This tutorial is about the installation of latest ownCloud application with Let’s Encrypt Free SSL on a Debian 9 Server. The steps that I have mentioned will be the same for an Ubuntu VPS too. I will start from the very beginning and assume that you have a domain name for your ownCloud application and a VPS / droplet server ready to setup it.
Pre-requisites
- A droplet / VPS server running in Debian 9 (x64) Linux Distribution (minimum 1GB RAM is recommended and 2GB+ RAM would be great).
- Don’t you have a VPS server with your??
Having a DigitalOcean droplet is same as having a VPS server. Sign up now via this link and redeem free $100 in credit over 60 days. Redeem Now !! - Root access to your server is essential.
- A domain name to access your ownCloud: If you don’t have a domain name with you, you can do the installation / access ownCloud using the servers’ public IP.
Point you Domain to the VPS Server
Note: You can skip this step, if you are willing to access ownCloud with server’s public IP.
1. Login to your domain provider account and go to the page which allows you to manage DNS for you domain.
The DNS configuring interface will look something as follows (Example from Godaddy)
2. Next add following two records. If the records with same Type and Name are available, just change their values.
Record – 1
Type: A
Name: @ OR blank
Value / Target: YOUR-SERVER-IP_ADDRESS
TTL: 3600
Record – 2
Type: A
Name: www
Value / Target: YOUR-SERVER-IP_ADDRESS
TTL: 3600
3. Finally, save the changes.
4. Then you have to check whether your newly added DNS record has propagated successfully. For that;
- Visit https://www.whatsmydns.net
- Type your domain name, select the record type as A and click on “Search”
- If DNS records are not propagated successfully, you’ll get an output as follows (red – cross). Don’t worry, DNS would take about 2-3 hours (maximum 48 hours) to propagate and in the meantime we can consider on setting up our server.
- If DNS records are propagated successfully, you’ll get an output as above (green -tick).
Connect to your VPS using a SSH Client
If necessary, you can follow my tutorial on “Make First Connection to your Droplet” or “Make First Connection to your VPS Server“.
Now we are ready to install ownCloud !
The installation procedure is consist of 7 sub-sections, let’s proceed ……
Install PHP and required PHP Modules
Issue following commands orderly to install PHP 7.2 and required PHP modules for ownCloud to operate.
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install apt-transport-https
wget -q https://packages.sury.org/php/apt.gpg -O- | sudo apt-key add -
sudo echo "deb https://packages.sury.org/php/ stretch main" | tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/php.list
wget -q https://packages.sury.org/php/apt.gpg -O- | sudo apt-key add -rver.
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install -y php7.2 php7.2-gd php7.2-curl php7.2-zip php7.2-dom php7.2-xml php7.2-simplexml php7.2-mbstring php7.2-mysql php7.2-intl
Note: If you get “-bash: sudo: command not found” issue, install it with
apt-get install -y sudo
Install a Web-Server (Apache)
sudo apt-get install -y apache2 libapache2-mod-php
sudo a2enmod ssl
sudo systemctl restart apache2
Some Apache Configurations
Note: You can skip this step, if you are willing to access ownCloud with server’s public IP.
Install nano text edition (if not already installed)
sudo apt-get install -y nano
Then let’s create a VirtualHost configuration file for your domain. Remember to replace yourdomain.com with your actual domain name.
cd /etc/apache2/sites-available
nano yourdomain.com.confAdd following contents to the file
<VirtualHost *:80>
ServerName yourdomain.com
ServerAlias www.yourdomain.com
DocumentRoot "/var/www/html/owncloud"
</VirtualHost>Save and exit from the edition: CTRL + X, Then “y“, Then press Enter.
cd ../sites-enabled
ln -s ../sites-available/yourdomain.com.conf yourdomain.com.conf
sudo systemctl restart apache2
Install and Configure Let’s Encrypt SSL
Now we are going to install a Free SSL certificate for our domain, so that we can access ownCloud via HTTPS securely.
First add the certbot repository,
sudo apt-get install -y software-properties-common
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:certbot/certbot
You’ll need to press ENTER to accept.
Then install certbot apache package:
sudo apt-get install -y python-certbot-apache
Then issue following command to have the SSL certificate installed. Replace yourdomain.com appropriately.
sudo certbot --apache -d yourdomain.com -d www.yourdomain.comSince this is your first time running certbot, you will be prompted to enter an email address and agree to the terms of service.
After obtaining the certificate, certbot will ask how you’d like to configure your HTTPS settings:
Select your choice 2 (Redirect) then hit ENTER
That’s it 🙂
Install & Secure MySQL database server
Issue following commands to install MySQL in your server.
wget http://repo.mysql.com/mysql-apt-config_0.8.13-1_all.deb
sudo dpkg -i mysql-apt-config_0.8.13-1_all.deb
Select “Ok” as in image and press Enter.
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install -y mysql-server
The installation process will prompt for the root password to set as default. Input a secure password and same to confirm password window. This will be MySQL root user password required to log in to MySQL server.
Then select the “Use Legacy Authentication Method” and press Enter.
Now its time to secure the mysql installation.
sudo systemctl restart mysql
sudo mysql_secure_installation
Securing the MySQL server deployment.
Enter password for user root:
(Enter your root password here)
VALIDATE PASSWORD COMPONENT can be used to test passwords
and improve security. It checks the strength of password
and allows the users to set only those passwords which are
secure enough. Would you like to setup VALIDATE PASSWORD component?
Press y|Y for Yes, any other key for No: N
Using existing password for root.
Change the password for root ? ((Press y|Y for Yes, any other key for No) : N
... skipping.
By default, a MySQL installation has an anonymous user,
allowing anyone to log into MySQL without having to have
a user account created for them. This is intended only for
testing, and to make the installation go a bit smoother.
You should remove them before moving into a production
environment.
Remove anonymous users? (Press y|Y for Yes, any other key for No) : Y
Success.
Normally, root should only be allowed to connect from
'localhost'. This ensures that someone cannot guess at
the root password from the network.
Disallow root login remotely? (Press y|Y for Yes, any other key for No) : Y
Success.
By default, MySQL comes with a database named 'test' that
anyone can access. This is also intended only for testing,
and should be removed before moving into a production
environment.
Remove test database and access to it? (Press y|Y for Yes, any other key for No) : Y
- Dropping test database...
Success.
- Removing privileges on test database...
Success.
Reloading the privilege tables will ensure that all changes
made so far will take effect immediately.
Reload privilege tables now? (Press y|Y for Yes, any other key for No) : Y
Success.
All done!Provide answers as above…..
Create MySQL database and user for ownCloud
Log in to mysql server as root user.
mysql -u root -p
Provide the root password.
Now let’s create a MySQL database and user account for configuring ownCloud. Give a strong password as “user_password“
CREATE DATABASE owncloud;
CREATE USER 'owncloud'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'user_password';
GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON owncloud.* TO 'owncloud'@'localhost';
FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
exit;Download and install the ownCloud
cd /var/www/html
rm index.html
wget https://download.owncloud.org/community/owncloud-complete-20200731.tar.bz2Replace the download URL with the latest Tarball found at https://owncloud.com/download-server/
sudo tar xjf owncloud-complete-20200731.tar.bz2
sudo rm -f owncloud-complete-20200731.tar.bz2
mkdir owncloud/data
sudo chown -R www-data:www-data owncloud
cd owncloud
find . -type d -exec chmod 755 {} \;
find . -type f -exec chmod 644 {} \;Now visit https://yourdomain.com or http://YOUR_SERVER_IP to access the Web Installer.
Provide admin login details and the database information that we have created previously. Keep database host as “localhost“
Finally Finish the Setup
Now login to ownCloud with username and password.
Now you have successfully installed ownCloud in your Debian 9 server.
Let me know the problems you faced while following this tutorial in comment section. I am happy to help you 🙂
