Owncloud

References

• https://owncloud.org/

Tools:

• DAVDroid — paid sync app on Android
• Outlook CalDav Synchronizer — Sync Outlook with Google, SOGo, Horde or any other CalDAV server

Also on GitHub.

• CardDAV-Sync — Another CardDAV sync app for Android (free / paid).

Install

Install packages

From Owncloud page, on Ubuntu:

wget -nv https://download.owncloud.org/download/repositories/stable/xUbuntu_14.04/Release.key -O Release.key
apt-key add - < Release.key
sh -c "echo 'deb http://download.owncloud.org/download/repositories/stable/xUbuntu_14.04/ /' >> /etc/apt/sources.list.d/owncloud.list"
apt-get update
apt-get install owncloud

On Debian 8:

wget -nv https://download.owncloud.org/download/repositories/9.0/Debian_8.0/Release.key -O Release.key
apt-key add - < Release.key
sh -c "echo 'deb http://download.owncloud.org/download/repositories/9.0/Debian_8.0/ /' >> /etc/apt/sources.list.d/owncloud.list"
apt-get update
apt-get install owncloud

Note:

• Installing owncloud-files was not enough. Not sure what are the missing dependencies.

Optional:

• Install php5-imagick to get image preview (but beware of recent vulnerabilities. See Linux security).

Configuration

When installed, Owncloud is available at URL http://localhost/owncloud/. This is configured in apache2 file /etc/apache2/conf-available/owncloud.conf:

Alias /owncloud "/var/www/owncloud/"
<Directory "/var/www/owncloud">
Options +FollowSymLinks
AllowOverride All

<IfModule mod_dav.c>
Dav off
</IfModule>

SetEnv HOME /var/www/owncloud
SetEnv HTTP_HOME /var/www/owncloud
</Directory>

<Directory "/var/www/owncloud/data/">
# just in case if .htaccess gets disabled
Require all denied
</Directory>

Note that owncloud files /var/www/owncloud are outside the regular http root (i.e. /var/www/html).

Before completing the installation, we first setup a virtual access to allow accessing Owncloud via HTTPS. This is also recommended for remote installs. For this create the file /etc/apache2/sites-available/owncloud.immie.org.conf, with content:

<IfModule mod_ssl.c>
<VirtualHost *:443>
ServerAdmin webmaster@localhost
ServerName owncloud.immie.org

DocumentRoot /var/www/html

# Owncloud configuration: see conf-available/owncloud.conf

SSLCertificateFile      /etc/ssl/certs/ssl-cert-owncloud.immie.org.pem
SSLCertificateKeyFile /etc/ssl/private/ssl-cert-owncloud.immie.org.key

# ...

</VirtualHost>
</IfModule>

We only list the most relevant settings. Basically we only setup the server name and give the SSL certificates. For now, we leave File:/owncloud as a global alias.

Enable the site:

a2ensite owncloud.immie.org
service apache2 reload

We also need to create a new MySQL user and database for owncloud. This way owncloud will not use MySQL root access.

MYSQL_HISTFILE=/dev/null mysql --user=root -p mysql          # You'll need MySQL root user password

CREATE DATABASE owncloud_immie;
GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON owncloud_immie.* TO owncloud_immie@localhost IDENTIFIED BY '********************';
quit

Of course, replace ******************** with your own password.

Proceed to the URL https://owncloud.immie.org/owncloud:

• Enter a new admin account user name and password.
• Click on Storage & database
• Keep data folder as is (/var/www/owncloud/data). Make sure it is outside web server root.
• Select MySQL / MariaDB.
• Enter MySQL user name, password, database name. Keep localhost for the DB server name.
• Click Finish setup.

Hardening

See Linux Security.