cloud9.txt

OwnCloud:
Share and sync
Take charge of your data by creating your own cloud service.
Do you want the convenience of an omnipresent
Dropbox-like storage service without doling out wads
of cash and your data to a third party? OwnCloud is
one of the best pieces of open source software to help you
create your own private and protected cloud-sharing service.
Using OwnCloud, you can sync and share your private data,
and access it from any device connected to the internet. For
added security, OwnCloud can also encrypt your files. The
software can handle files in a variety of formats and you can
extend its usability by adding a number of other apps.
As with other online cloud storage services, you can sync
files on OwnCloud either using the web browser or a desktop
client on Windows, Mac and Linux, as well as mobile clients
for Android and iOS devices. Furthermore, your OwnCloud
server keeps older versions of all changed files and enables
you to revert to an older version without much effort.
In this tutorial, we’re setting up the OwnCloud server on
top of the Raspbian distribution for the Raspberry Pi. The
server software has modest requirements and it performs
well even on the Raspberry Pi Model B in certain small and
controlled environments, such as your house. You also need a
USB portable disk for storing the data. For maximum
reliability and performance, it’s best to use a self-powered
disk that doesn’t draw power from the Raspberry Pi. Before
OwnCloud has a well designed browser-based dashboard
that exposes a lot of features but is still easy to operate.
To view some
stats on the APC
cache, copy its
script to your
DocumentRoot
with cp /usr/
share/doc/phpapc/
apc.php /var/
www/ and then
view it in the
web browser on
http://localhost/
apc.php.
Quick
tip
COMPATIBILITY
All Pi’s
best on
Pi 2
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snappier. Pull in the components with sudo apt-get install
php-apc and then open APC’s configuration file and add:
$ sudo nano /etc/php5/conf.d/20-apc.ini
extension=apc.so
apc.enabled=1
apc.shm_size=12M
Then bring the cache online by restarting Apache with:
$ sudo apachectl restart.
Now that the server is set up and configured, it’s time to
prepare the storage medium. Plug the USB disk into the Pi
and enter sudo blkid in a terminal. The USB disk is probably
be mounted as /dev/sda1 if you don’t have any other USB
disks attached. Make a note of the corresponding UUID,
which looks something like 6154-F660. Now create a
directory to mount this drive using:
$ sudo mkdir /media/owncloud
Then mount the drive with:
$ sudo mount -t vfat -o umask=007,auto,uid=33,gid=33 /dev/
sda1 /media/owncloud
The above command assumes your drive has a FAT32
filesystem and is mounted at /dev/sda1. Once the drive is
mounted correctly, you can edit the fstab file to make sure
it’s automatically mounted:
$ sudo nano /etc/fstab
UUID=6154-F660 /media/owncloud/ vfat
rw,umask=007,auto,uid=33,gid=33 0 0
Configure the cloud
That’s all there is to installing the server components. You’re
now all set to configure your cloud. Launch a web browser
and navigate to the OwnCloud installation instance at
192.168.3.111/owncloud. Because this is a brand new
installation, you are asked to create a new user account for
the OwnCloud administrator.
Next, we need to ask OwnCloud to use the MySQL
database and store files under the mounted USB drive. For
this, click on the Storage & Database pull-down menu. Then
enter /media/owncloud/data in the text box corresponding
to the Data Folder entry and select the MySQL/MariaDB
option in the Database section. You’re asked to enter the
connection details of the database serve, so just enter
localhost as the host and root as the username, along with
the password you configured when the database was pulled
in along with OwnCloud.
That’s it – you’ve set up OwnCloud. You can now log into
your cloud server as the administrator using the credentials
you have just created for OwnCloud. While you can start using
the server to upload and download files straight away, let’s
take a moment to get the house in order. For starters, when
you log into the OwnCloud server, click on the pull-down
menu next to your username and click on Personal. Here you
can change the settings for your account, such as the login
password and display name. You can also add a profile picture
and configure how you would like to be notified about certain
actions. Also, if your cloud is going to be used by multiple
people, it’s advisable to add users and organise them into
different groups. To do this, select the Users option from the
pull-down menu. While adding users, you can restrict their
storage space and even share your admin responsibilities
with other users, and mark certain users as admins for a
particular group.
Upload and share files
You’re now all set to upload data into your OwnCloud server.
After you’ve logged in, you are in the Files section. To upload a
file, click on the arrow button. To organise files into folders,
click on the button labelled New, and select the Folder option
from the drop-down menu to create a new folder.
If you’ve uploaded a file in a format that OwnCloud
understands, you can click on its name to view and edit the
file. OwnCloud can visualise the data it houses in different
views. For example, click on the Files pull-down menu in the
top-left corner of the interface, and select the Pictures option.
This view helps you view images in your cloud by filtering out
all other types of content.
Another way to upload files to the server is by using the
WebDAV protocol, with which you can access your cloud
server from your file manager. For example, in the Files file
manager, press Ctrl+L to enable the location area. Here you
can point to your OwnCloud server, such as
dav://192.168.3.111/owncloud/remote.php/webdav.
Once authenticated, the OwnCloud storage is mounted and
you can interact with it just like a regular folder.
To share uploaded files, go to the Files section in the web
interface and hover over the file or folder you wish to share.
This displays several options, including Share, which enables
you to select which users or groups you want to share the
item with and whether you want to give them permission to
edit and delete the files. You can also share with someone
who isn’t registered with your OwnCloud server. Click on
Share with Link, and OwnCloud displays a link to the item that
you can share with anybody on the internet. You can also
password-protect the link and set an expiration date.
While you can interact with the cloud using the web
interface, it’s far easier to use one of its official clients.
OwnCloud has clients for all the major desktop and mobile
If your drive has
an NTFS partition,
install the NTFS
driver with sudo
apt-get install
ntfs-3g and use
-t ntfs-3g in the
mount command.
Quick
tip
Ready-made solutions
Although it doesn’t take too much effort to install
and configure the OwnCloud server from scratch,
there’s a couple of ways to save time and effort.
The chaps behind PetRockBlog have written a
script that automates the whole installation
process.
The script downloads and sets up an
OwnCloud installation on top of a Raspbian
distribution. However, unlike the tutorial, the
script uses the Nginx web server instead of the
Apache web server. To use the script, install the
required components with:
$ sudo apt-get install git dialog
Then download the script with:
$ git clone git://github.com/petrockblog/
OwncloudPie.git
which creates a directory called OwncloudPie.
Move into this directory:
$ cd OwncloudPie
Make the script executable:
$ chmod +x owncloudpie_setup.sh
Then execute it:
$ sudo ./owncloudpie_setup.sh
Now give it some time to download all the
components and configure your server. Once
you’ve installed OwnCloud from the script, you
can run it again to update the installation
whenever a new




platforms. These clients also help you synchronise folders
from the desktop to your OwnCloud server with ease.
Set up clients
Most desktop distros host the Linux client in their
official repos. You can also grab the latest version by
adding the corresponding repo for your distro from here:
http://bit.ly/1HZxhOy.
The page has instructions for popular distros including
Debian, Fedora, Ubuntu, OpenSUSE, and more. To download
clients for other platforms, head to the downloads page on
OwnCloud’s website (https://owncloud.org/
install/#install-clients). Mobile clients are best fetched
from either Apple’s App Store or Google’s Play Store.
Once the client is installed, it prompts you for your login
credentials in order to connect to the OwnCloud installation.
Once connected, the Linux clients create a local sync folder
named owncloud under the home directory, such as
/home/bodhi/owncloud. Any files you move into this
directory are automatically synced to the server. You can also
specify one or more directories on a local machine to sync
with the OwnCloud server. If a directory is shared with several
users, when anyone makes a change to a file on one
computer, it automatically flows across to the others.
When collaborating with other users, you’ll appreciate
OwnCloud’s version control system, which creates backups of
files before modifying them. These backups are accessible via
the Versions pull-down option corresponding to each file,
along with a Restore button to revert to an older version.
In addition to files, you can also sync your calendar and
address book with your OwnCloud server. Follow the
walkthrough opposite to enable the Calendar and Contacts
apps. Once you’ve enabled both, the top-left pull-down menu
now includes the Calendar and Contacts option.
Now you need to import your contacts and calendar from
your existing apps into your cloud server. OwnCloud supports
the popular vCard file format (which has the .vcf file
extension) and almost every popular email app, including
online ones such as Gmail, export their address books in this
format. Similarly, calendars can be imported in the popular
iCal format. Before proceeding further, make sure you
download both the .vcf and .ical files from your existing
contacts and calendar apps.
Now head to Contacts in OwnCloud and click on Import
Contacts. In the pop-up window, click on Upload File and
point it to the .vcf file. Once the contacts have been imported,
you can sync them with your email clients using CardDAV
links. Head to the Contacts section in OwnCloud, click on the
gears icon at the bottom, hover over the name of the address
book you imported and click on the Chain icon. This spits out
a CardDAV link for this address book that you can feed to your
desktop or mobile address book client.
Sync and share your calendar
Similarly, you can use OwnCloud to manage your calendar
and tasks. To create an event in your calendar, head over to
the Calendar app. You can view the calendar for the entire
month or for the current week. To add a new event, click on
the appropriate date in the calendar. This brings up a window,
which gives you several options to configure the event. To
import an existing client, simply upload the .ical file to your
cloud server. When you click on the file in OwnCloud’s web
interface, the server recognises the file and offers to import it
into an existing calendar or into a new one. Select the option
that best suits you.
After you’ve imported the calendar, you can use
OwnCloud to share it with other users. Click on the Share
Calendar icon corresponding to the calendar you wish to
share. This brings up a pull-down menu, which enables you to
select the users or the group of users you wish to share the
calendar with. Furthermore, just like address books,
OwnCloud can also sync your calendars with desktop and
mobile apps that can read this information from CalDAV links.
To get the CalDAV link for your calendar, click on the Gears
button and then on the Chain icon corresponding to the
calendar you wish to sync. This displays the link that you can
pass on to the clients to keep them in sync with the
OwnCloud calendar.
There’s a lot more you can do with OwnCloud. Follow the
walkthrough opposite to flesh out the default installation with
new apps to extend the functionality of your cloud.
Universal access
The real advantage of commercial cloud
services such as Dropbox is that you can access
data stored within them from any computer
connected to the internet. However, by default, a
self-hosted OwnCloud installation is only
accessible from computers and devices within
the local network,
That’s not to say that you can’t access your
private cloud from the internet, though. The
trickier and expensive solution is to get a static
IP address from your ISP and then poke holes in
your router’s firewall. Or, you can set up Dynamic
DNS in your router or local machine. The
smarter way, however, is to use a tunnelling
service, such as PageKite. The service uses a
pay- what- you-want model. As a non- commercial
user, you can use the service for free by filling
out a form once a month, telling PageKite how
you use the service. But it’s definitely worth
more than the $3 per month minimum they
request from individuals.
First you need to install PageKite. Launch a
terminal and enter:
$ curl -s https://pagekite.net/pk/ | sudo bash
When it’s done, make your local web server
public with the following command:
$ pagekite.py 80 mycloudserver.pagekite.me
Remember to replace mycloudserver with
the name you want for your OwnCloud server.
Now you can access your own personal
OwnCloud instance by heading over to
http://mycloudserver.pagekite.me from any
computer anywhere in the world. The first time
you run this command, PageKite runs you
through its brief sign-up process and asks for
your email address.
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1 Enabled apps
You can extend your default OwnCloud installation by adding (or
removing) a bunch of apps. Bring up the pull-down menu in the top-left
of the interface and click on Apps. By default, you are shown a list of
apps that are already enabled on your installation. You can browse
through this list and read their descriptions to understand them better.
You can also disable any enabled app from this section.
2 Documents app
Once you’ve browsed through this list, head to the Recommended
section, which lists a number of apps that are recommended by the
OwnCloud developers. These haven’t been enabled by default as they
might not be of use on all OwnCloud deployments. The Documents
app enables you to edit and collaborate on documents in various
formats within OwnCloud itself, without the need for an external app.
3 Bookmarks app
The other productivity app that you should enable is Bookmarks. This
app lets you store and manage bookmarks in your OwnCloud server.
You can add bookmarks by adding them directly, or by importing a
bookmark file from your web browser. The app also has a bookmarklet
that you can add to your browser’s bookmarks. Press the bookmarklet
to add a website to OwnCloud’s list of bookmarks.
4 Calendar and Contacts
Scroll down and click on the PIM tab on the left. This section lists two
apps. You can enable either or both the Calendar and Contacts apps.
Once enabled, the apps let you pull in your existing contacts and
calendars, which you can sync with the PIM apps from your OwnCloud
installation, as explained in the tutorial. Some OwnCloud apps also
have the option to enable them for specific users.
5 More apps
In addition to the apps listed in the Apps section on your OwnCloud
installation, there are others that you can install from the OwnCloud
website. Scroll down the Apps section and click on the More Apps…
link. This takes you to the OwnCloud app store at http://apps.
owncloud.com. You can download any app from here and extract it
under the /var/www/owncloud/apps folder inside the Pi.
6 News and storage usage
Two other useful apps are the News and Storage Usage apps. The
former is an RSS reader and the latter visualises the storage space on
your cloud with a variety of charts. Once you’ve downloaded them
from the website and extracted them under the apps folder, head back
to the Apps section in your OwnCloud installation. These and any
other downloaded apps are listed under the Not Enabled section.