How To Install Owncloud On Ubuntu 12.10

OwnCloud gives you universal access to your files through a web interface or WebDAV. It also provides a platform to easily view & sync your contacts, calendars and bookmarks across all your devices and enables basic editing right on the web.

Installation has minimal server requirements, doesn’t need special permissions and is quick. ownCloud is extendable via a simple but powerful API for applications and plugins. Visit the Owncloud homepage.



If you want to install Owncloud on Ubuntu 12.10 for personal usage in your own network you first need to install some dependencies. Open a terminal window and copy+paste the following line:

sudo apt-get install apache2 php5 php-pear php-xml-parser php5-sqlite php5-json sqlite php5-mysql mp3info curl libcurl3 libcurl3-dev php5-curl zip php5-gd

After installing the dependencies you need to download the Owncloud files from this page and save it to your Downloads folder. To extract the tar.bz2 file and move the files to your /var/www folder copy+paste the following lines:

cd ~/Downloads
tar -xvf owncloud*.tar.bz2
sudo mv owncloud /var/www/owncloud

After moving the files to the /var/www folder you need to change the permissions of the /var/www/owncloud folder and restart apache using the following command lines:

sudo chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www/owncloud
sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 restart

When done open your internet browser and point it to:

http://localhost/owncloud

If you get any error message about “No database drivers (sqlite or mysql) installed.” you need to restart your system and try again. When the Owncloud page is loaded for the first time you need to make an admin account before you can access Owncloud. Once logged in the cloud is ready for usage all you have to do is to explore how it all works.

After creating the admin account you need to create the .well-known folder in the /var/www folder, to do this copy+paste the following lines;

sudo mkdir /var/www/.well-known
sudo touch /var/www/.well-known/host-meta
sudo chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www/.well-known/

Source: Webupd8.

For those who own or rent a server….

You can install the cloud by uploading the setup-owncloud.php file to your web server. When the setup-owncloud.php file is upload point your web browser to the php file on your web server and follow the instructions. In a few simple steps owncloud will be installed and after creating the admin account Owncloud is ready to be used.


Syncing clients.

Installing the syncing client on Ubuntu 12.10 is not a difficult task. Open the Ubuntu Software Center and search for Owncloud and click on the Install button in the search result. Once installed the client will be started and all there is to do is to enter the url to your Owncloud and fill in the username and password. When the url, username and password are correct the client will connect to the Owncloud.

To install the sync client on Windows download the desktop client setup file from this page. Make sure to download version 1.0.5 because the newer version 1.2.0 doesn’t work well on Windows 7 or later (version 1.2.0 works fine on XP and Vista). Once installed the client will be started and all there is to do is to enter the url to your Owncloud and fill in the username and password. When the url, username and password are correct the client will connect to the Owncloud.