e.g. 192.0.2.0:8080) to launch the Nextcloud console.

3. Create an admin account when prompted:

Talk works by allowing all the users that are registered to your Nextcloud instance to communicate with each other. Nextcloud Talk offers simple text and video chat, private or group password protected calls, and screen sharing. The Nextcloud Talk source code is available on GitHub.

1. From the Nextcloud console main page, click the Settings icon on the right side of the navigation bar. Choose + Apps.

2. Install the Talk add-on located in the Social & communication section. Select the app and click Enable.

3. Navigate to the Users section of the Nextcloud interface, and create logins for your team.

Nextcloud Talk is built using WebRTC, and works in your browser.

1. Choose Users from the settings menu and add one or more additional users. Give the username and password combinations to each user and have them log in through the web console.

2. Once Talk is installed, an icon for the addon will appear on the nav menu:

   

3. Click this icon to enter Talk and allow the use of your system’s camera and microphone when prompted. Once this is done, you will be able to start a chat or video call with any of the users you have created.

The basic configuration here allows you to make video calls using Firefox. Google Chrome requires an HTTPS connection in order to allow access to the camera and microphone. To do this, create an SSL certificate or place Nextcloud behind a reverse proxy.

The basic Nextcloud Docker image is already configured for persistent data in the event that your container crashes. However, Docker Compose makes it easy to launch a configuration using a separate database container and persistent data volume. This method keeps your data consistent through upgrades and automatically handles all container restarts.

1. Download the latest version of Docker Compose. Check the releases page and replace 1.25.4 in the command below with the version tagged as Latest release:

   sudo curl -L https://github.com/docker/compose/releases/download/1.25.4/docker-compose-`uname -s`-`uname -m` -o /usr/local/bin/docker-compose

2. Set file permissions:

   sudo chmod +x /usr/local/bin/docker-compose

1. In a text editor, create docker-compose.yaml and add the following configuration (from the Nextcloud Github repo). Fill in the MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD and MYSQL_PASSWORD with suitable values.

   File: docker-compose.yaml

   1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27

   version: '2' volumes: nextcloud: db: services: db: image: mariadb restart: always volumes: - db:/var/lib/mysql environment: - MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD= - MYSQL_PASSWORD= - MYSQL_DATABASE=nextcloud - MYSQL_USER=nextcloud app: image: nextcloud ports: - 8080:80 links: - db volumes: - nextcloud:/var/www/html restart: always

2. If it is still running, stop the container from the previous section using docker stop and the container name or ID.

3. Launch the Docker Compose configuration:

   docker-compose up -d
   

   Nextcloud should be available at port 8080 on your Linode’s public IP address.

4. When creating an admin account, open the Storage & database drop-down menu, fill in the information as shown below, and enter the MySQL password you used in the docker-compose file:

   

Caution

The setup provided by Nextcloud does not include any SSL encryption. To secure your data and communications, the Nextcloud service should be placed behind a reverse proxy. A Docker Compose file using a NGINX reverse proxy and Let’s Encrypt is also available.

More Information

You may wish to consult the following resources for additional information on this topic. While these are provided in the hope that they will be useful, please note that we cannot vouch for the accuracy or timeliness of externally hosted materials.

• Nextcloud Docker Image Documentation