OwnCloud on Amahi
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Each of us has been touched by the term “Cloud Computing” in some way. Either through experience using “public cloud services”, media articles, ravings from I.T. boffins, people naming dropping the latest techie terms etc. ... All sources claiming it's the “greatest thing since sliced bread”.
Many organizations and people have jumped on the public cloud band wagon for various reasons. It's free or cheap. Data is safely stored with the minimum of hassle. It's flexible to access (anywhere, anytime, most any device). There are all sorts of neat applications that can be used to enhance use of the data.
All of the above is good stuff, until, reality bites back. In come the litigators, the legal authorities, the public cloud provider “Terms of Use” statements. Paid any attention to what has been going? The “take downs”, cloud service providers going out of business, the organization mergers/buyouts? Oh yes scary stuff. Stored information owners who "thought" it was their data have found it's no longer the case or access has been cut-off.
Take control of your own data. Bring it home. Use a “private cloud”. Eliminate/minimize the need for a public cloud. If some public cloud access is required then the private cloud becomes a “hybrid cloud” (combination of the two).
ownCloud installed on Amahi is a great combination for home and small business use. ownCloud is a "Cloud Storage" application that provides control of owner data on a private server. Additionally, ownCloud applications be used to provide enhanced use of owner data (i.e. music streaming, photo gallery).
ownCloud Installation
The Amahi ownCloud installation package is a "one-click install" and takes care of; downloading and installing required software dependencies, setting up the ownCloud database, ownCloud "administration" user. The following steps show the installation of ownCloud on Amahi.
Configuring ownCloud
Now the ownCloud has been installed some configuration of the new ownCloud instance needs to be done.
- Accessing ownCloud from a...
Server Console: http://owncloud Workstation: http://owncloud.server_name
- Initial login credentials for the administration user:
User name: admin Password: admin
- Note: Remember to change the administration user password after installation
<show how to change the admin password>
Creating Users
<show creation of normal users and introduce the quota concept>
Things You Need to Know
- ownCloud maintains its own account security system and does not utilize the Amahi host server's user account system.
- The "ownCloud Community" default installation on a typical LAMP server places the data directory with the application binaries. The Amahi installation places the data directory at "/var/hda/files/owncloud/data/".
- The ownCloud data directory area and is not the same as the shared directories (via Samba) created from the Amahi dashboard.
- There is no "automatic upgrade" facility for new versions of ownCloud. An administration "update" feature is available, but will only work on a LAMP server using ownCloud install defaults. Once the "one click install" Amahi package has been updated to a new version of ownCloud the package will have to be reinstalled. When reinstalling the ownCloud package make sure all data is backed up.
