Manual Installation on Linux

Installing ownCloud on Linux from our Open Build Service packages is the preferred method (see Preferred Linux 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 ../enterprise_installation/linux_installation

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 Configuration Tips 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 >= 5.6

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 Connectors

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

MySQL/MariaDB Require InnoDB

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

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

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

Example Installation 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.

BINLOG_FORMAT = STATEMENT

If your ownCloud installation fails and you see this in your ownCloud log:

An unhandled exception has been thrown: exception ‘PDOException’ with message
'SQLSTATE[HY000]: General error: 1665 Cannot execute statement: impossible to
write to binary log since BINLOG_FORMAT = STATEMENT and at least one table
uses a storage engine limited to row-based logging. InnoDB is limited to
row-logging when transaction isolation level is READ COMMITTED or READ
UNCOMMITTED.'

See MySQL / MariaDB with Binary Logging Enabled.

Apache Web Server Configuration

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.

Enabling 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.

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 Setting 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 Configuration Tips.

To use occ see Installing ownCloud from the Command Line.

To use the graphical Installation Wizard see Installation Wizard.

Setting Strong Directory Permissions

After completing installation, you must immediately set the directory permissions in your ownCloud installation as strictly as possible for stronger security. Please refer to Setting Strong Directory Permissions.

Now your ownCloud server is ready to use.

SELinux Configuration Tips

See SELinux Configuration for a suggested configuration for SELinux-enabled distributions such as Fedora and CentOS.

php.ini Configuration Notes

Several core PHP settings have to be configured correctly, otherwise ownCloud may not work properly. Known settings causing issues are listed here. Please note that there might be other settings causing unwanted behaviours. In general it is recommended to keep the php.ini at their defaults.

session.auto_start && enable_post_data_reading

Ensure that session.auto_start is set to 0 or Off and enable_post_data_reading to 1 or On in your configuration. If not, you may have issues logging in to ownCloud via the WebUI, where you see the error: “Access denied. CSRF check failed”.

session.save_path

In addition to setting session.auto_start and enable_post_data_reading correctly, ensure that, if session.save_handler is set to files, that session.save_path is set to a path on the filesystem which the web server process, or process which PHP is running as, can read from and write to.

post_max_size

Please ensure that you have post_max_size configured with at least the minimum amount of memory for use with ownCloud, which is 512 MB.

Important

Please be careful when you set this value if you use the byte value shortcut as it is very specific. Use K for kilobyte, M for megabyte and G for gigabyte. KB, MB, and GB do not work!

Note

Keep in mind that changes to php.ini may have to be configured in more than one ini file. This can be the case, for example, for the date.timezone setting.

php.ini - used by the Web server:

  /etc/php5/apache2/php.ini
or
  /etc/php5/fpm/php.ini
or ...

php.ini - used by the php-cli and so by ownCloud CRON jobs:

/etc/php5/cli/php.ini

php-fpm Configuration Notes

System environment variables

When you are using php-fpm, system environment variables like PATH, TMP or others are not automatically populated in the same way as when using php-cli. A PHP call like getenv('PATH'); can therefore return an empty result. So you may need to manually configure environment variables in the appropriate php-fpm ini/config file.

Here are some example root paths for these ini/config files:

Ubuntu/Mint CentOS/Red Hat/Fedora
/etc/php5/fpm/ /etc/php-fpm.d/

In both examples, the ini/config file is called www.conf, and depending on the distribution or customizations which you have made, it may be in a sub-directory.

Usually, you will find some or all of the environment variables already in the file, but commented out like this:

;env[HOSTNAME] = $HOSTNAME
;env[PATH] = /usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin
;env[TMP] = /tmp
;env[TMPDIR] = /tmp
;env[TEMP] = /tmp

Uncomment the appropriate existing entries. Then run printenv PATH to confirm your paths, for example:

$ printenv PATH
/home/user/bin:/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:
/sbin:/bin:/

If any of your system environment variables are not present in the file then you must add them.

When you are using shared hosting or a control panel to manage your ownCloud virtual machine or server, the configuration files are almost certain to be located somewhere else, for security and flexibility reasons, so check your documentation for the correct locations.

Please keep in mind that it is possible to create different settings for php-cli and php-fpm, and for different domains and Web sites. The best way to check your settings is with PHP Version and Information.

Maximum upload size

If you want to increase the maximum upload size, you will also have to modify your php-fpm configuration and increase the upload_max_filesize and post_max_size values. You will need to restart php5-fpm and your HTTP server in order for these changes to be applied.

.htaccess notes for Apache

ownCloud comes with its own owncloud/.htaccess file. Because php-fpm can’t read PHP settings in .htaccess these settings and permissions must be set in the owncloud/.user.ini file.

No basic authentication headers were found

This error is shown in your data/owncloud.log file. Some Apache modules like mod_fastcgi, mod_fcgid or mod_proxy_fcgi are not passing the needed authentication headers to PHP and so the login to ownCloud via WebDAV, CalDAV and CardDAV clients is failing. Information on how to correctly configure your environment can be found in the forums but we generally recommend against the use of these modules and recommend mod_php instead.