ownCloud Server Administration Manual

Manual Installation on Linux

Installing ownCloud on Linux from the openSUSE Build Service packages is the preferred method (see Preferred Linux Installation Method). These are maintained by ownCloud engineers, and you can use your package manager to keep your ownCloud server up-to-date.

Note

Enterprise Subscription customers should refer to Installing ownCloud Enterprise Subscription on Linux

If there are no packages for your Linux distribution, or you prefer installing from sources, you can setup ownCloud from scratch using a classic LAMP stack (Linux, Apache, MySQL/MariaDB, PHP). This document provides a complete walk-through for installing ownCloud on Ubuntu 14.04 LTS Server with Apache and MySQL.

Prerequisites

Note

This tutorial assumes you have terminal access to the machine you want to install ownCloud on. Although this is not an absolute requirement, installation without it is likely to require contacting your hoster (e.g. for installing required modules). Consult the PHP manual for information on modules. Your Linux distribution should have packages for all required modules.

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

  • php5 (>= 5.4)
  • PHP module ctype
  • PHP module dom
  • PHP module GD
  • PHP module iconv
  • PHP module JSON
  • PHP module libxml
  • PHP module mb multibyte
  • PHP module posix
  • PHP module SimpleXML
  • PHP module XMLWriter
  • PHP module zip
  • PHP module zlib

Database connectors (pick at least one):

  • PHP module sqlite (>= 3, usually not recommended for performance reasons)
  • PHP module mysql (MySQL/MariaDB)
  • 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 and fixes sorting of non-ASCII characters)
  • PHP module mcrypt (increases file encryption performance)
  • PHP module openssl (required for accessing HTTPS resources)

Required for specific apps:

  • PHP module ldap (for LDAP integration)
  • smbclient (for external user authentication)
  • PHP module ftp (for FTP storage / external user authentication)
  • PHP module imap (for external user authentication)

Recommended for specific apps (optional):

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

For enhanced server 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
  • You don’t need the WebDAV 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, SabreDAV.

Example installation on Ubuntu 14.04 LTS Server

On a machine running a pristine Ubuntu 14.04 LTS server, install the required and recommended modules for a typical ownCloud installation, using Apache and MariaDB, by issuing the following commands in a terminal:

apt-get install apache2 mariadb-server libapache2-mod-php5
apt-get install php5-gd php5-json php5-mysql php5-curl
apt-get install php5-intl php5-mcrypt php5-imagick
  • This installs the packages for the ownCloud core system. If you are planning on running additional apps, keep in mind that they might require additional packages. See the Prerequisites section (above) for details.
  • At the installation of the MySQL/MariaDB server, you will be prompted to create a root password. Be sure to remember the password you enter there for later use as you will need it during ownCloud database setup.

Now download the archive of the latest ownCloud version:

  • Go to the ownCloud Download Page.

  • Click the Archive file for server owners button.

  • Click Download Unix.

  • This downloads 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.

  • Verify the MD5 or SHA256 sum:

    md5sum  owncloud-x.y.z.tar.bz2
sha256sum owncloud-x.y.z.tar.bz2

  • You may also verify the PGP signature:

    wget https://download.owncloud.org/community/owncloud-x.y.z.tar.bz2.asc
wget https://www.owncloud.org/owncloud.asc
gpg --import owncloud.asc
gpg --verify owncloud-x.y.z.tar.bz2.asc owncloud-x.y.z.tar.bz2

  • Now you can extract the archive contents. Open a terminal, navigate to your download directory, and run:

    tar -xjf owncloud-x.y.z.tar.bz2

  • Copy the ownCloud files to their final destination in the document root of your web server:

    cp -r owncloud /path/to/webserver/document-root

    where /path/to/webserver/document-root is replaced by the document root of your Web server. On Ubuntu systems this /var/www/html/owncloud, so your copying command is:

    cp -r owncloud /var/www/html

Apache Web Server Configuration

On Debian, Ubuntu, and their derivatives, Apache installs with a useful configuration so all you have to do is create a /etc/apache2/conf-available/owncloud.conf file with these lines in it:

Alias /owncloud /var/www/owncloud
<Directory /var/www/owncloud/>
 AllowOverride All
</Directory>

Then create a symlink to /etc/apache2/conf-enabled:

ln -s /etc/apache2/conf-available/owncloud.conf /etc/apache2/conf-enabled/owncloud.conf

Additional Apache Configurations

  • For ownCloud to work correctly, we need the module mod_rewrite. Enable it by running:

    a2enmod rewrite

    Additional recommended modules are mod_headers, mod_env, mod_dir and mod_mime:

    a2enmod headers
a2enmod env
a2enmod dir
a2enmod mime

    If you’re running mod_fcgi instead of the standard mod_php also enable:

    a2enmod setenvif

  • You should make sure that any built-in WebDAV module of your Web server is disabled (at least for the ownCloud directory), as it will interfere with ownCloud’s built-in WebDAV support.

    If you need the WebDAV support in the rest of your configuration, you can turn it off specifically for the ownCloud entry by adding the following line in the <Directory section for your ownCloud server:

    Dav Off

  • You must disable any server-configured authentication for ownCloud, as it uses Basic authentication internally for DAV services. If you have turned on authentication on a parent folder (via e.g. an AuthType Basic directive), you can turn off the authentication specifically for the ownCloud entry. Following the above example configuration file, add the following line in the <Directory section:

    Satisfy Any

  • When using SSL, take special note on the ServerName. You should specify one in the server configuration, as well as in the CommonName field of the certificate. If you want your ownCloud to be reachable via the internet, then set both of these to the domain you want to reach your ownCloud server.

  • Now restart Apache:

    service apache2 restart

Note

You can use ownCloud over plain HTTP, but we strongly encourage you to use SSL/TLS to encrypt all of your server traffic, and to protect user’s logins and data in transit.

Enabling SSL

An Apache installed under Ubuntu comes already set-up with a simple self-signed certificate. All you have to do is to enable the ssl module and the according site. Open a terminal and run:

a2enmod ssl
a2ensite default-ssl
service apache2 reload

Note

Self-signed certificates have their drawbacks - especially when you plan to make your ownCloud server publicly accessible. You might want to consider getting a certificate signed by commercial signing authority. Check with your domain name registrar or hosting service, if you’re using one, for good deals on commercial certificates.

Installation Wizard

You may complete your installation by running either the graphical Installation Wizard, or on the command line with the occ command. To use occ see Installing ownCloud From the Command Line.

To use the graphical Installation Wizard see Installation Wizard.

Setting Strong Directory Permissions

We recommend setting the directory permissions in your ownCloud installation as strictly as possible for stronger security. Please refer to Setting Strong Directory Permissions.

SELinux

See SELinux Configuration for a suggested configuration for SELinux-enabled distributions such as Fedora and CentOS.

Apache is the recommended Web server.

Configuration notes to php.ini files

Keep in mind that changes to php.ini may have to be done on more than one ini file. This can be the case, as example, for the date.timezone setting.

php.ini - used by the webserver:

  /etc/php5/apache2/php.ini
or
  /etc/php5/fpm/php.ini
or ...

php.ini - used by the php-cli and so by ownCloud CRON jobs:

/etc/php5/cli/php.ini

Configuration notes to php-fpm

System environment variables

When you are using php-fpm, system environment variables like PATH, TMP or others are not automatically populated in the same way as when using php-cli. A PHP call like getenv('PATH'); can therefore return an empty result. So you may need to manually configure environment varibles in the appropropriate php-fpm ini/config file.

Here are some example root paths for these ini/config files:

Ubuntu/Mint CentOS/Red Hat/Fedora
/etc/php5/fpm/ /etc/php-fpm.d/

In both examples, the ini/config file is called www.conf, and depending on the distro version or customizations you have made, it may be in a subdirectory.

Usually, you will find some or all of the environment variables already in the file, but commented out like this:

;env[HOSTNAME] = $HOSTNAME
;env[PATH] = /usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin
;env[TMP] = /tmp
;env[TMPDIR] = /tmp
;env[TEMP] = /tmp

Uncomment the appropriate existing entries. Then run printenv PATH to confirm your paths, for example:

$ printenv PATH
/home/user/bin:/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:
/sbin:/bin:/

If any of your system environment variables are not present in the file then you must add them.

When you are using shared hosting or a control panel to manage your ownCloud VM or server, the configuration files are almost certain to be located somewhere else, for security and flexibility reasons, so check your documentation for the correct locations.

Please keep in mind that it is possible to create different settings for php-cli and php-fpm, and for different domains and Web sites. The best way to check your settings is with phpinfo().

Maximum upload size

If you want to increase the maximum upload size, you will also have to modify your php-fpm configuration and increase the upload_max_filesize and post_max_size values. You will need to restart php5-fpm and your HTTP server in order for these changes to be applied.

.htaccess notes for webservers <> Apache

ownCloud comes with its own owncloud/.htaccess file. php-fpm can’t read PHP settings in .htaccess unless the htscanner PECL extension is installed. If php-fpm is used without this PECL extension installed, settings and permissions must be set in the owncloud/.user.ini file.

Other Web Servers

Nginx Configuration

See Nginx Configuration

Yaws Configuration

See Yaws Configuration

Hiawatha Configuration

See Hiawatha Configuration