Nextcloud VM updater shows permissions error

When trying to update your Nextcloud VM using the updater in the GUI the following error might be shown: 

• Check for write permissions

  The following places can not be written to:

  • /var/www/nextcloud/updater/../cron.php
  • /var/www/nextcloud/updater/../version.php
  • /var/www/nextcloud/updater/../console.php
  • /var/www/nextcloud/updater/../public.php
  • /var/www/nextcloud/updater/../robots.txt
  • /var/www/nextcloud/updater/../status.php
  • /var/www/nextcloud/updater/../.htaccess
  • /var/www/nextcloud/updater/../COPYING
  • /var/www/nextcloud/updater/../occ
  • /var/www/nextcloud/updater/../remote.php
  • /var/www/nextcloud/updater/../index.php
  • /var/www/nextcloud/updater/../index.html
  • /var/www/nextcloud/updater/../AUTHORS
  • /var/www/nextcloud/updater/../.user.ini

That might be due to the usage of the "set strong permissions" script, which sets permissions to root:www-data instead of www-data:www-data. You can check that using:

root@lin:~#
root@lin:~# ll /var/www/nextcloud/
total 172
drwxr-x--- 14 root     www-data  4096 Sep 21 14:07 ./
drwxr-xr-x  4 root     root      4096 Sep 21 14:07 ../
drwxr-x--- 41 root     www-data  4096 Sep  9 13:44 3rdparty/
drwxr-x--- 46 www-data www-data  4096 Sep 21 14:07 apps/
-rw-r-----  1 root     www-data 16522 Sep  9 13:41 AUTHORS
drwxr-x---  2 www-data www-data  4096 Sep 21 14:07 config/
-rw-r-----  1 root     www-data  3967 Sep  9 13:41 console.php
-rw-r-----  1 root     www-data 34520 Sep  9 13:41 COPYING
drwxr-x--- 23 root     www-data  4096 Sep  9 13:44 core/
-rw-r-----  1 root     www-data  5140 Sep  9 13:41 cron.php
drwxr-x---  2 root     www-data  4096 Sep 21 14:07 data/
-rw-r--r--  1 root     www-data  4400 Sep 21 14:08 .htaccess
-rw-r-----  1 root     www-data   156 Sep  9 13:41 index.html
-rw-r-----  1 root     www-data  2960 Sep  9 13:41 index.php
drwxr-x---  6 root     www-data  4096 Sep  9 13:41 lib/
-rwxr-x--x  1 root     www-data   283 Sep  9 13:41 occ*
drwxr-x---  2 root     www-data  4096 Sep  9 13:41 ocm-provider/
drwxr-x---  2 root     www-data  4096 Sep  9 13:41 ocs/
drwxr-x---  2 root     www-data  4096 Sep  9 13:41 ocs-provider/
-rw-r-----  1 root     www-data  3102 Sep  9 13:41 public.php
-rw-r-----  1 root     www-data  5332 Sep  9 13:41 remote.php
drwxr-x---  4 root     www-data  4096 Sep  9 13:41 resources/
-rw-r-----  1 root     www-data    26 Sep  9 13:41 robots.txt
-rw-r-----  1 root     www-data  2379 Sep  9 13:41 status.php
drwxr-x---  3 www-data www-data  4096 Sep  9 13:41 themes/
drwxr-x---  2 www-data www-data  4096 Sep  9 13:42 updater/
-rw-r-----  1 root     www-data   101 Sep  9 13:41 .user.ini
-rw-r-----  1 root     www-data   362 Sep  9 13:44 version.php
root@lin:~#
root@lin:~#

Cause and solution

That is why the GUI updater of nextcloud is blocked because the permissions isn’t as safe as with root:www-data. In the Nextcloud VM this is solved that using an own script for it: https://github.com/nextcloud/vm/blob/master/nextcloud_update.sh. 

👉Instead of using that script, run sudo bash /var/scripts/update.sh instead.