How To Install ownCloud on Linux Mint 20

In this tutorial, we will show you how to install ownCloud on Linux Mint 20. For those of you who didn’t know, ownCloud is an open-source, self-hosted file sync and file share platform, similar to Dropbox, Microsoft OneDrive, and Google Drive. It works with various database management systems such as MySQL, PostgreSQL, or MariaDB. It maintains the synchronization with all the computers whether it is a window-based or Linux-based operating system.

This article assumes you have at least basic knowledge of Linux, know how to use the shell, and most importantly, you host your site on your own VPS. The installation is quite simple and assumes you are running in the root account, if not you may need to add ‘sudo‘ to the commands to get root privileges. I will show you the step-by-step installation of ownCloud self-hosted file sync on a Linux Mint 20 (Ulyana).

Prerequisites

• A server running one of the following operating systems: Linux Mint 20 (Ulyana).
• It’s recommended that you use a fresh OS install to prevent any potential issues.
• SSH access to the server (or just open Terminal if you’re on a desktop).
• A non-root sudo user or access to the root user. We recommend acting as a non-root sudo user, however, as you can harm your system if you’re not careful when acting as the root.

Install ownCloud on Linux Mint 20 Ulyana

Step 1. Before running the tutorial below, it’s important to make sure your system is up to date by running the following apt commands in the terminal:

sudo apt update

Step 2. Installing a LAMP Stack.

A Linux Mint LAMP server is required. If you do not have LAMP installed, you can follow our guide here.

Step 3. Installing ownCloud on Linux Mint 20.

Now we download the last ownCLoud version from the official page:

wget https://download.owncloud.org/community/owncloud-latest.zip

Then, decompress it using the unzip command:

unzip owncloud-latest.zip

Move the directory into the Apache default directory:

sudo mv owncloud /var/www/

We will need to change some folders permissions:

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

Step 4. Configuring MariaDB.

By default, MariaDB is not hardened. You can secure MariaDB using the mysql_secure_installation script. you should read and below each step carefully which will set a root password, remove anonymous users, disallow remote root login, and remove the test database and access to secure MariaDB:

mysql_secure_installation

Configure it like this:

- Set root password? [Y/n] y
- Remove anonymous users? [Y/n] y
- Disallow root login remotely? [Y/n] y
- Remove test database and access to it? [Y/n] y
- Reload privilege tables now? [Y/n] y

Next, we will need to log in to the MariaDB console and create a database for ownCloud. Run the following command:

mysql -u root -p

This will prompt you for a password, so enter your MariaDB root password and hit Enter. Once you are logged in to your database server you need to create a database for ownCloud installation:

CREATE DATABASE ownclouddb;
CREATE USER 'ownclouduser'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'your-strong-password';
GRANT ALL ON ownclouddb.* TO 'ownclouduser'@'localhost' WITH GRANT OPTION;
FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
EXIT

Step 5. Configure Apache.

Now we create a new virtual host directive in Apache:

sudo nano /etc/apache2/sites-available/owncloud.conf

Add the following lines:

<VirtualHost *:80>
     ServerAdmin admin@your_domain.com
     DocumentRoot /var/www/owncloud
     ServerName your-domain.com

    <Directory /var/www/owncloud>
         Options FollowSymlinks
         AllowOverride All
         Require all granted
     </Directory>

ErrorLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/your-domain.com_error.log
CustomLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/your-domain.com_access.log combined
</VirtualHost>

Then, we can restart the Apache webserver so that the changes take place:

sudo a2ensite owncloud.conf
sudo a2enmod rewrite
sudo systemctl restart apache2

Step 6. Configure Firewall.

Run the following command to open HTTP and HTTPS ports:

sudo ufw allow 'Apache Full'

Step 7. Accessing ownCloud Web Interface.

Once successfully installed, open your favorite browser and navigate to http://your-domain.com and complete the required steps to finish the installation. If everything was properly installed, you should get a page as shown:

Congratulations! You have successfully installed ownCloud. Thanks for using this tutorial for installing the latest version of ownCloud on the Linux Mint system. For additional help or useful information, we recommend you to check the official ownCloud website.