why not have your owncloud?

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Following various outages and security lapses, Phil has decided to keep all his off-site data firmly under control, with his very own cloud

‘The cloud’ was once a nebulous place on flow charts, where developers could shunt data and carry out routine operations, before bringing it back into the real world application they

were creating. It became more real when the IT industry started referring to off-site data storage as ‘cloud storage’. Then the name spread so that software run on a remote server and previously know as SaaS (software as a service) became cloud apps.

Of course what happens in the industry soon filters down to normal users, repackaged for ease of use. Copy, Box, Dropbox UbuntuOne and, of course, iCloud are all cloud storage systems that allow you to sync data across several devices and often make it available to others. Dropbox in particular is used by us freelancers to send photos to editors. Google’s Calendar, contact syncing systems and bookmark syncing are also cloud based.

Off-site backup systems are cloud storage too. My own PCs have been backed up to JungleDisk, based in the US, for a couple of years at least. In the light of last year’s revelation that the NAS routinely snoops on foreign internet traffic entering the US, and GCHQ monitors traffic from abroad into the UK, I’m not sure I like that.

I’m not alone. In December, computer security expert Graham Cluley was widely reported to have said that the ‘trendy’ use of the word ‘cloud’ has been responsible for a certain carelessness by organisations. He advocated replacing all instances of the word ‘cloud’ with ‘somebody else’s computer’ as a means of making organisations think about what they’re doing, and went on, as you’d expect an IT security expert to do, to recommend encryption. But there’s another solution, especially for individuals and small businesses: manage your own cloud. And to do this, there’s free software called OwnCloud.

OwnCloud OwnCloud (owncloud.org) is free, open-source software that you install on your own web server or, more likely, a web server you rent

from a provider – which these days will be a virtual server sharing hardware with dozens of others. You’ll see the snag straight away: it’s ‘someone else’s computer’. At least this time, though, it’s a computer you control. And if you choose a small UK-based provider, it won’t be probed by US mega corps trying to build up their knowledge of you so they can sell you to advertisers, or by the NSA.

Fortunately I already have a website (www.pthane.co.uk) hosted by a small company in NW England called Perfect Hosts (perfecthosts.co.uk), so I used that. If you already have a website based on a Linux server and your contract gives you access to the file manager through Cpanel or some similar dashboard, then you can install you own OwnCloud.

If you don’t, then you could go to the OwnCloud website and click on ‘Find Hosting’ to choose a host for your cloud. Many are UK based and some are even free. Be aware, though, that the presence of a Union flag doesn’t mean your data is guaranteed to stay in the UK,

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because these are multinational companies. They’re also quite stingy with the free space, and you’ll almost certainly end up paying for more, so check the prices before you commit. Alternatively, you could track down a local web host yourself.

Don’t worry about OwnCloud being on Linux. Most of the web runs on Linux, but you can get an OwnCloud desktop client for Windows, Mac or Linux from www.owncloud.org and iOS and Android clients from their respective app stores. Or you can just use a web browser interface.

FeaturesLike any cloud service, OwnCloud offers storage and somewhere to keep data that can be used for off-site backups, and it can enable you to access your files when you’re away from your PC or using a different device. With desktops and laptops often having terabytes of storage and mobile devices only a few gigabytes, the OwnCloud clients for mobile devices connect to the server and display what’s there so you can download a file when you need it, rather than filling your phone with unnecessary data. The desktop client, on the other hand, works with you PC’s regular file manager and downloads data into an OwnCloud directory.

Once there’s storage, it becomes possible to add SaaS, and OwnCloud has several useful apps already, two of the most useful being a calendar and a contacts list. I wrote a piece for Micro Mart last summer about trying to escape Google’s corporate clutches, and at the time I couldn’t find an online calendar or a contacts manager that would sync my mobile devices and desktop PC. Now I have.

A recently added feature is Documents, an online word processor that not only lets you work on documents anywhere, but allows collaborative editing, with several people making edits to a document simultaneously. It’s based on the Open Document format used by LibreOffice (and others) and developed by WebODF (www.webodf.org). At present, OwnCloud can only edit word processing (.odt) files, but other office formats are in the pipeline.

Several other ‘official’ apps can be added to your OwnCloud from the dashboard, and clicking on ‘more’ takes you to a website (apps.owncloud.com) with more third-party apps than you’d expect for a relatively new project.

Before InstallingI’m assuming you have a server up and running, and access to the file manager. It’s okay if you currently use it for a conventional website, because OwnCloud installs in its own subdirectory and won’t interfere with normal operations. If you’re setting up from scratch, then many hosting companies will provide a software ‘stack’ to get you started. Bare minimum is the LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL & PHP) stack plus Cpanel, but if you know what you’re doing, you can use alternative web servers and databases (see the OwnCloud site for more details). My site has been up and running for years, and the PHP installed years ago was several versions behind the times, but it needs to be at least 5.3.x for OwnCloud. If your installation is out of date, you may need to consult your host’s tech support. During installation, OwnCloud will check the installed system and flag up any shortcomings.

In order to use a secure https system, you need an SSL certificate, and these have to be bought from an SSL issuer. Fortunately, my ever-helpful host provided a solution: shared certification. Basically, the chap who owns the host buys a certificate and attaches it to a site he runs, then creates pages on that site which forward to my OwnCloud. If your host does the same, it may cause your browser to issue a warning about you going to the ‘wrong’ site, but if you accept it, then it will just work in future. It would be wise to check your hosting company offers SSL; many that cater for small business/hobby/family sites will charge around £10 a year.

InstallingThe short version is: go to http://owncloud.org/install/ click </>Web Installer and follow the instructions. I did that, but there are a few ‘gotchas’ for the first-timer.


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1. Right-click here and save the file (setup-owncloud.php) to your computer. That’s easy.

2. Upload setup-owncloud.php to your web space. The file manager in Cpanel has an ‘Upload’ button, but where do you put the file? In public_html. Being cautious, I created a subdirectory for it, but it turns out the installer creates its own, so it was unnecessary and just made the URL longer.

3. Point your web browser to setup-owncloud.php on your web space – which is where exactly? Unless you created a new subdirectory like I did, then it’s just yourwebsiteaddress/setup-owncloud.php.

4. Follow the instructions and configure OwnCloud Login to your newly created OwnCloud instance! Yup, that works okay.

To log into the web interface for your OwnCloud, go to yourwebaddress/owncloud. If SSL is working okay then the address will change, putting https://... at the front, showing you have a secure connection. If it displays an SSL error message instead, you didn’t get SSL sorted before you installed!

First Run WizardThe wizard pops up the first time you log into your OwnCloud in the browser (and you can run it any time you want in future by going to your profile button the at top right of the page and choosing ‘Personal’. The wizard will guide you through installing the desktop app, which will create an ‘owncloud’ directory in your filing system and keep it in sync with your OwnCloud. It advises iOS and Android users to get the relevant app from their app stores and explains

how to sync your calendar and contacts across various devices and operating systems. Once again I found a few catches.

Desktop AppOnce installed, the desktop app is accesible from an icon in the ‘systray’ on Windows and Linux – not sure about Mac, though. As you’d expect, it has an ‘Accounts’ page, where you enter the details of your OwnCloud and the name of the local folder you want to sync. I found the Linux app didn’t want to play at first, displaying an error message about Etags. This seemed to be related to PHP version numbers and was resolved by 1) yet another email to my web host who updated it, and 2) me uninstalling ‘OwnCloud’ from my PC then reinstalling it, together with all the related libraries, including probably several I don’t really need. Now it works fine.

An alternative to using the app is simply to use Web Distributed Authoring and Versioning (WebDAV) in your file manager, entering the address of your OwnCloud directly, then creating a shortcut. The First Run wizard has the details for Linux, OS X and Windows.

Mobile AppsI tested on Android (2.2 on an old phone and 4.2 on a Galaxy Tab), but I believe the iOS app is similar. In both cases, it simply displays the filing system on your OwnCloud server, leaving it to you to download whatever you want.

Web Apps InterfaceMaybe it’s me but I found the web interface confusing at first. The default home page is ‘Files’, which shows a default selection of directories including Documents and Pictures. On the left is a side bar listing all the installed web apps in your OwnCloud, including


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Documents and Pictures. These are not necessarily the same as the Documents and Pictures in your files!

The sidebar shows apps. Click on Files and the file manager app runs. Click on Pictures and a picture viewer app runs. which is smart enough to display any pictures in almost any format even if you didn’t file them in ‘Pictures’. Click on Documents and it runs the rudimentary document editor that finds .odt files wherever you filed them. Hope that’s clear.

DocumentsThe latest version (6) of OwnCloud added the document editor, and like a lot of open-source projects, it uses the ‘release early, update often’ method of development. Despite that, this early release has some interesting features and shows real promise.

At the moment, it only handles word processing files in .odt format, though there are plans to add other office formats in due course. The .odt format is used by LibreOffice, which is what I do most of my writing on, so naturally I copied an old file to my OwnCloud folder, waited for it to sync then looked for it in OwnCloud Documents. It wasn’t there. You have to manually upload the file using either the web interface or the desktop app.

The Document editor is a basic word processor, which does almost everything most people want to do, but beware of complex formatting with frames and other inserts. There’s no ‘Save’ function, but when you hit ‘Close’ the file is saved, but only locally; it doesn’t sync back to the desktop. If you want it back on your PC, you need to download it. Forum posts suggest this is to do with the way LibreOffice and OwnCloud lock files for editing, and it will be fixed in future.

Collaborative editing is a feature that works like a charm. Open your OwnCloud document and go to Share. Enter the name and email address of your collaborator and they’ll get an email inviting

them to work on the document. It’s quite weird to see someone else’s work appearing on your document while you’re writing another line! Each edit has a colour bar in the margin to identify who wrote what. Eventually somebody has to download it and edit the definitive version, but I imagine it’ll be a lot easier than merging three or four versions, which I sometimes do at the moment.

Sync Calendar And ContactsI’ve lumped these together since they use essentially the same methods – CalDAV (for the calendar) and CardDAV (for the contacts) – both being based on WebDAV (see above).

First stage, assuming you have desktop calendar and contacts applications at present, is to export both to vCal and vCard files, then import them into OwnCloud Calendar and Contacts. Of course, if you don’t have files to import, then you can just start creating a calendar and contacts list on your OwnCloud.

Next, in your OwnCloud Calendar or Contacts, click the gear wheeel ‘Settings’ icon – top right in Calendar, bottom right in Contacts. In Calendar this will display a syncing URL, which you can copy. Go to your desktop calendar application’s settings menu and add a new calendar. Obviously, this will vary depending on what you use, but the principle is the same: you need to add a ‘CalDAV’ resource. At some point you’ll be asked for the URL, so paste in what you copied. You’ll need you username and password too.

Now your calendar application will show two calendars on some form of picking list. Untick the local one and tick the CalDAV resource; if you use this one from now on it will remain in sync with your OwnCloud.

Contacts is essentially the same, except that having clicked the gearwheel, you need to click the globe icon to get the CardDAV link.

Mobile SyncSyncing to iOS devices should be straightforward, since they use CalDAV and CardDAV just like most desktops. Android makes it a bit trickier, I guess because Google would prefer you to stick with GoogleCalendar, etc. The answer is to install the CalDAV Sync app (£2.19 from GooglePlay) and the matching CardDAV Sync (free). Once configured, they present an alternative Calendar and Contacts list to whatever app you use at the moment; just choose that one and untick the old ones.

SharingIn the Files app, hover over a file or directory, and one of the options that appears is ‘Sharing’. Click on that, then enter the name and email address of the person you want to have access so they can download the files. I created a Micro Mart directory and shared it with the editor of this very magazine. If you’re reading this, then it must work. mm
