PHP Modules & Configuration
PHP Modules
This
section lists all required and optional PHP modules.  Consult the PHP manual for more information on modules.
You can
check the presence of a module by typing php -m | grep -i <module_name>.
If you get a result, the module is present.
Required:
- PHP (see System requirements for a list of supported versions) 
- PHP module ctype 
- PHP module curl 
- PHP module dom 
- PHP module fileinfo (included with PHP) 
- PHP module filter (only on Mageia and FreeBSD) 
- PHP module GD 
- PHP module hash (only on FreeBSD) 
- PHP module JSON (included with PHP >= 8.0) 
- PHP module libxml (Linux package libxml2 must be >=2.7.0) 
- PHP module mbstring 
- PHP module openssl (included with PHP >= 8.0) 
- PHP module posix 
- PHP module session 
- PHP module SimpleXML 
- PHP module XMLReader 
- PHP module XMLWriter 
- PHP module zip 
- PHP module zlib 
Database connectors (pick the one for your database):
- PHP module pdo_sqlite (>= 3, usually not recommended for performance reasons) 
- PHP module pdo_mysql (MySQL/MariaDB) 
- PHP module pdo_pgsql (PostgreSQL) 
Recommended packages:
- PHP module intl (increases language translation performance and fixes sorting of non-ASCII characters) 
- PHP module sodium (for Argon2 for password hashing. bcrypt is used as fallback, but if passwords were hashed with Argon2 already and the module is missing, your users can’t log in. Included with PHP >= 7.2) 
Required for specific apps:
- PHP module ldap (for LDAP integration) 
- PHP module smbclient (SMB/CIFS integration, see SMB/CIFS) 
- PHP module ftp (for FTP storage / external user authentication) 
- PHP module imap (for external user authentication) 
- PHP module bcmath (for passwordless login) 
- PHP module gmp (for passwordless login) 
Recommended for specific apps (optional):
- PHP module gmp (for SFTP storage) 
- PHP module exif (for image rotation in pictures app) 
For enhanced server performance (optional) select one or more of the following caches:
- PHP module apcu (>= 4.0.6) 
- PHP module memcached 
- PHP module redis (>= 2.2.6, required for Transactional File Locking) 
See Memory caching to learn how to select and configure a cache.
For preview generation (optional):
- PHP module imagick 
- avconv or ffmpeg 
- OpenOffice or LibreOffice 
Note
If the preview generation of PDF files fails with a “not authorized” error message, you must adjust the imagick policy file. See https://cromwell-intl.com/open-source/pdf-not-authorized.html
For command line processing (optional):
- PHP module pcntl (enables command interruption by pressing - ctrl-c)
Note
You also need to ensure that pcntl_signal and pcntl_signal_dispatch are not disabled
in your php.ini by the disable_functions option.
For command line updater (optional):
- PHP module phar (upgrades Nextcloud by running - sudo -u www-data php /var/www/nextcloud/updater/updater.phar)
ini values
The following ini settings should be adapted if needed for Nextcloud:
- disable_functions: avoid disabling functions unless you know exactly what you are doing
- max_execution_time: see Uploading big files > 512MB
- memory_limit: should be at least 512MB. See also Uploading big files > 512MB
- opcache.enableand friends: See Memory caching and Server tuning
- open_basedir: see Hardening and security guidance
- upload_tmp_dir: see Uploading big files > 512MB
php.ini configuration notes
Keep in mind that changes to php.ini may have to be configured on more than one
ini file. This can be the case, for example, for the date.timezone setting.
You can search for a parameter with the following command: grep -r date.timezone /etc/php.
php.ini - used by the Web server:
  /etc/php/8.3/apache2/php.ini
or
  /etc/php/8.3/fpm/php.ini
or ...
php.ini - used by the php-cli and so by Nextcloud CRON jobs:
/etc/php/8.3/cli/php.ini
Note
Path names have to be set in respect of the installed PHP (8.1, 8.2, 8.3 or 8.4) as applicable.