Nextcloud on Synology NAS, with Docker Compose

Install Docker

You can install Docker through the Synology DiskStation Manager (DSM) Package Center.

Just search for "docker" and follow the wizard to install docker.

Enable SSH

You will need to have SSH enabled from the Synology DSM control panel. Please feel free to skip this step if you've already done that.

Create folder

Use the File Station from Synology DSM to create a new folder in one of your volumes. I created the folder in my docker folder.

You need to ensure the user you will SSH with has permissions to create files and folders inside the docker folder.

Create docker-compose manifest

Create a new file (which I called nextcloud.yaml) in the folder you just created.

As per the official docs, you have to set the values for MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD and MYSQL_PASSWORD in the following yaml.

version: '2'

volumes:
  nextcloud:
  db:

services:
  db:
    image: mariadb
    restart: always
    command: --transaction-isolation=READ-COMMITTED --binlog-format=ROW --innodb-file-per-table=1 --skip-innodb-read-only-compressed
    volumes:
      - db:/var/lib/mysql
    environment:
      - MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD=
      - MYSQL_PASSWORD=
      - MYSQL_DATABASE=nextcloud
      - MYSQL_USER=nextcloud

  app:
    image: nextcloud
    restart: always
    ports:
      - 8080:80
    links:
      - db
    volumes:
      - nextcloud:/var/www/html
    environment:
      - MYSQL_PASSWORD=
      - MYSQL_DATABASE=nextcloud
      - MYSQL_USER=nextcloud
      - MYSQL_HOST=db

IMPORTANT: I also had to change the command attribute of the mariadb service, to address the following error:

Error while trying to initialise the database: An exception occurred while executing a query: SQLSTATE[HY000]: General error: 4047 InnoDB refuses to write tables with ROW_FORMAT=COMPRESSED or KEY_BLOCK_SIZE.

Run

NOTE: By default, my admin user didn't have permissions to run docker commands, so I had to use sudo. It was somewhat confusing that the password requested by sudo was the password of the same user I was logged in as (the user was an administrator).

$ sudo docker-compose --file nextcloud.yml up --detach

Setup nextcloud

You can access the nextcloud web UI at: http://your.nas.ip.address:8080.

You will then see the following screen:

Go ahead and add a username/password for your administrator.

I also enabled the installation of the recommended apps, so I can explore what nextcloud has to offer (I am currently a first-time nextcloud user). This took a bit of time. If everything goes well, you'll see the following screen.

Once the installation is completed, you will see this screen:

Congrats! Nextcloud is up and running on your Synology NAS!

Next step: use nextcloud as the replacement for iCloud photos!