Nextcloud

Posted on by Darrell

A self-hosted and administered cloud service. The Nextcloud Team can be read up on here: https://nextcloud.com/about/

Be sure to recognize the community and open-source goals of the team. This brings with it many advantages with the cost of your time and efforts to keep your instance alive and healthy. This is applicable to how secure Nextcloud and the content within is. orGGro’s Nextcloud (nc.technellc.com) is hosted and administered by Darrell Haggard (the system admin). Efforts have been made to encrypt traffic between you and the server, backups are locally encrypted and encrypted on remote storage, and known hacking vulnerabilities attended to. While best efforts are made to provide security and stability, please understand the risks. This begins with a strong password.

Registration can be completed by the system admin only please contact them directly.

Passwords/App Passwords/Two-Factor Authentication

Password Requirements

  • Minimum password length: 10
  • User password history: 0
  • Number of days until user password expires: 10
  • Number of login attempts before the user account is blocked: 5
  • Common passwords forbiden
  • Uppercase and lower case
  • One numeric character
  • One special character

App Passwords

Highly recommended for apps on mobile devices. Can be setup under Personal Settings -> Security -> Devices & Sessions.
Use the code and your username to login to that specific app. New codes can be generated for the specific app if they are lost.

Two-Factor Authentication

Highly recommended.
First, research and understand the implications of Two-Factor Authentication. You will need access to another app to generate the authentication code. We recommend using the Google Authenticator app (free for iOS and Android) or 1Password (subscription required).
Under Personal Settings -> Security -> Two-Factor Authentication, click the enable TOTP check box. Use your authenticator app to scan the QR code. Capture and log the backup codes somewhere secure that is outside of nc.technellc.com.
If you have issues signing in using the authenticator app and need to sign in using backup codes, you will need access to them. However, they need to be kept in a secure place as a bad actor could use them to login on your behalf. Using 1Password, these can be added as a text field for that login entry.

Services/Apps

nc.technellc.com offers a variety of apps that can be accessed through a web browser or dedicated mobile and desktop apps.

Web Browser Apps

  • Calendar
  • Contacts
  • Deck (tabbed todo list)
  • Files
  • Mail
  • Maps (OpenStreet Maps)
  • Music
  • News (RSS Feed)
  • Photos (Video and Picture Gallery)
    Place a blank text file in a folder directory with the name of .noimage to prevent it from showing in the Photos Gallery. Highly recommended for the Talk directory that ultimately stores conversation attachments (i.e. photos shared in conversation)
  • Talk (Messaging and video call service for contacts within nc.technellc.com)

Dedicated Apps

  • Calendar
    Can be synced with any CalDav capable android/iOS app. Most default built it apps will work.
    More info here
  • Contacts
    Similar to Calendar, utilizing CalDav.
  • Files
    The default Nextcloud app for iOS and Android are recommended.
  • News
  • Photos
    The default Nextcloud app does have a Gallery option but functionality is limited. Recommended app is nkming’s Photos app.