My very own dropbox : OwnCloud

Actually, it's a lot more than dropbox, It's also a calendar, contact manager, media player, etc. OwnCloud, what a great project.

Installing the OwnCloud server.

You need to have a web server that suport php and cgi and a database server. I choose to continue to use lighttpd and postgresq. Here is my list of USE flags for the relevant packages:

dev-lang/php            cgi curl gd imap inifile pcntl pdo postgres threads xmlwriter
www-apps/owncloud       -mysql -sqlite postgres
www-servers/lighttpd    libev php webdav

Note: if you want to have your web root to be somewhere else than the default then you have to tell webapp-config it's location. Do so by editing the file /etc/vhosts/webapp-config and change the value of the variable vhost_root to the base location of your web server (the directory that will contain the htdocs). It's the same as in the /etc/lighttpd/lighttpd.conf variable var.basedir.

With gentoo you have to tell portage to accept keyword for the package www-apps/owncloud and emerge it.

Then edit the lighttpd.conf and add the following:

$HTTP["url"] =~ "^/owncloud/data/" {
    url.access-deny = ("")
}

This will tell lighttpd not to directly publish the files under ownCloud control. You can also change the location of this directory to somewhere else — you'll be asked for it's location the first time you access ownCloud, when you'll be presented with a nice wizard to setup the administrator user credentials, the database connection and data directory location.

Syncing with the linux desktop

To set the client in a gentoo host you must emerge the packages (it's hard to actually find out which ones are needed):

• net-misc/csync
• net-misc/mirall

Then start owncloud in your desktop (it will show up in the systray). Follow the wizard to set up the first configuration and then stop it so that you can set the server target directory to the root (it will be forced to be clientcsync) Edit the file ~/.local/share/data/ownCloud/folders/ownCloud and change the line

targetPath=clientcsync

to

targetPath=

Start the owncloud again and now the directory ~/ownCloud will be synchronized with the server and the other devices. Magic!

I guess this could also be acomplished by setting a new folder to sync with the user root of the ownCloud, but what's the fun of that?

One thing I would like to find is how to do the synchonization without a X server. Something I still have to research how to do.

For the android devices

This is as easy as installing the owmClient Android client (or at FDroid) and follow the nice wizard.