Hosting more than one Cozy instance on the same server

Having its own selfhosted Cozy instance is nice but hosting Cozy instances for friends and family is a must! Here is how to add more Cozy instances on the same server.

The first Cozy instance we added was https://cozy.domain.example. We will create a second Cozy instance for Mary with address https://mary.domain.example (Replace domain.example with your own domain name and mary with what you want to uniquely identify the Cozy instance.

So we will need:

• Our domain name. We still use domain.example in this documentation
• The new Cozy instance’s “slug”, which is its unique identifier. We will use mary here for example. The address for this new Cozy instance will the be in the form https://<slug>.<domain>, for example here https://mary.domain.example

First, let’s put all that important information in variables:

DOMAIN=domain.example
EMAIL=<your email addresse>
NEWSLUG=mary
NEWEMAIL=<Mary's email address>

Create DNS entries for this Cozy instance. For example:

mary     1h     IN         A     <your_server_IP>
*.mary   1h     IN     CNAME     mary

Create Nginx base configuration for this Cozy instance:

cat <<EOF | sudo tee /etc/nginx/sites-available/${NEWSLUG}.${DOMAIN} > /dev/null
server {
    listen 80;
    listen [::]:80;

    root /var/www/html;
    server_name *.${NEWSLUG}.${DOMAIN} ${NEWSLUG}.${DOMAIN};
    access_log /var/log/nginx/${NEWSLUG}.${DOMAIN}.access.log with_host;
    error_log /var/log/nginx/${NEWSLUG}.${DOMAIN}.error.log;

    location /.well-known {
        alias /var/www/html/.well-known;
    }

    location / {
        return         301 https://\$host\$request_uri;
    }
}
EOF
sudo ln -s ../sites-available/${NEWSLUG}.${DOMAIN} /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/
sudo systemctl reload nginx

Generate SSL certificate using certbot:

sudo certbot certonly --email "${EMAIL}" --non-interactive --agree-tos --webroot -w /var/www/html -d ${NEWSLUG}.${DOMAIN} $(printf -- " -d %s.${NEWSLUG}.${DOMAIN}" home banks contacts drive notes passwords photos settings store mespapiers)

Finalize Nginx configuration:

cat <<EOF | sudo tee -a /etc/nginx/sites-available/${NEWSLUG}.${DOMAIN} > /dev/null

server {
    listen 443 ssl http2;
    listen [::]:443 ssl http2;
    ssl_certificate /etc/letsencrypt/live/${NEWSLUG}.${DOMAIN}/fullchain.pem;
    ssl_certificate_key /etc/letsencrypt/live/${NEWSLUG}.${DOMAIN}/privkey.pem;

    server_name *.${NEWSLUG}.${DOMAIN} ${NEWSLUG}.${DOMAIN};
    access_log /var/log/nginx/${NEWSLUG}.${DOMAIN}.access.log with_host;
    error_log /var/log/nginx/${NEWSLUG}.${DOMAIN}.error.log;

    add_header Strict-Transport-Security "max-age=31536000; includeSubDomains;";
    client_max_body_size 1g;

    location / {
        proxy_pass http://localhost:8080;
        proxy_http_version 1.1;
        proxy_set_header Upgrade \$http_upgrade;
        proxy_set_header Connection "upgrade";
        proxy_set_header Host \$host;
        proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For \$remote_addr;
    }
}
EOF
sudo systemctl reload nginx

Create Cozy instance:

[[ -z "${COZY_PASS}" ]] && read -p "Cozy stack admin password: " -r -s COZY_PASS
sudo COZY_ADMIN_PASSWORD="${COZY_PASS}" cozy-stack instances add --apps home,banks,contacts,drive,notes,passwords,photos,settings,store --email "${NEWEMAIL}" --locale fr --tz "Europe/Paris" ${NEWSLUG}.${DOMAIN}

Note the “Registration token” the last command gives you and send Mary the following url: https://mary.domain.example?registerToken=<registration_token>, substituting domain.example with your own domain name, mary with the slug you chose for this new instance and <registration_token> with the “Registration token” returned by the last command. By visiting this address with her browser, Mary will be able to define its password and start using her Cozy.

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