Setup Your Personal Cloud Storage with OwnCloud

We tell you how to setup OwnCloud 7 Server on Ubuntu 14 to share your files, calendars, and contacts over web

OwnCloud is a free and open-source web based application for data synchronization that provides universal access to your files, music, calendar, pictures etc over the web . You can therefore access all your data from your computer, laptop, or mobile devices at anytime from anywhere. Let’s see how to set it up.

Step 1: Install Ubuntu and log on to your Ubuntu server as root and make sure that all packages are up to date. Run the following commands:

apt-get update

apt-get upgrade

su

Step 2: Install the Apache web server on your Ubuntu 14.04 by using the following command:

apt-get install apache2

Step 3: Next, install PHP on your server:

apt-get install php5 php5-mysql

and once the installation is done, add the following PHP modules required by OwnCloud:

apt-get install php5-gd php5-json php5-curl php5-intl php5-mcrypt php5-imagick

Restart apache with the following command:

/etc/init.d/apache2 restart

Step 4: Install Mariadb database server. After installing, assign username and database password.

sudo apt-get install mariadb-server

Step 5: After the initial preparation, we start the installation. First, we will download the latest stable release of OwnCloud on the server.

wget https://download.OwnCloud.org/community/OwnCloud-7.0.2.tar.bz2

Step 6: Extract the downloaded archive to the Apache’s document root directory with the following command:

tar -xvf OwnCloud-7.0.0.tar.bz2 -C /var/www/html/

Step 7: Since the user running the web server has to be the owner of the OwnCloud files, we have to change the ownership too:

chown www-data:www-data -R /var/www/html/OwnCloud/

Step 8: Then create a Mariadb user and database for OwnCloud and also give full privileges to the mariadb user on the database.

mysql -u root -p

Enter password:

And once you are inside the mariadb console, enter the following commands:

MariaDB <(none)>> CREATE USER ‘OwnCloud’@’localhost’ IDENTIFIED BY ‘YOUR PASSWORD’;

MariaDB <(none)>> CREATE DATABASE OwnCloud;

MariaDB <(none)>> GRANT ALL ON OwnCloud.* TO ‘OwnCloud’@’localhost’;

MariaDB <(none)>> FLUSH PRIVILEGES;

MariaDB <(none)>> exit

Don’t forget to change ‘Your PASSWORD’ with your own password.

Step 9: Once this is done, you can open http://localhost/OwnCloud in your browser. The configuration screen of OwnCloud is open and you will be able to create a new administrator user and enter the information of the MariaDB database we created earlier in this tutorial.

Step 10: Now create an admin account. Here we have chosen OwnCloud as the admin account and a desired password for that user. Click on Storage & database option. Select MariaDB and give the entry of the username=OwnCloud and password=database_password. The database name shall be OwnCloud. Then press Finish setup.

Step 11: Once you click on Finish Setup you will see the OwnCloud welcome screen.

Step 12: After login, click on the upload icon at the top to upload files, music or pictures. By default, you can upload maximum 512Mb file but if you want to upload big file, go to admin setting panel, click on admin option and change File handling option value according to your requirement.

Step 13: OwnCloud provide many apps like pdf reader, calendar, video and music player etc. It has some pre-installed internal apps but it also provides external apps. To install any external app, go to http://apps.OwnCloud.com/ and download the app you want to install. Unzip the download file, login as root in Ubuntu, go to OwnCloud installed directory i.e filesystem/var/www/html/OwnCloud/apps and paste unzip folder. Then go to Apps option from the main menu and enable the app you have installed. Here, we have installed external music player app Music 2.0

Step 14: You can organise your contacts by using contacts app. Select the contacts app and add a new contact or import existing contacts from a VCF file.

To organize your meetings and events, OwnCloud also provides calender app.

Step 15: Download OwnCloud app in Android Smartphone to access your files from your phones. OwnCloud app is a paid app but there is also a free version available by some other developers. We have installed free OwnCloud app. The official app is also available for iOS.