Activation not Possible

[AndreHerling]

Hi,

I have a Raspberry PI 5 with 8GB Ram. As router I have a Fritz!Box.

I downloaded the image for v1.55.2 and flashed it to a micro SD with Raspberry PI Imager. Then, according to the manual (https://help.nextcloud.com/t/how-to-access-nextcloudpi-first-time-activation/126309), I was supposed to access https://nextcloudpi or https://nextcloudpi.local. Both sites were not accessible. I also tried to access the IP, but it just doesn't work and looking to the comments on https://help.nextcloud.com/t/how-to-access-nextcloudpi-first-time-activation/126309 I'm not the only one.

The Raspberry PI 5 is seen in the network and I can ping it.

Greetings

André

[paulmoench]

Hey,
thanks for creating the topic. I have the same issue and cannot access the activation site. When I try it either with the link or the IP address, it says Error 403 - no authorization for accessing this page.
For setup I am using a Raspberry Pi 4 4gb and a MicroSD with a capacity of 32gb. My router is a Fritz!Box as well. Before, I was able to flash Raspbian and other Linux images onto my SD card and use them with the Pi. For flashing I have tried Balena Etcher and the Raspberry Imager. I also tried different versions of the Nextcloudpi image: v1.55.2, v1.55.1, v1.54.0. The error occurs with either of these images.
When connecting the Pi via HDMI to a screen, the booting process seems to work fine, although I am not an expert. I can also find the pi in the Interface of my router and find it via SSH even though access over SSH is not possible because I haven't enabled it.
In another (German) thread, I read, that the WebUI, for some reason was not enabled and therefore producing this problem. Unfortunately I cannot access the config to activate the WebUI in the TUI, because I have no access to the random password that is generated and usually displayed during the activation process. pi/raspberry and ncp/ownyourbits do not work.
Does anyone have a solution? Thanks in advance :)

[FadeFx]

Did you guys try activating it via CLI?
When connecting via SSH you can enter
sudo ncp-config
There go to config/nc-webui and set it to enabled if it is not.
You could also even enable nextcloud using the CLI instead of the webui

[gwilherm]

Hello, I have the same issue with RaspberryPi 4 using NextcloudPi_RaspberryPi4_v1.55.2.zip (md5sum checked).
https://nextcloudpi.local gives the raw content of PHP code :

<?php
/**
 * @copyright Copyright (c) 2016, ownCloud, Inc.
 *
 * @author Christoph Wurst <[email protected]>
 * @author Joas Schilling <[email protected]>
 * ...

https://192.168.1.36 brings me to the activation page, but it is not working :

NextCloudPi not yet initialized, trying again in a few seconds ...

I don't have microHDMI cable, so as says FadeFx I tried SSH. But SSH is not activated (nmap says port 22 not opened, btw 4443 port is closed aswell)
I tried to touch a /boot/firmware/ssh file (raspbian thing), no SSH.
I tried to touch a /boot/ssh file (old raspbian thing ?), still no SSH.

For the long story :
I was running a NextcloudPi 1.55.1 / bullseye.
Update to 1.55.2 was not working so I thought maybe I had to do the bookworm upgrade.
So I ran ncp-dist-upgrade, and after more than one hour of package installation it (guess what) failed.
Edit: dang, I just saw the pined issue #1913 ...

[AndreHerling]

I installed the v.1.55.0 image and then updated it in the WebUI to v.1.55.2. This worked well.

You can access the WebUI either with https://nextcloudpi.local/ or with https://fill-in-your-ip:4443. In the local network you needn’t open the port 4443 on your router.

[gwilherm]

Thank you @AndreHerling your workaround worked well for me too ! Except that I had to go to https://my-servers-ip (with no port) to have the activation page.
Given that,

• https://my-servers-ip:4443 was leading me to a "Could not connect to server" error before activation
• https://nextcloudpi.local to a raw php code (this is still the case after activation but anyway, I don't need that URL)

[Bingo2023]

local login (w/ keyboard connected to Pi5) also not working, SSH can also not be activated, very annoying.

Will try with older image version <v1.55.2

[FadeFx]

local login (w/ keyboard connected to Pi5) also not working, SSH can also not be activated, very annoying.

Will try with older image version <v1.55.2

Did you try putting the SSH file in boot partition of the SD card?

[AndreHerling]

It is intended to activate SSH from the WebUI.

[FadeFx]

I suspect 1.55.2 to have issues with root access, that is why several things do not work

[theCalcaholic]

Sorry to hear about your issues. Unfortunately, the information isn't really conclusive for me yet and I don't know what might be causing these issues.
Most likely, the v1.55.2 image for the RPi 5 (and 4?) is broken in some way, despite it having worked in the automated tests.

I'll release a new version soon which hopefully works better.

A few notes though:

1. Depending on your network configuration, it might not work to access nextcloudpi via https://nextcloudpi.local or https://nextcloudpi. The safest bet is to access the activation page directly via the IP address (with https:// but without any port).
2. Raspbian related configurations or workaround won't work with the NextcloudPi images, because they are now based on Armbian. You can usually do the same with armbian, but it will work differently - please refer to the Armbian documentation and help forum.

[FadeFx]

When did the switch to armbian happen?
I actually expect the 1.55.2 version to fail updating nextcloud as well, as long as the mysql root user password is not empty, but there has not yet been an update yet...

[FadeFx]

To be more precise, I think there is an issue to access /root/.my.cnf

[FadeFx]

BTW according to armbian doku SSH should be enabled by default with user root and password 1234 which you should be prompted to change on first login and create a proper user as well.

[theCalcaholic]

BTW according to armbian doku SSH should be enabled by default with user root and password 1234 which you should be prompted to change on first login and create a proper user as well.

Default root credentials as well as default SSH access are disabled in NCP, because that would pose a big security risk due of the activation mechanism that NCP uses.

[theCalcaholic]

When did the switch to armbian happen?
I actually expect the 1.55.2 version to fail updating nextcloud as well, as long as the mysql root user password is not empty, but there has not yet been an update yet...

NCP is using Armbian for all SBCs since v1.54.0

[theCalcaholic]

To be more precise, I think there is an issue to access /root/.my.cnf

What makes you believe that? 🤔

[FadeFx]

To be more precise, I think there is an issue to access /root/.my.cnf

What makes you believe that? 🤔

As for me I can only update nextcloud when mysql(mariadb) root password is empty. Otherwise I get an error that it can not login to mysql

[theCalcaholic]

To be more precise, I think there is an issue to access /root/.my.cnf

What makes you believe that? 🤔

As for me I can only update nextcloud when mysql(mariadb) root password is empty. Otherwise I get an error that it can not login to mysql

Would you mind creating another bug report for that? It's likely unrelated to this one and I would need the output of the failing commands to understand the cause for this.

[theCalcaholic]

Now that v1.55.3 is released, please try and report if these issues persist for your :)

[joehai]

Hi,
I use BalenaEther (V1.5.113; MacOS) to copy the image (for PI4) on a 32GB SD card and I'm facing the same behaviour with the latest release 1.55.3:
PI boots, can be located in the network (ping works) but cannot be reached under https://192.168.178.25/ nor https://nextcloudpi/ or https://nextcloudpi.local/. nslookup provides nextcloudpi.fritz.box as name (which does also not work).
The Raspberry is a PI 4 B 2GB, it works well with other images/installations, so I do not think it is a (obvious) hardware issue. But it has a Hifiberry-Soundcard on top.
It is directly connected via ethernet to a FritzBox.

Same behaviour with 1.55.0 image.

[geoW-n]

32GB SD card and I'm facing the same behaviour with the latest release 1.55.3:

Did a quick install with release 1.55.3 on rpi4 sd-card 32GB, wrote image on Win10 laptop with Raspberrry Pi Imager v.1.9.0.
Up and running as expected in minutes.

[F4HTB]

Same here. 1.55.3 on RPI5, can't connect on login, ssh activated but can't connect, activation interface dont get response.....

[theCalcaholic]

@F4HTB Not sure what you mean with "connect on login". There is no login by default, you need to connect via web browser to set passwords

[theCalcaholic]

Hi,
I use BalenaEther (V1.5.113; MacOS) to copy the image (for PI4) on a 32GB SD card and I'm facing the same behaviour with the latest release 1.55.3:
PI boots, can be located in the network (ping works) but cannot be reached under https://192.168.178.25/ nor https://nextcloudpi/ or https://nextcloudpi.local/. nslookup provides nextcloudpi.fritz.box as name (which does also not work).
The Raspberry is a PI 4 B 2GB, it works well with other images/installations, so I do not think it is a (obvious) hardware issue. But it has a Hifiberry-Soundcard on top.
It is directly connected via ethernet to a FritzBox.

Same behaviour with 1.55.0 image.

Do you have the option to to attach a display and check if there are any meaninful logs during boot?

@geoW-n Thanks for testing!

[geoW-n]

Did a quick install with release 1.55.3 on rpi4 sd-card 32GB, wrote image on Win10 laptop with Raspberrry Pi Imager v.1.9.0.
Up and running as expected in minutes.

Did a quick test with raspi 5. It works as expected.

• Keep iut simple, rpi5, sd card, ethernet, power
• Don't use presets. Write only the img to the sd-card.
• In a few minutes it is up and running, check ip address in router
• Take a web-browser with javascript enabled, https://ip-address
• Activation page. print it - activate it, every reloading before activation changes credentials
• redirection to webui login https://ip-address:4443
• first thing I recommend is activate ssh
  Now you can get comfortable with your server and have fun!!

[Bingo2023]

I did a test, same as @geoW-n .

latest Version v1.55.3 (2024-11-08)
Pi5 every thing striped down to minimum (Pi HAT for M.2 SSD, mountet but unsed).

System is not coming up, after several reboots I started all over again. This time I checked with a local monitor the screen.

• Pi5 hangs up during first boot (screen freezes, waited for 10min -> reset)
• second boot: it continues but multiple Services fail to load (webserver etc.. [don't remember exact names])
• now it is clear that the system cannot come up as many subsystems fail to load.. Device can be pinged, but config cannot be completed as Webserver is not active

I guess it is a general problem in Armbian, as it stucks during boot already. My Pi5 HW is brand new. I also did a complete check of the SD-card -> no problem.