All Sterrewacht users have access to our own NextCloud server. You can use your Sterrewacht account to login.

The Online Accounts is supported for some major desktops, such as Gnome, Cinnamon and KDE Plasma.

We are moving towards adding two-factor authentication to our nextcloud server

Users will now see a button below the login form, labeled “STRW Identity provider”. If you are a new user, without an existing nextcloud account on our server, click there, and you will be directed to the keycloak login window, and once authenticated, an account in nextcloud is made, connected to the strw account. Or, if you were already logged in (eg for webmail or intraneet), you will only see you are immediately logged in to your new nextcloud account.

However, for existing users who already have an account in nextcloud, this is not the right way, since the procedure outlined above creates a new user account. So, if an account already exists with your e-mail address, an error message will be shown, and the system will prevent you from accidentally creating a new account, overwriting your old one (and loosing any files).

So, the correct way for existing users, is to login as usual without 2FA, and then go to your own profile menu, and open the settings page. In the “Social login” entry, the user can see the “STRW Identity provider” under “Available providers”. Clicking that button will bring them to the keycloak login page, and once authenticated there, the existing account in nextcloud is connected to the strw account in keycloak. When the user already happens to be logged in through keycloak, they will immediately see the identity provider button here. From then on, the user can use the “STRW Identity provider” button on the nextcloud login page to log in through keycloak (or be logged in immediately if already logged in to another keycloak-enabled site)

We will give users sufficient time to do these setup steps before we disable the simple login without two-factor code. But the plan is, to allow only two-factor logins on the website some time next year (2026, to be announced).

On your Linux PC open Online Accounts interface and create a new account by clicking on the NextCloud button. You can search for Online Accounts in your main search interface or access it via the main system settings interface.

Use https://nextcloud.strw.leidenuniv.nl/ for the Server field. For the Username and Password fields use your Sterrewacht credentials.

After succefully creating an Online Account for NextCloud, you must be able to use your file manager to access your files. It will be shown on the left pane of the file manager window.

In case you get a window with a request to enter your keyring password and you can't skip it, provide the password. If you don't know the password you will need to disable it for this session. For this open Passwords and Keys application and delete the record with name Login (right click). It will be recreated during your next login.

Our Linux workstations also have a Nextcloud desktop app installed; this is a different method to work with nextcloud, so you can use this in stead of the Online Accounts method. This app can be found in the desktop menu. Open it, and it will add an icon to the panel or notification area of your desktop. The first time you run the app, it will pop up a configuration screen (which can be accessed later with a right-click on the icon and selecting “settings”).

This app is different than the online accounts method: it synchronizes your nextcloud account with a local directory. As with many Linux apps, the default location will be in your home directory, and of course, there will not be sufficient space for that. Luckily, you can select the location where you want the synchronization to take place once you have completed the setup. Alternatively, you can move the folder to a data disk and make a symbolic link to this location:

mv $HOME/Nextcloud /net/computername/data2/yourname/Nextcloud
ln -s /net/computername/data2/yourname/Nextcloud $HOME/Nextcloud

This should be done when the app is not running, and of course, fill in the computername and username in stead of literally copying this example.