Getting started with your ownCloud
Trust no one.
If you’ve been paying any attention at all, you’re probably aware by now that cloud sync services like Dropbox or Google Drive have issues. You can’t easily share and store data without having to place your trust in a third party, and many of those third parties haven’t exactly been the best stewards of privacy.
So why not create your own cloud service? You can store your files on a server at home or in your own office and access them from anywhere on any device. You can share and link files to friends, family and co-workers without ever making them accessible to a third party.
There are a number of tools available for creating your own cloud service. Unfortunately for Windows users, many of the best ones – like Nextcloud ( nextcloud. com), Seafile ( seafile.com) and ownCloud ( owncloud.com) – are only available for Linux (they have clients for Windows and mobiles, but the server must be Linux).
And yet, as we’ve discussed in the last few issues, it is possible to install Linux servers on Windows, and this month we’re going to look at how to install ownCloud on Windows using Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL).
Prepping
This guide actually draws on lessons in the column over the last five months, and we recommend you go back to the guides on installing WSL, Ubuntu and Docker. If you don’t have access to those issues or haven’t been following along, however, here’s the abbreviated version of the setup: Go into Windows Update and make sure you’re up to date (you need to have the latest patch for WSL version 2).
Type ‘turn windows features’ in the search bar to take you to the ‘Turn Windows features on or off’ control panel and enable Windows Subsystem for Linux as well as Virtual Machine
Platform.
Go to the Microsoft Store and find and download Ubuntu, which will install the server version of Ubuntu on top of WSL. Update the Linux kernel by going to docs.microsoft.com/en-gb/ windows/wsl/wsl2-kernel and downloading and running the kernel updater.
Make sure Ubuntu is using
WSL2. Open a command prompt (type cmd in the search bar) and type: wsl --set-version Ubuntu 2
Go to Docker.com and download Docker Desktop for Windows. During the install, select yes when it asks you to enable WSL integration (and make sure it’s enabled in the settings).
Whew! We’re all set now to run Linux server apps on the Windows PC. Now to install ownCloud.
Installing ownCloud
Thanks to Docker, installing ownCloud is super-easy. Make sure you have Docker Desktop running, then go to a command prompt and type:
docker run -p8080:8080 owncloud/server
This points to the official ownCloud Docker image. Docker will do the thing where it automatically goes out and downloads the image for you. It should start automatically.
Getting started
Once ownCloud is installed, you can access it by going to a web browser on the PC it’s installed on and entering the address:
localhost:8080
This points your browser back at the computer it’s running on, and grabs the page on port 8080, which is the port we configured with the installation command line above.
You should then see the login page for ownCloud. A default admin account will have been created using username admin, password admin so type those in (you can, of course, change this later).
Once you’re logged in, you’ll be taken to the main interface.
Now the first thing we want to do is create user accounts for ownCloud. The admin account is present, but you probably don’t want an admin account to be used by everybody. In the top right hand corner, go to Admin > Users.
On the User page, the first thing to do is create a group. ownCloud uses group-based user management, which makes it easier to manage larger numbers of users.
Click on the Add Group button on the top left, and give the Group a name. You can just use ‘Users’, for a start (in a home install, you’re probably not expecting to be that granular with your users).
Now to create users. In the top central panel, enter the username and email address of a new user you want to create. Then click on the drop down group list, and check every group you would like them to be a member of (typically the Users one you just created). Click on Create.
If you now go to the Users group, you’ll see the name. You can click to create a password for them, and you can change their quota here as well.
And that’s it: a user has been created and can use an ownCloud client to log in. Time to install a client.
Remote and local access
Before getting to a client, you may need to ensure that your ownCloud server is accessible. As we’ve discussed previously in this column, you’ll need a static local IP address for the server so that clients can find it and connect. You can set that in Windows IP address settings in the network control panel.
For remote access to the server from outside your home network, you should set up a DDNS service like noip.com, which will allow users to find it using a URL rather than an IP address. On your router, you’ll also need to forward port 8080 to the PC on which the server is installed (see portforward.com) – but you should only do this if you have all passwords in place and good passwords are enabled. Opening the port but leaving admin/admin is a potential catastrophe! Ideally, you would also have HTTPS setup, which is fairly involved.
Apps
Now to install a client app on the platforms you want to access the cloud on. ownCloud has clients for Windows, OS X, Linux, iOS and Android. On Google Play, the iTunes App store or at owncloud. com download the client for you chosen platform.
Once you’ve installed and run the client, you’ll be asked to enter the server address of ownCloud server. This can be the local IP address of the server (eg. 192.168.0.6:8080) or the DDNS URL if you have it set up. Remember to put the port number, so if the server IP is 192.168.0.10, you would enter 192.168.0.10:8080. You won’t be able to connect securely yet – you can only use HTTP.
Then you’ll be asked to enter the username and password of the account, and select syncing options.
After that, it works very much like Google Drive, Dropbox or other cloud platforms. Everything you put in a synced folder is automatically uploaded to the server; you can share and collaborate through the app or by logging onto the web interface (by typing the server address and the port number in a web browser); you can add sync folders through File Explorer; and much more.
And there is much more to ownCloud, including installable collaboration apps, remote data storage, notifications and email integration, shared workspaces and multimedia embedding. It’s an enterprise-class app, and this is just the start of what you can do, so check out some of its settings, and take a good look at the website to see more of what it’s capable of.