Nextcloud setup - help needed

Hi all

I'm trying to set up nextcloud. My environment:

RPi400 running Libreelec 10.0.4.

Docker with a bunch of linuxserver containers (plex server and client, radarr, qbittorent, sickchill, jackett) running.

External HDD with media and container configs. I can't remember but it might be NTFS as I can see an NTFS.mount service running when I check top. It's not mounted as the nobody user as I've seen suggested on other threads, I don't know how to do this and I don't want to risk my other containers if I don't have to.

I tried installing nextcloud the same way I installed other containers and I tried going via Kodi UI but couldn't get either anywhere near working. I stumbled upon this post and installed portainer and created the nextcloud stack changing only "/media/<your-hard-disk>" to "/var/media/" and the name of my external hard drive. The first time it worked and I started syncing the camera roll from my phone as a test, but it got stuck when the SD card in the pi filled up. I'm not sure now but perhaps I hadn't actually changed the data directory to be on the HDD, though I then have no idea what location on the SD card I would've used. Anyway, I had to start over and now all I get is the "Can't write into config directory!" error when I access the web UI. I've tried putting the config directory somewhere else but it doesn't help. I've tried using PUID = 0 (root). I have no idea why the config directory worked once and not again. MariaDB configs are in the same directory and there's no problem with that.

Nextcloud logs are non-existent but the container logs in portainer include:

"fopen(/var/www/html/config/config.php): Failed to open stream: Permission denied at /var/www/html/lib/private/Config.php#276"

and

"chmod(): Operation not permitted at /var/www/html/lib/private/Config.php#279".

I don't know if this helps.

Any help would be appreciated.

I think part of the problem is recreating the container with the same volumes, somehow it fails to set permissions on the existing config/data folders.

I've now used new folders and it gets me quite far. I can get through the setup part but now I'm stuck because the data folder isn't owned by nextcloud (based on logs), which causes the server to start in maintenance mode even though the maintenance mode parameter isn't set to true in the config file.

This link suggets doing chmod 0750 on the data folder but when I check permissions on the folder afterwards, nothing changed. How do I set the permissions correctly?

(The data folder is in the external hard drives root folder.)

Quote from chuckynorris

I think part of the problem is recreating the container with the same volumes, somehow it fails to set permissions on the existing config/data folders.

I've now used new folders and it gets me quite far. I can get through the setup part but now I'm stuck because the data folder isn't owned by nextcloud (based on logs), which causes the server to start in maintenance mode even though the maintenance mode parameter isn't set to true in the config file.

This link suggets doing chmod 0750 on the data folder but when I check permissions on the folder afterwards, nothing changed. How do I set the permissions correctly?

(The data folder is in the external hard drives root folder.)

OK I now know that it's not possible to change ownership of a mounted drive after mounting it if it's a non-posix/Windows file system (i.e. NTFS in this case). But is it possible to mount it with different permission for a subfolder? Assuming not, does that mean I need to mount it with the nobody user as the owner of the whole drive and then chmod so that the nextcloud data folder has has write access for other users but all other folders on the drive have rwx permissions for all users?

(I've never learnt about or played with linux permissions before so I could really use some help before I mess up permissions for all my other containers.)