Howto install OwnCloud with NGINX in Ubuntu LTS

OwnCloud is a PHP-based Cloud-storage web application for remote storage with file synchronization capabilities.

Step 1
You need to install several packages in order to configure OwnCloud with nginx in your server

sudo apt-get -y install nginx-full php5-fpm php5-sqlite

Step 2: Download Owncloud
Download Owncloud, replace $OWNCLOUD_VER with the latest Owncloud version.

export OWNCLOUD_VER="8.1.0"
cd /var/www/
sudo wget -c https://download.owncloud.org/community/owncloud-${OWNCLOUD-VER}.tar.bz2

Step 3: Extract Owncloud
This will extract owncloud to /var/www/owncloud/

cd /var/www/
tar jxvf owncloud-${OWNCLOUD-VER}.tar.bz2

Step 4: Setup Nginx
You need to setup NGINX

cd /etc/nginx/sites-available
sudo nano -c /etc/nginx/sites-available/owncloud

Step 4a: Setup ‘owncloud’ nginx site

Please change server_name directive to your own ip address or your own domain.
You can also download textfile and upload it directly to your server: http://pastebin.com/2P8h1zNB

#
#/etc/nginx/sites-available/owncloud
# 
server {
  listen 80;
server_name cloud.example.com;
server_name 192.168.1.47;

  # Path to the root of your owncloud installation
  root /var/www/owncloud/;
  # set max upload size
  client_max_body_size 10G;
  fastcgi_buffers 64 4K;

  # Disable gzip to avoid the removal of the ETag header
  gzip off;

  # Uncomment if your server is build with the ngx_pagespeed module
  # This module is currently not supported.
  #pagespeed off;

  rewrite ^/caldav(.*)$ /remote.php/caldav$1 redirect;
  rewrite ^/carddav(.*)$ /remote.php/carddav$1 redirect;
  rewrite ^/webdav(.*)$ /remote.php/webdav$1 redirect;

  index index.php;
  error_page 403 /core/templates/403.php;
  error_page 404 /core/templates/404.php;

  location = /robots.txt {
    allow all;
    log_not_found off;
    access_log off;
    }

  location ~ ^/(?:\.htaccess|data|config|db_structure\.xml|README){
    deny all;
    }

  location / {
   # The following 2 rules are only needed with webfinger
   rewrite ^/.well-known/host-meta /public.php?service=host-meta last;
   rewrite ^/.well-known/host-meta.json /public.php?service=host-meta-json last;

   rewrite ^/.well-known/carddav /remote.php/carddav/ redirect;
   rewrite ^/.well-known/caldav /remote.php/caldav/ redirect;

   rewrite ^(/core/doc/[^\/]+/)$ $1/index.html;

   try_files $uri $uri/ /index.php;
   }

   location ~ \.php(?:$|/) {
   fastcgi_split_path_info ^(.+\.php)(/.+)$;
   include fastcgi_params;
   fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $document_root$fastcgi_script_name;
   fastcgi_param PATH_INFO $fastcgi_path_info;
	  fastcgi_pass unix:/var/run/php5-fpm.sock;
   }

   location ~* \.(?:jpg|jpeg|gif|bmp|ico|png|css|js|swf)$ {
       expires 30d;
       # Optional: Don't log access to assets
         access_log off;
   }

  }

Step 4b: Enable ‘owncloud’ settings

cd /etc/nginx/sites-enable/
sudo ln -sf ../sites-available/owncloud .
nginx -t
service nginx restart
service php5-fpm restart

Step 5: Finishing off Owncloud setup

cd /var/www/
mkdir /var/www/owncloud/data
chmod 0770 /var/www/owncloud/data
chmod 0770 /var/www/owncloud/lib/private/
sudo chown -R www-data.www-data /var/www/owncloud

Step 6: Goto the IP-Address or domain name of your owncloud installation

First screen
setup-owncloud-first

Welcome to Owncloud
welcome-to-owncloud

Owncloud File Manager and Settings
owncloud-filemanager

What’s Next?

After completing installation you may:

  1. Install Android, iPhone or Desktop client to sync all your files
  2. Install TLS/SSL Certificates to secure your Owncloud connection
  3. Install MariaDB/MySQL for efficient synchronization

Warning: Do not enable Pagespeed and SPDY in OwnCloud

OwnCloud servers does not support PageSpeed and SPDY module, so please disable those extension if its exists within your nginx configuration.

Recommended Owncloud book

Using a new Google API or Service? It might not last long…

I read an interesting analysis on the lifespan of some of the Google service and API that has been cancelled: http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/mar/22/google-keep-services-closed

Based on the analysis at the time of the writing, Google service has a mean lifespan of 1,459 days.

An interesting point to ponder, especially if your applications/services depends on one or more Google services.

Screenshot below:
google-service

What ever happened to 1Malaysia Email – Tricubes, Pemandu, anyone??

What ever happened to 1Malaysia email, a project that said to be valued at 5.3 milions (MAVcap funding) ?

Source:

OpenTracker – simplistic, lightweight PHP bittorrent tracker

I just remembered that I used to run a simplistic and lightweight php bittorrent tracker out from my webserver, the tracker slowly attracts users until it used up all the allocated web server bandwidth.

This is a pure tracker with no statistic or control panel, just drop it in the web directory, create the required mysql db connection and schema and you’re good to go. You only need to include the tracker “announce” url in the newly created bittorrent file and start seeding!

Download OpenTracker by WhitSoft Development
Download OpenTracker (Mirror) from Mypapit Personal Blog

Stop Comment spams with IP Blacklist Cloud

Comment spams is the bane of any website operator that rely on real human interaction. Stopping comment spams by hand is a tedious process especially when comment spam attacks are sophisticated and are launched from Botnet. There are several techniques that can be employed to fight comment spams including behavioral analysis and also IP analysis.

In maintaining WordPress and Joomla sites, I myself has analyzed several web logfiles and Cloudflare logs to learn that most comment spam originated from certain ip blocks and countries. Therefore, I decided to completely deny access from those affected ip block through firewall (which keep the comment spam low and saves web server resources!)

ipblc_server

However, recently I found a new service IP Blacklist Cloud which list the top most blacklisted ip address through collaborative effort. Normally I find blacklisting by ip address is tedious and probably harmful to legitimate visitors, however after conforming the ip addresses that I found inside my spam logs, I decided the list is legitimate and decided to firewall-block some of the worst offenders in the list.

IP Blacklist Cloud free WordPress plugins, which I personally does not use due to my policy of keeping my installation lean with minimal (to no plugins!), however I see that there’s no harm giving a shot!

Ubuntu One cloud storage discontinued

Read this: The once-hyped Ubuntu One cloud storage service has been discontinued. Canonical through its Ubuntu One website has stated that Ubuntu One file services will be shut down permanently effective 1 June 2014.

ubuntuone

Users are being given time until 31st July 2014 to download and backup files from Ubuntu One before they will be permanently deleted. Additionally, the service shutdown will also affect Ubuntu One content and music store.

However, according to Canonical Blog, the shutdown will not affect Ubuntu One Single Sign On service, Ubuntu payment service or the U1DB database service.

My thoughts:
Personally, as I suspected early on – Ubuntu One is unable to compete with other Cloud storage competitors and thus decided to focus their efforts on other projects such as Ubuntu Phone project.

Additionally, I also won’t hold my breath on the Ubuntu Phone project as I find it quite hard for Canonical to find manufacturers that will carry Ubuntu OS on their phone. In my opinion, Ubuntu Phone depends too much on Android backend/platform which may risk legal entanglement in the future, or platform incompatibility should there are significant changes in Android platform in the future.