Prerequisites¶

To run ownCloud, your web server must have the following installed:

• PHP (>= 5.3.3 minimum, 5.4 or higher recommended)
• PHP module ctype
• PHP module dom
• PHP module GD
• PHP module iconv
• PHP module JSON
• PHP module libxml
• PHP module mb multibyte
• PHP module SimpleXML
• PHP module zip
• PHP module zlib

Database connectors (pick at least one):

• PHP module sqlite (requires sqlite >= 3.0; simple configuration, but inferior performance)
• PHP module mysql
• PHP module pgsql (requires PostgreSQL >= 9.0)

Recommended packages:

• PHP module curl (highly recommended, some functionality, e.g. http user authentication, depends on this)
• PHP module fileinfo (highly recommended, enhances file analysis performance)
• PHP module bz2 (recommended, required for extraction of apps)
• PHP module intl (increases language translation performance)
• PHP module mcrypt (increases file encryption performance)
• PHP module openssl (required for accessing HTTPS resources)

Required for specific apps (if you use the mentioned app, you must install that package):

• PHP module ldap (for ldap integration)
• smbclient (for SMB storage)
• PHP module ftp (for FTP storage)

Recommended for specific apps (optional):

• PHP module exif (for image rotation in pictures app)

For enhanced performance (optional / select only one of the following):

• PHP module apc
• PHP module apcu
• PHP module xcache

For preview generation (optional):

• PHP module imagick
• avconv or ffmpeg
• OpenOffice or libreOffice

Remarks:

• Please check your distribution, operating system or hosting partner documentation on how to install/enable these modules.

• Make sure your distribution’s php version fulfils the version requirements specified above. If it doesn’t, there might be custom repositories you can use. If you are e.g. running Ubuntu 10.04 LTS, you can update your PHP using a custom PHP PPA:

  sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ondrej/php5
  sudo apt-get update
  sudo apt-get install php5

• You don’t need any WebDAV support module for your web server (i.e. Apache’s mod_webdav) to access your ownCloud data via WebDAV. ownCloud has a built-in WebDAV server of its own.

sudo apt-get install apache2 mysql-server libapache2-mod-php5
sudo apt-get install php5-gd php5-json php5-mysql php5-curl
sudo apt-get install php5-intl php5-mcrypt php5-imagick

Download, extract and copy ownCloud to Your Web Server¶

First, download the archive of the latest ownCloud version:

• Navigate to the ownCloud Installation Page

• Click “Tar or Zip file”

• In the opening dialog, chose the “Linux” link.

• This will start the download of a file named owncloud-x.y.z.tar.bz2 (where x.y.z is the version number of the current latest version).

• Save this file on the machine you want to install ownCloud on. If that’s a different machine than the one you are currently working on, use e.g. FTP to transfer the downloaded archive file there.

• Extract the archive contents. Open a terminal and run:

  cd path/to/downloaded/archive
  tar -xjf owncloud-x.y.z.tar.bz2

  where path/to/downloaded/archive is to be replaced by the path where you put the downloaded archive, and x.y.z of course has to be replaced by the actual version number as in the file you have downloaded.

• Copy the ownCloud files to their final destination in the document root of your webserver (you can skip this step if you already downloaded and extracted the files there):

  sudo cp -r owncloud /path/to/your/webservers/document-root

  where /path/to/your/webservers/document-root, needs to be replaced by the actual path where the document root of your webserver is configured to be.

  • If you don’t know where your webserver’s document root is located, consult its documentation. For Apache on Ubuntu 12.04 LTS for example, this would usually be /var/www. So the concrete command to run would be:

    sudo cp -r owncloud /var/www

  • The above assumes you want to install ownCloud into a subdirectory “owncloud” on your webserver. For installing it anywhere else, you’ll have to adapt the above command (and also the commands in the following section) accordingly.

Set the Directory Permissions¶

The user running your web server must own at least the config/, data/ and apps/ directories in your ownCloud installation folder so that you can configure ownCloud, create/modify and delete your data files through ownCloud and install apps through the web interface. If you are planning on also using the automatic updater app for updating, the whole owncloud folder must be owned by (or at least be writable to) the user running php on your system.

The following command will change the ownership of the whole ownCloud folder to that user.

• The generic command to run is:

  sudo chown -R <php-user>:<php-user> /path/to/your/webservers/document-root/owncloud

  where <php-user> is to be replaced by the user running php scripts, and /path/to/your/webservers/document-root/owncloud by the folder where the extracted ownCloud files are located.

• For Ubuntu 12.04 LTS server, where the owncloud folder was copied into the Apache document root at /var/www, and the user running Apache and php scripts is called www-data, this would mean you need to run:

  sudo chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www/owncloud

• For all Debian-based distributions (like Ubuntu, Debian or Linux Mint) and Gentoo, use www-data user

• On ArchLinux, use http user.

• On Fedora, use apache user.

• When you had extracted ownCloud as user root, you should adjust file and directory permission to avoid world writeable files and folder:

  find /path/to/your/webservers/document-root/owncloud -type d -exec chmod 750 {} \;
  find /path/to/your/webservers/document-root/owncloud -type f -exec chmod 640 {} \;

  Running this in combination with the above chown command will give a secure set-up.

Web Server Configuration¶

Apache is the recommended web server.

sudo a2enmod ssl
sudo a2ensite default-ssl
sudo service apache2 reload

sudo apachectl -v
apache2 -v

Server version: Apache/2.2.22 (Ubuntu)
Server built:   Jul 12 2013 13:37:10

<Directory /path/to/your/owncloud/install>
    Options Indexes FollowSymLinks MultiViews
    AllowOverride All
    Order allow,deny
    allow from all
</Directory>

<Directory /path/to/your/owncloud/install>
    Options Indexes FollowSymLinks MultiViews
    AllowOverride All
    Require all granted
</Directory>

<IfModule mod_ssl.c>
<VirtualHost _default_:443>
        ServerName YourServerName
        ServerAdmin webmaster@localhost
        DocumentRoot /var/www
        <Directory />
                Options FollowSymLinks
                AllowOverride None
        </Directory>
        <Directory /var/www/>
                Options Indexes FollowSymLinks MultiViews
                AllowOverride None
                Order allow,deny
                allow from all
        </Directory>
        ErrorLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/error.log
        LogLevel warn
        CustomLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/ssl_access.log combined
        SSLEngine on
        SSLCertificateFile    /etc/ssl/certs/ssl-cert-snakeoil.pem
        SSLCertificateKeyFile /etc/ssl/private/ssl-cert-snakeoil.key
        <FilesMatch "\.(cgi|shtml|phtml|php)$">
                SSLOptions +StdEnvVars
        </FilesMatch>
        <Directory /usr/lib/cgi-bin>
                SSLOptions +StdEnvVars
        </Directory>
        BrowserMatch "MSIE [2-6]" \
                nokeepalive ssl-unclean-shutdown \
                downgrade-1.0 force-response-1.0
        BrowserMatch "MSIE [17-9]" ssl-unclean-shutdown
        <Directory /var/www/owncloud>
                Options Indexes FollowSymLinks MultiViews
                AllowOverride All
                Order allow,deny
                Allow from all
                # add any possibly required additional directives here
                # e.g. the Satisfy directive (see below for details):
                Satisfy Any
        </Directory>
</VirtualHost>
</IfModule>

upstream php-handler {
        server 127.0.0.1:9000;
        #server unix:/var/run/php5-fpm.sock;
}

server {
        listen 80;
        server_name cloud.example.com;
        return 301 https://$server_name$request_uri;  # enforce https
}

server {
        listen 443 ssl;
        server_name cloud.example.com;

        ssl_certificate /etc/ssl/nginx/cloud.example.com.crt;
        ssl_certificate_key /etc/ssl/nginx/cloud.example.com.key;

        # Path to the root of your installation
        root /var/www/;

        client_max_body_size 10G; # set max upload size
        fastcgi_buffers 64 4K;

        rewrite ^/caldav(.*)$ /remote.php/caldav$1 redirect;
        rewrite ^/carddav(.*)$ /remote.php/carddav$1 redirect;
        rewrite ^/webdav(.*)$ /remote.php/webdav$1 redirect;

        index index.php;
        error_page 403 /core/templates/403.php;
        error_page 404 /core/templates/404.php;

        location = /robots.txt {
            allow all;
            log_not_found off;
            access_log off;
        }

        location ~ ^/(data|config|\.ht|db_structure\.xml|README) {
                deny all;
        }

        location / {
                # The following 2 rules are only needed with webfinger
                rewrite ^/.well-known/host-meta /public.php?service=host-meta last;
                rewrite ^/.well-known/host-meta.json /public.php?service=host-meta-json last;

                rewrite ^/.well-known/carddav /remote.php/carddav/ redirect;
                rewrite ^/.well-known/caldav /remote.php/caldav/ redirect;

                rewrite ^(/core/doc/[^\/]+/)$ $1/index.html;

                try_files $uri $uri/ index.php;
        }

        location ~ ^(.+?\.php)(/.*)?$ {
                try_files $1 =404;

                include fastcgi_params;
                fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $document_root$1;
                fastcgi_param PATH_INFO $2;
                fastcgi_param HTTPS on;
                fastcgi_pass php-handler;
        }

        # Optional: set long EXPIRES header on static assets
        location ~* ^.+\.(jpg|jpeg|gif|bmp|ico|png|css|js|swf)$ {
                expires 30d;
                # Optional: Don't log access to assets
                access_log off;
        }

}

$HTTP["url"] =~ "^/owncloud/data/" {
        url.access-deny = ("")
}

$HTTP["url"] =~ "^/owncloud($|/)" {
        dir-listing.activate = "disable"
}

apt-get build-dep lighttpd
apt-get install quilt patch devscripts

apt-get source lighttpd
cd lighttpd-1.4.31
export QUILT_PATCHES=debian/patches # This tells quilt to put the patch in the right spot
quilt new http-patch.patch
quilt add src/connections.c src/keyvalue.c src/keyvalue.h # Make quilt watch the files we'll be changing
patch -p1 -i /patch/to/downloaded/patch.patch
quilt refresh

<server owncloud.myserver.com/>
        port = 80
        listen = 0.0.0.0
        docroot = /var/www/owncloud/src
        allowed_scripts = php
        php_handler = <cgi, /usr/local/bin/php-cgi>
        errormod_404 = yaws_404_to_index_php
        access_log = false
        dir_listings = false
        <redirect>
                /data == /
        </redirect>
</server>

UrlToolkit {
    ToolkitID = denyData
    Match ^/data DenyAccess
}

Follow the Install Wizard¶

• Open your web browser
• Navigate to your ownCloud instance.
  • If you are installing ownCloud on the same machine as you are accessing the install wizard from, the url will be https://localhost/owncloud
  • If you are installing ownCloud on a different machine, you’ll have to access it by its hostname or IP address, e.g. https://example.com/owncloud
  • If you are using a self-signed certificate, you will be presented with a security warning about the issuer of the certificate not being trusted which you can ignore.
• You will be presented with the setup screen
• Enter username and password for the administrative user account
• Expand Advanced options to choose a data folder and the database system
• If you are not using Apache as the web server, please set the data directory to a location outside of the document root.
• If following the Ubuntu-Apache-MySQL walk-through:
  • choose MySQL as Database backend (you might not be presented with any other choice if you haven’t installed any other database systems).
  • As Database host, enter localhost.
  • As Database user enter root.
  • As Database password, enter the password you entered during installation of the MySQL server package.
  • As Database name, enter an arbitrary name as you see fit
    • Beware that there are restrictions as to what characters a database name may or may not contain, see the MySQL Schema Object Names documentation for details);
    • Make sure to choose a name under which no database exists yet
  • ownCloud will use the provided credentials and create its own user with permissions only on its own database.
• In general, you have the following choices regarding the database:
  • For basic installs we recommend SQLite as it is easy to setup (ownCloud will do it for you). The performance when using sqlite is however inferior to the two other options.
  • For larger installs you should use MySQL or PostgreSQL.
  • Note that you will only be able to choose among the php database connectors which are actually installed on the system (see package requirements above).
  • Further, it is not easily possible to migrate to another database system once you have set up your ownCloud to use a specific one. So make sure to carefully consider which database system to use.
  • When using MySQL or PostgreSQL you have two options regarding the database name and user account you specify:
    • You can specify either an admin/root user, and the name of a database which does not yet exist. This lets ownCloud create its own database; it will also create a database user account with restricted rights (with the same username as you specified for the administrative user, plus an oc_ prefix) and will use that for all subsequent database access.
    • You can enter the name of an existing database and the username/password of a user with restricted permissions
      • You can create such a user yourself e.g. via phpmyadmin.
      • This user shouldn’t have permission to create a database.
      • It should have full permissions on the (existing) database with the name you specify.
• Press “Finish Setup”
• ownCloud will set up your cloud according to the given settings
• When its finished, it will log you in as administrative user and present the “Welcome to ownCloud” screen.

Note¶

When the initial ownCloud configuration is performed, ownCloud will take the URL used to access it and insert that the config.php file under the ‘trusted_domains’ header.

Users will only be able to log into ownCloud when the addressed URL is as stated in the ‘trusted_domans’ header in the config.php file.

In the event that a load balancer is in place, as long as it sends the correct X-Forwarded-Host header, there will be no issues.

It should be noted that the loopback address, 127.0.0.1, is white labeled and therefore users on the ownCloud server who access ownCloud with the loopback will successfully login. In the event that an improper URL is used, the following error will appear:

For configuration examples, refer to the config.php document.