Prelude

I started writing this blog post in a first attempt a couple days ago and it got way too verbose and lengthy, going into detail about the specifics of my setup and the reasoning behind it. So here’s a short version.

Goal

Adding Collabora to an existing Nextcloud instance to enable online collaborative document editing right inside the Nextcloud webinterface.

Step by Step

Prerequisites

I’m assuming you’ve got Nextcloud installed somewhere already (publically reachable, with it’s own domain or subdomain) and also installed the Collabora app (it’s listed as one of the official apps in the Office & Text section of Nextcloud’s list of apps). You also need a server for running Collabora, that has docker and docker-compose installed and a domain or subdomain pointing to it. If both, Nextcloud and Collabora, will be running on the same server, take a closer look at the jwilder/nginx-proxy, that I’ll be using anyhow. It should be no problem having both running behind the proxy on the same server, accessible through different subdomains.

The docker-compose.yml file

is stitched together from this thread:

version: '2'

services:
  proxy:
    image: jwilder/nginx-proxy
    container_name: proxy
    ports:
      - 80:80
      - 443:443
    volumes:
      - ./proxy/conf.d:/etc/nginx/conf.d
      - ./proxy/vhost.d:/etc/nginx/vhost.d
      - ./proxy/html:/usr/share/nginx/html
      - ./proxy/certs:/etc/nginx/certs:ro
      - /var/run/docker.sock:/tmp/docker.sock:ro
    networks:
      - proxy-net

  letsencrypt-companion:
    image: jrcs/letsencrypt-nginx-proxy-companion
    container_name: letsencrypt-companion
    volumes_from:
      - proxy
    volumes:
      - /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock:ro
      - ./proxy/certs:/etc/nginx/certs:rw

  collabora:
    image: collabora/code
    container_name: collabora
    expose:
      - 9980
    cap_add:
      - MKNOD
    environment:
      - domain=NEXTCLOUD_DOMAIN
      - VIRTUAL_HOST=COLLABORA_DOMAIN
      - VIRTUAL_NETWORK=proxy-net
      - VIRTUAL_PORT=9980
      - VIRTUAL_PROTO=https
      - LETSENCRYPT_HOST=COLLABORA_DOMAIN
      - LETSENCRYPT_EMAIL=ADMIN_EMAIL
    networks:
      - proxy-net


networks:
  proxy-net:
    external:
      name: proxy-net

You’ll just need to adapt NEXTCLOUD_DOMAIN, COLLABORA_DOMAIN (2x) and ADMIN_EMAIL. Also the Network, that connects the services (=collabora) with the proxy is declared as external, so you’ll have to create it by running

docker network create --driver bridged proxy-net

before starting the containers with

docker-compose up

Note: if you also want to have access to Collabora’s admin interface at https://COLLABORA_DOMAIN/loleaflet/dist/admin/admin.html also provide username and password in the environment section for the Collabora container.

Link Nextcloud and Collabora

All that’s left to do is enter the domain of your collabora service into the settings of your nextcloud collabora app and start editing documents right inside your nextcloud!

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