NC12: apps outside of nextcloud's root directory result in "ResourceLocator can not find a web root"

[philfry]

This bug is similar to #5057

Steps to reproduce

1. move apps from /var/www/nextcloud/apps to /var/www/nextcloud-apps
2. change config to

'apps_paths' =>  
  array (
    0 =>  
    array (
      'path' => '/var/www/nextcloud-apps',
      'url' => '/apps',
      'writable' => true,
    ),  
  ), 

3. set alias in httpd.conf:

Alias /apps /var/www/nextcloud-apps

Expected behaviour

No errors in log, no ui glitches

Actual behaviour

css is not loaded, errors in log:

{"reqId":"...","level":3,"time":"2017-06-07T16:17:26+02:00","remoteAddr":"xxx","user":"xxx","app":"lib","method":"GET","url":"\/index.php\/apps\/files\/","message":"ResourceLocator can not find a web root (root: \/var\/www\/nextcloud-apps\/files, file: index.php\/css\/files\/merged.css, webRoot: , throw: true)","userAgent":"Mozilla\/5.0 (X11; Fedora; Linux x86_64; rv:53.0) Gecko\/20100101 Firefox\/53.0","version":"12.0.0.29"}

Server configuration

Operating system:
CentOS 7

Web server:
httpd 2.4

Database:
mariadb 10.2.6

PHP version:
7.1.5

Nextcloud version:
12.0.0

Updated from an older Nextcloud/ownCloud or fresh install:
updated from 11.0.3

Where did you install Nextcloud from:
https://download.nextcloud.com/server/releases/nextcloud-12.0.0.zip

Signing status:

Alle Checks bestanden.

...

[jospoortvliet]

@philfry does the patch from #5057 (comment) fix it? Then this would also be fixed by #5252

[philfry]

@jospoortvliet no, unfortunately the patch didn't solve the problem.
I'll do some debugging later, maybe I can find where the webroot gets lost.

[philfry]

Since the bug is not caused by a symlink the realpath fix won't help here.

As far as I understood the exception raises in lib/private/Template/CSSResourceLocator.php because there's no mappings entry of the relocated app directories /var/www/nextcloud-apps/....

I don't see any way to append other directories to these mappings as they seem to be hardcoded.
They get initialized in lib/private/Template/ResourceLocator.php (constructor) by findStylesheetFiles in lib/private/TemplateLayout.php with array(\OC::$SERVERROOT => \OC::$WEBROOT).

btw - since NC 9 does not have these resource appending functions having the apps outside of NC's webroot is working fine with NC 9.

[derkostka]

I can confirm that an apps directory outside the DocumentRoot is not possible anymore. Even the webroot fix does not apply, as stated above. Aliasing the directory or put a symlink does not work either, so #5252 does not help, this is a different issue.

[blizzz]

What is the motivation to move out the apps? This scenario is not very well tested unfortunately, and – nowadays – does not bring many advantages.

[philfry]

@blizzz
As there are no pre-packaged nextcloud releases for rhel/centos/SL/fedora/... yet it makes upgrading way easier. When having 3rd party apps and the config file outside of the nextcloud root folder all I have to do is to wipe the nextcloud folder and unpack the archive file for a clean nextcloud installation.

[kyrofa]

What exactly is broken here: moving the default apps out of the root, or ANY item in apps_paths being outside the root? The Nextcloud snap uses the latter for user-installed apps as the snap itself (including the default apps) is read-only.

[jospoortvliet]

So it is needed for the Snap as well as packages for various distributions.