DB Doctor

Your database, but with a regular check-up.

DB Doctor audits the MySQL, MariaDB, or PostgreSQL database powering your Nextcloud against best-practice rules — ported from phpMyAdmin's advisor, plus curated PostgreSQL checks and a set of Nextcloud-specific schema checks — and presents the results as a friendly check-up: an at-a-glance health grade and a plain-English recommendation for every rule that fails. Apply safe runtime fixes with one click, or copy a my.cnf / postgresql.conf snippet for permanent changes.

It is read-only by default, admin-only, and never phones home.

Screenshots

Highlights

• Health grade A–F with a numeric score, and a plain-English issue + recommendation for every failing rule.
• 50+ MySQL/MariaDB rules ported from phpMyAdmin's advisor (each keeps its upstream id so future syncs can be tracked), plus curated PostgreSQL checks (cache hit ratio, dead tuples, replication lag, connection saturation, long-running queries, sequential-scan hotspots).
• Nextcloud-specific checks that a generic advisor can't express:
  • missing indices / columns / primary keys — detected via the same events behind occ db:add-missing-*, so the recommended fix is exactly the occ command that resolves it;
  • 4-byte utf8mb4 charset, InnoDB storage engine, and READ-COMMITTED transaction isolation.
• One-click runtime fixes for an allow-listed set of variables (SET GLOBAL / ALTER SYSTEM), with a downloadable config snippet for everything else. Every apply is recorded in an audit log.
• Score trend chart (30-day) and a per-rule sparkline so you can watch health climb over time.
• Live metric tiles (cache hit ratio, connection saturation, throughput) and a live database-latency chart, polled only while the page is visible.
• Weekly automatic check-ups that keep the trend data flowing and notify admins when database health declines.
• Setup check — the grade shows up in Settings → Overview where admins already look for problems.
• occ dbdoctor:check command with --output=json and Nagios-style exit codes for monitoring integration.
• Reverted-fix detection — a runtime fix lost to a database restart is flagged so you can make it permanent.
• Uptime-aware — ratio/rate rules are skipped until the server has enough uptime for their counters to mean anything, so you don't get false alarms right after a restart.
• Optional override connection — point DB Doctor at a separate (e.g. higher-privilege or read-only) database account without changing Nextcloud's main connection; the password is encrypted at rest.

Requirements

• Nextcloud 33–35
• PHP 8.3 or newer
• MySQL 5.7+ / MariaDB 10.4+ / PostgreSQL 13+

Installation

Install DB Doctor from the Nextcloud app store, or build from source (below) and enable it:

sudo -u www-data php occ app:enable dbdoctor

Open it under Settings → Administration → DB Doctor and click Run check now.

Command line

Run the advisor from the CLI — handy for cron and monitoring:

# Human-readable summary
sudo -u www-data php occ dbdoctor:check

# Machine-readable, for monitoring systems
sudo -u www-data php occ dbdoctor:check --output=json

# Only list failing rules
sudo -u www-data php occ dbdoctor:check --failing-only

Exit codes follow the Nagios convention: 0 OK, 1 warnings, 2 alerts, 3 unsupported/unknown.

Configuration

Optional config.php settings:

// Restrict which hosts an admin may point the override connection at
// (defense-in-depth against using the UI as an internal-network probe).
// When absent or empty, every host is allowed.
'dbdoctor.allowed_override_hosts' => ['db1.internal', '10.0.0.5'],

Disable the weekly automatic check-up:

sudo -u www-data php occ config:app:set dbdoctor scheduled_checks --value=no

Building from source

composer install --no-dev --prefer-dist
npm ci
npm run build

Development helpers: composer test (PHPUnit), npm test (Vitest), npm run lint, npm run watch.

Translations

Strings are translated on Transifex via the standard Nextcloud translation sync (.tx/config + translationfiles/). To contribute a translation, join the Nextcloud Transifex team — compiled l10n/*.js / l10n/*.json files land here automatically once the dbdoctor resource is activated for the sync bot.

Credits

The MySQL/MariaDB rule set is ported from the phpMyAdmin Advisor, with each rule's upstream id preserved so future syncs can be tracked.

• Source: https://github.com/phpmyadmin/phpmyadmin/tree/master/src/Advisory

License

DB Doctor is licensed under AGPL-3.0-or-later. The bundled phpMyAdmin advisor data is GPL-2.0-or-later (upward-compatible), retained intact and tracked via REUSE.toml.