New User - not off to a great start - pihole & nextcloud

[j___r]

Hi,

Hobby-level user here. New to Armbian. Trying to get Nextcloud and PiHole installed and running on my Odroid HC1.

I use Tailscale as a VPN and would like to be set up to use both the pihole's ad-blocking and Nextcloud from outside my LAN.

I've gone through set up and install of both. Armbian-config>Softy reports both installed and running.

Nextcloud

The Nextcloud activation page is visible at https://192.168.20.100/activate/ 

When I go to https://nextcloudpi.local:4443 I get nothing - it seems to get stuck at the DNS lookup stage.

PiHole

PiHole's admin page is not reachable at http://192.168.20.100/admin

Server not found is the message.

I'd really like to get this server set up properly from the start and will wait for advice on how to proceed.

 

Jon

 

[Werner]

3 minutes ago, j___r said:

Hi,

Hobby-level user here. New to Armbian.

Welcome

 

Quote

Nextcloud

The Nextcloud activation page is visible at https://192.168.20.100/activate/ 

When I go to https://nextcloudpi.local:4443 I get nothing - it seems to get stuck at the DNS lookup stage.

How should your operating system know to which IP address it should to when calling "nextcloudpi.local"? You have to create that DNS entry first or make pihole work beforehand to add this dns entry there.

 

Quote

 

PiHole

PiHole's admin page is not reachable at http://192.168.20.100/admin

Server not found is the message.

I'd really like to get this server set up properly from the start and will wait for advice on how to proceed.

 

Disable your VPN and try again. Maybe it does not allow packages outside the VPN to be routed back to your PC.

[j___r]

27 minutes ago, Werner said:

Welcome

Thank you - I will try to learn

27 minutes ago, Werner said:

How should your operating system know to which IP address it should to when calling "nextcloudpi.local"? You have to create that DNS entry first or make pihole work beforehand to add this dns entry there.

 

Ok, so I need to make pihole work first. Pihole is not found regardless of whether my vpn is active or not.

pihole status returns

jon@hc1:~$ pihole status
[sudo] password for jon:
  [✓] DNS service is running
  [✓] Pi-hole blocking is Enabled

and if I go to 192.168.20.100 I see the nextcloud activation page - that seems to suggest to me that the web server is running ok.

[Werner]

Well It gets a bit complicated at this point. See both Pihole and nextcloud need a webserver to serve their webinterface. Without manual configuration they cannot be used at the same time.

What I'd do so it is pretty:

 

Install pihole first and make sure it works.

 

When you open "pi.hole/admin" in your browser and you see the webinterface then everything is good. Do not proceed until this is achieved.

 

Now add "nextcloudpi.local" as a custom domain via pihole interface and point it to the ip of your SBC (192.168.20.100 to say if this your board).

When you open a command prompt and ping nextcloudpi.local then it should respond from the given IP address.

 

Create a folder where you want nextcloud to be run in (like /var/www/cloud) and

edit your lighttpd config (lighttpd has been installed by pihole before). create a virtualhost besides pi.hole for the server name nextcloudpi.local and point to the working directory mentioned above.

 

Then install nextcloud (btw. using armbian-config to install any software is not mandatory ;)) and tell the installer to use the domain mentioned above.

 

If everything is setup properly you can simply enter nextcloudpi.local in your browser to get to your nextcloud or pi.hole to get to its equivalent webinterface.

 

Once all this stuff works nicely in your local network then I'd start taking care about the VPN stuff.

 

Btw. I never created vhosts within lighttpd by myself, mostly apache and nginx only so that part you have to figure out by yourself. Tutorials should be easy to find in the web though.

[j___r]

Thanks again,

I started over and I'll roll my own by hand from now on. The reason I'm here at Armbian is because of issues with pre-packaged software on DietPi.

 

So far so good. Time for bed now

[Werner]

Sleep well, friend.

Armbian is trying to mostly provide "vanila" OS feeling when deployed on a board. So you get the same experience like if you install Debian or ubuntu to a regular computer. armbian-config is an optional tool for beginners or lazy people to install stuff which also can break sometimes if there are major changes upstream.