Hey y’all! First time trying to self-host something, I started with a local Nextcloud instance for me and my family to use. I just wanted to make sure that no outsiders can enter the instance (access it or its files) through a browser on another connection.
I don’t have a DNS server so we access it through its IP address. The connection is unencrypted (I don’t know if this is a problem on a local instance, but from what I’ve read, I need a local DNS server to encrypt it, as well as to be able to set a domain (?) name (I don’t really know if it’s a domain name, but I’m referring to the website name, for instance google.com). I don’t think leaving it as it is (unencrypted, no domain name, only accessible through IP) will be problematic. Could other people access the server remotely with this setting? By remotely, I mean from far away. I tried out Nextcloud’s own Security Scan and it returns:
Scan failed! The scan for the specified domain failed. Either no Nextcloud or ownCloud can be found there or you tried to scan too many servers.
I’m guessing this is a good thing for what I’m trying to achieve?
for reference, the tutorial I’ve used is this one under Linux Mint
It sounds like you are accessing it only from your local network, and as long as it stays that way its fine. I have a DNS Server at home, set up a domain name, therefor have certificates from letsencrypt which get automatically renewed for https access, AND STILL I only access it from my local network with no ports open to the www.
If you have your instance openend up to the internet (e.g. by port forwarding from your ISPs router to your nextcloud instance) and have no encryption / no certificate, thats a major flaw and i would advise you to shut it down immediately and close the port.