Uploading large files can take a very long time. If the process takes
longer than the configured timeout in Apache, it will be aborted and the
client will receive an HTTP 504 Gateway Timeout error. Increasing the
timeout will help alleviate this for files up to a certain size.
Notably, it now lets me upload Signal backups without errors.
Nextcloud thinks it needs to run the upgrade/migration tool if the
version number in its configuration file does not match the running
version. It then updates the config file with the correct version. The
next time the configuration policy is applied, however, the version will
revert back to whatever is set in the template. This will re-trigger
the upgrade notification.
To avoid this problem, we now set the version in the configuration file
dynamically. Nextcloud writes its version number in a constant in
`version.php`.
Nextcloud uses double backslashes in its fully-qualified path names.
Although single backslashes work, the application will replace them,
leading to a constant conflict between itself and the Ansible template.
Since the Nextcloud configuration file is managed by the configuration
policy, all of the settings configurable through the web UI need to be
templated. One important group of settings is the outbound email
configuration. This can now be configured using the `nextcloud_smtp`
Ansible variable.
Fedora now includes a packaged version of Nextcloud. This will be
_much_ easier to maintain than the tarball-based distribution method.
There are some minor differences in how the Fedora package works,
compared to the upstream tarball. Notably, it puts the configuration
file in `/etc/` and makes it read-only, and it stores persistent data
separate from the application. These differences require modifications
to the Apache and PHP-FPM configuration, but the package also included
examples to make this easier. Since the `config.php` is read-only now,
it has to be managed by the configuration policy; it cannot be modified
by the Administration web UI.
Changing/renewing a certificate generally requires restarting or
reloading some service. Since the *cert* role is intended to be generic
and reusable, it naturally does not know what action to take to effect
the change. It works well for the initial deployment of a new
application, since the service is reloaded anyway in order for the new
configuration to be applied. It fails, however, for continuous
enforcement, when a certificate is renewed automatically (i.e. by
`lego`) but no other changes are being made. This has caused a number
of disruptions when some certificate expires and its replacement is
available but has not yet been loaded.
To address this issue, I have added a handler "topic" notification to
the *certs* role. When either the certificate or private key file is
replaced, the relevant task will "notify" a generic handler "topic."
This allows some other role to define a specific handler, which
"listens" for these notifications, and takes the appropriate action for
its respective service.
For this mechanism to work, though, the *cert* role can only be used as
a dependency of another role. That role must define the handler and
configure it to listen to the generic "certificate changed" topic. As
such, each of the roles that are associated with a certificate deployed
by the *cert* role now declare it as a dependency, and the top-level
playbooks only include those roles.
The *nextcloud* role installs Nextcloud from the specified release
archive, downloading it to the control machine first if necessary, and
configures Apache and PHP-FPM to serve it.
The `nextcloud.yml` playbook uses the *cert* role to install the X.509
certificate for the Nextcloud server, sets up Apache HTTPD with the
*apache* role, and installs Nextcloud using the *nextcloud* role.
The host *cloud0.pyrocufflink.blue* is the Nextcloud server for
Pyrocufflink.
Dustin