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By hoyt at 2015-03-30 09:53
It appears that "the cloud" is the popular buzzword now. All cloud computing is, is a remote file server where you can store, access, share and manipulate your files. While several commercial services are available, it's possible to create your own cloud service using the ownCloud software. As with any powerful server software, it's not out-of-the-box easy, but with some preparation and understanding, it's not that difficult. Most of this HOWTO is Mageia-specific; a lot of the configuration details are enumerated at the ownCloud website documents.

We're installing ownCloud on a minimal Mageia4 virtual machine using VirtualBox just to go through the process. There is no X-server, so it's all done on the command line.

Part One -- Installing the Apache Webserver

We must begin by installing the Apache webserver. It's certainly possible to use alternative webservers, but Apache is most common. Getting a working Apache webserver is pretty straightforward.

1. Install Apache and some other related modules we'll need. Eventually, you'll want to configure ownCloud to use SSL, so install that module now.

Code:
$ sudo urpmi apache apache-mod_ssl
Note that we don't install apache-mod_dav since ownCloud supplies its own DAV module.

2. Use drakconf on the command line and choose the selection that allows you to configure the firewall to allow the web server (and the ssh server for system administration via ssh).



3. Set inint to run the webserver on startup.

Code:
$ sudo chkconfig httpd on
4. Start the webserver.

Code:
$ sudo service httpd start
5. Check to see that the webserver is working by pointing you browser to the server IP. I used the text-based lynx browser since there is no X-server on this machine.

Code:
$ lynx localhost
And it works!

Part Two - Install Useful Dependencies

Use urpmi to install the following apps. The ownCloud documentation explains why they are useful. You might as well do it now.

Code:
imagemagick
libreoffice-writer
php-exif
php-imagick
php-bz2
php-mcrypt
samba-client
davfs2
ffmpeg
Part Three - Install ownCloud

By default, the Mageia package installs ownCloud in /use/share. There's nothing wrong with that although some people prefer it to be someplace else and, with some care, you can move it wherever you like. What's important is that the user apache own all the files and directories associated with ownCloud. We do that by using:

Code:
$ sudo chown -R apache:apache /usr/share/owncloud
It's also necessary to provide an initial configuration file. The easiest way to do that is to copy the example they provide. That leaves us with a pristine example file to examine if we need.

Code:
$ sudo cp /usr/share/owncloud/config/config.sample.conf  /usr/usr/share/owncloud/config/config.conf
When we run ownCloud the first time, it will strip out all the comments and fill in some of the values during its initial setup.

Part Four - Setup ownCloud

Before you access the admin part of ownCloud, you must be logging in from an authorized fully qualified domain name (FQDN). This is allowed by editing config.php to add your FQDN. If you are assigned a dynamic IP address, you must use a dynamic DNS service to get access; it's a security feature.

Once that is out of the way, access the admin pages by pointing your web browser to http://your.server.address/owncloud.

The post-configuration is actually a little more complicated that this )you need to get email working and some file permissions may need adjustment), but essentially this is what you need to to do to get ownCloud running on Mageia4; it's just not as simple as "urpmi owncloud", but this will get you started.

NOTE: I've had some difficulty getting ownCloud 6.x to run reliably, but Mageia has not as of this writing updated their package to version 7.X. However, you can simply download the tar.bz2 package from the ownCloud site and replace the contents of /usr/share/owncloud.

by sag47 on Fri, 2015-05-01 00:49
The definition for "cloud" has changed slightly as technology progresses, for me anyway. Cloud to tends to mean that you are capable of multi-region failover. Elastic expansion of resources as load goes up (that is when more users are using your services then it automatically doubles in processing capacity by provisioning more machines; like magic!). The same could be said for elastic shrinking as well when there is no load. Cloud may also mean being able to auto-configure DNS or spin up infrastructure such as a load balancer with a private network and machines to balance with a web API call or few?

I have my own home server that has monitoring and text messages me when things go wrong. It also has global file sharing and is capable of allowing me to proxy through it no matter where I'm at in the world. It even proxies all of my IM traffic in a completely separate IM gateway (separate from the web proxy). Do I consider my system a cloud? No.

OwnCloud is a decent solution for when you want an encrypted file store and a mobile app to interface with it. Cloud infrastructure has grown to be an entirely different scale than a server in my basement.

Great job on the write-up. I don't mean to harp too much on the term but I did want to point out what I think is current the definition of cloud.

EDIT: edited my post to sound less harsh because it was unwarranted.


  



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