[Nextcloud] Installing Collaboraoffice in LXC

Both, Nextcloud and Collabora, are recommending the Docker installation for Collaboraoffice (here and here). But I wasn’t able to get the Collabora Docker Image running succesfully inside an Debian Buster LXC. There were appearing some errors and as far as I understand, it has something to do with running an LXC on ZFS. After spending about 3 hours I gave up and did a manual installation.

Installation

For a current installation guide, have look on their website here.
Install https support for apt and add Collabora CODE repository. (CODE = Collabora Online Development Edition)

sudo apt install apt-transport-https ca-certificates
sudo apt-key adv --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com --recv-keys 0C54D189F4BA284D

Add the Collabora CODE repository to the apt sources list.

nano /etc/apt/sources.list.d/collabora.list

Add the following line for Debian Buster:

deb https://www.collaboraoffice.com/repos/CollaboraOnline/CODE-debian10 ./

Now update the repository and install Collabora. (lool = LibreOffice OnLine)

sudo apt update
sudo apt install loolwsd code-brand

Configuration

You have to edit three sections in the config: SSL handling, inserting your Nextcloud domain as WOPI client and add some credentials for webinterface. So open the config with:

nano /etc/loolwsd/loolwsd.xml

1. If you are using a reverse proxy (I have running a docker with nginx) which is managing all SSL certifactes, you don’t need local certifactes for your Collaboraoffice. So scroll down to the SSL settings, disable SSL and enable SSL termination.

   <ssl desc="SSL settings">
        <enable type="bool" desc="Controls whether SSL encryption is enable (do not disable for production deployment). If default is false, must first be compiled with SSL support to enable." default="true">false</enable>
        <termination desc="Connection via proxy where loolwsd acts as working via https, but actually uses https." type="bool" default="true">true</termination>

• 2. Next add you Nextcloud domain in the WOPI storage section.

    <storage desc="Backend storage">
        <filesystem allow="false" />
        <wopi desc="Allow/deny wopi storage. Mutually exclusive with webdav." allow="true">
            <host desc="Regex pattern of hostname to allow or deny." allow="true">localhost</host>
            <host desc="Regex pattern of hostname to allow or deny." allow="true">nextcloud\.domain\.org</host>

• 3. Add your credentials fot the webinterface.

  <admin_console desc="Web admin console settings.">
        <enable desc="Enable the admin console functionality" type="bool" default="true">true</enable>
        <enable_pam desc="Enable admin user authentication with PAM" type="bool" default="false">false</enable_pam>
        <username desc="The username of the admin console. Ignored if PAM is enabled.">user_name</username>
        <password desc="The password of the admin console. Deprecated on most platforms. Instead, use PAM or loolconfig to set up a secure password.">super_secret_password</password>

Now restart loolwsd and check the status.

systemctl restart loolwsd.service
systemctl status loolwsd.service

Check if the https connection is working via browser https://ipaddress:9980 or curl:

curl -vkI https://localhost:9980

You can reach the webinterface with:

https://ipaddress:9980/loleaflet/dist/admin/admin.html

Reverse Proxy

Go to your reverse proxy, in my case it’s nginx proxy manager, and add another subdomain for collabora with an SSL certificate.

You also have to add a few custom locations. Look at the Collabora website for the some nginx configs. I used the second with “SSL terminates at the proxy”. I also added the given custom locations via the webui, e.g.:

You should now be able to reach Collabora through your new subdomain via https.
https://collabora.your.domain.org/
And if you added /lool/adminws in your nginx config, you can also access the webui.
https://collabora.your.domain.org/loleaflet/dist/admin/admin.html

Install & configure Collabora Online App in Nextcloud

The easiest part is to install the Collabora Online App.
If done, go to Settings -> Collabora Online and set your Collabora Domain https://collabora.your.domain.org/ in here. Apply and edit your first excel in Nextcloud.

Done! 🙂