Manual Installation on Linux

Installing ownCloud on Linux from our Open Build Service packages is the preferred method (see Preferred Installation Method). These are maintained by ownCloud engineers, and you can use your package manager to keep your ownCloud server up-to-date.

Note

Enterprise customers should refer to Installing & Upgrading ownCloud Enterprise Edition

If there are no packages for your Linux distribution, or you prefer installing from the source tarball, you can setup ownCloud from scratch using a classic LAMP stack (Linux, Apache, MySQL/MariaDB, PHP). This document provides a complete walk-through for installing ownCloud on Ubuntu 14.04 LTS Server with Apache and MariaDB, using the ownCloud .tar archive.

Note

Admins of SELinux-enabled distributions such as CentOS, Fedora, and Red Hat Enterprise Linux may need to set new rules to enable installing ownCloud. See SELinux for a suggested configuration.

Prerequisites

The ownCloud tar archive contains all of the required third-party PHP libraries. As a result, no extra ones are required. However, ownCloud does require that PHP has a set of extensions installed, enabled, and configured.

This section lists both the required and optional PHP extensions. If you need further information about a particular extension, please consult the relevant section of the extensions section of the PHP manual.

If you are using a Linux distribution it should have packages for all the required extensions. You can check the presence of a module by typing php -m | grep -i <module_name>. If you get a result, the module is present.

Required

PHP Version

PHP >= 5.6

PHP Extensions

Name Description
Ctype For character type checking
cURL Used for aspects of HTTP user authentication
DOM For operating on XML documents through the DOM API
GD For creating and manipulating image files in a variety of different image formats, including GIF, PNG, JPEG, WBMP, and XPM.
HASH Message For working with message digests (hash).
Digest Framework  
iconv For working with the iconv character set conversion facility.
JSON For working with the JSON data-interchange format.
libxml This is required for the _DOM_, _libxml_, _SimpleXML_, and _XMLWriter_ extensions to work. It requires that libxml2, version 2.7.0 or higher, is installed.
Multibyte String For working with multibyte character encoding schemes.
PDO This is required for the pdo_msql function to work.
POSIX For working with UNIX POSIX functionality.
SimpleXML For working with XML files as objects.
XMLWriter For generating streams or files of XML data.
Zip For reading and writing ZIP compressed archives and the files inside them.
Zlib For reading and writing gzip (.gz) compressed files.

Database Extensions

Name Description
pdo_mysql For working with MySQL & MariaDB.
pgsql For working with PostgreSQL. It requires PostgreSQL 9.0 or above.
sqlite For working with SQLite. It requires SQLite 3 or above. This is, usually, not recommended, for performance reasons.

Required For Specific Apps

Name Description
ftp For working with FTP storage
sftp For working with SFTP storage
imap For IMAP integration
ldap For LDAP integration
smbclient For SMB/CIFS integration

Note

SMB/Windows Network Drive mounts require the PHP module smbclient version 0.8.0+; see SMB/CIFS.

Optional

Extension Reason
Bzip2 Required for extraction of applications
Fileinfo Highly recommended, as it enhances file analysis performance
intl Increases language translation performance and fixes sorting of non-ASCII characters
Mcrypt Increases file encryption performance
OpenSSL Required for accessing HTTPS resources
imagick Required for creating and modifying images and preview thumbnails

For MySQL/MariaDB

The InnoDB storage engine is required, and MyISAM is not supported, see: MySQL / MariaDB storage engine.

Required Packages

Installing on Ubuntu 16.04 LTS Server

On a machine running a pristine Ubuntu 16.04 LTS server, install the required and recommended modules for a typical ownCloud installation, using Apache and MariaDB, by issuing the following commands in a terminal:

apt install -y apache2 mariadb-server libapache2-mod-php7.0 \
    php7.0-gd php7.0-json php7.0-mysql php7.0-curl \
    php7.0-intl php7.0-mcrypt php-imagick \
    php7.0-zip php7.0-xml php7.0-mbstring

The remaining steps are analogous to the installation on Ubuntu 14.04 as shown below.

Installing on Ubuntu 14.04 LTS Server

On a machine running a pristine Ubuntu 14.04 LTS server, install the required and recommended modules for a typical ownCloud installation, using Apache and MariaDB, by issuing the following commands in a terminal:

apt-get install apache2 mariadb-server libapache2-mod-php5
apt-get install php5-gd php5-json php5-mysql php5-curl
apt-get install php5-intl php5-mcrypt php5-imagick
  • This installs the packages for the ownCloud core system. libapache2-mod-php5 provides the following PHP extensions: bcmath bz2 calendar Core ctype date dba dom ereg exif fileinfo filter ftp gettext hash iconv libxml mbstring mhash openssl pcre Phar posix Reflection session shmop SimpleXML soap sockets SPL standard sysvmsg sysvsem sysvshm tokenizer wddx xml xmlreader xmlwriter zip zlib. If you are planning on running additional apps, keep in mind that they might require additional packages. See Prerequisites for details.
  • At the installation of the MySQL/MariaDB server, you will be prompted to create a root password. Be sure to remember your password as you will need it during ownCloud database setup.

Now download the archive of the latest ownCloud version:

  • Go to the ownCloud Download Page.

  • Go to Download ownCloud Server > Download > Archive file for server owners and download either the tar.bz2 or .zip archive.

  • This downloads a file named owncloud-x.y.z.tar.bz2 or owncloud-x.y.z.zip (where x.y.z is the version number).

  • Download its corresponding checksum file, e.g. owncloud-x.y.z.tar.bz2.md5, or owncloud-x.y.z.tar.bz2.sha256.

  • Verify the MD5 or SHA256 sum:

    md5sum -c owncloud-x.y.z.tar.bz2.md5 < owncloud-x.y.z.tar.bz2
    sha256sum -c owncloud-x.y.z.tar.bz2.sha256 < owncloud-x.y.z.tar.bz2
    md5sum  -c owncloud-x.y.z.zip.md5 < owncloud-x.y.z.zip
    sha256sum  -c owncloud-x.y.z.zip.sha256 < owncloud-x.y.z.zip
    
  • You may also verify the PGP signature:

    wget https://download.owncloud.org/community/owncloud-x.y.z.tar.bz2.asc
    wget https://owncloud.org/owncloud.asc
    gpg --import owncloud.asc
    gpg --verify owncloud-x.y.z.tar.bz2.asc owncloud-x.y.z.tar.bz2
    
  • Now you can extract the archive contents. Run the appropriate unpacking command for your archive type:

    tar -xjf owncloud-x.y.z.tar.bz2
    unzip owncloud-x.y.z.zip
    
  • This unpacks to a single owncloud directory. Copy the ownCloud directory to its final destination. When you are running the Apache HTTP server you may safely install ownCloud in your Apache document root:

    cp -r owncloud /path/to/webserver/document-root
    

    where /path/to/webserver/document-root is replaced by the document root of your Web server:

    cp -r owncloud /var/www
    

On other HTTP servers it is recommended to install ownCloud outside of the document root.

Configure the Apache Web Server

On Debian, Ubuntu, and their derivatives, Apache installs with a useful configuration so all you have to do is create a /etc/apache2/sites-available/owncloud.conf file with these lines in it, replacing the Directory and other file paths with your own file paths:

Alias /owncloud "/var/www/owncloud/"

<Directory /var/www/owncloud/>
  Options +FollowSymlinks
  AllowOverride All

 <IfModule mod_dav.c>
  Dav off
 </IfModule>

 SetEnv HOME /var/www/owncloud
 SetEnv HTTP_HOME /var/www/owncloud

</Directory>

Then create a symlink to /etc/apache2/sites-enabled:

ln -s /etc/apache2/sites-available/owncloud.conf /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/owncloud.conf

Additional Apache Configurations

  • For ownCloud to work correctly, we need the module mod_rewrite. Enable it by running:

    a2enmod rewrite
    

    Additional recommended modules are mod_headers, mod_env, mod_dir and mod_mime:

    a2enmod headers
    a2enmod env
    a2enmod dir
    a2enmod mime
    
  • You must disable any server-configured authentication for ownCloud, as it uses Basic authentication internally for DAV services. If you have turned on authentication on a parent folder (via e.g. an AuthType Basic directive), you can turn off the authentication specifically for the ownCloud entry. Following the above example configuration file, add the following line in the <Directory section:

    Satisfy Any
    
  • When using SSL, take special note of the ServerName. You should specify one in the server configuration, as well as in the CommonName field of the certificate. If you want your ownCloud to be reachable via the internet, then set both of these to the domain you want to reach your ownCloud server.

  • Now restart Apache:

    service apache2 restart
    
  • If you’re running ownCloud in a sub-directory and want to use CalDAV or CardDAV clients make sure you have configured the correct Service discovery URLs.

Enable SSL

Note

You can use ownCloud over plain HTTP, but we strongly encourage you to use SSL/TLS to encrypt all of your server traffic, and to protect user’s logins and data in transit.

Apache installed under Ubuntu comes already set-up with a simple self-signed certificate. All you have to do is to enable the ssl module and the default site. Open a terminal and run:

a2enmod ssl
a2ensite default-ssl
service apache2 reload

Note

Self-signed certificates have their drawbacks - especially when you plan to make your ownCloud server publicly accessible. You might want to consider getting a certificate signed by a commercial signing authority. Check with your domain name registrar or hosting service for good deals on commercial certificates.

Run the Installation Wizard

After restarting Apache you must complete your installation by running either the graphical Installation Wizard, or on the command line with the occ command. To enable this, temporarily change the ownership on your ownCloud directories to your HTTP user (see Set Strong Directory Permissions to learn how to find your HTTP user):

chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www/owncloud/

Note

Admins of SELinux-enabled distributions may need to write new SELinux rules to complete their ownCloud installation; see SELinux.

To use occ see Command Line Installation.

To use the graphical Installation Wizard see The Installation Wizard.

Set Strong Directory Permissions

After completing installation, you must immediately set the directory permissions in your ownCloud installation as strictly as possible for stronger security. After you do so, your ownCloud server will be ready to use.

Note

For further information on improving the quality of your ownCloud installation, please see the Configuration Notes & Tips guide.