How to Install ownCloud on CentOS 8

ownCloud is a software application provide self hosted file hosting services. You can install owncloud application on your server and use it as your own file server. Where you can easily upload/sync files from the client machine. It also provides options to sync and share across devices—all under your control. This tutorial will help you to set up your own file hosting server with the ownCloud on the CentOS 8 Linux system.

Prerequsites

• New system’s recommended to follow initial server setup.
• Shell access to the CentOS 8 system

Step 1 – Disable SELinux

Before starting, it is a good idea to disable the SELinux in your system.

To disable SELinux, open the /etc/selinux/config file:

nano /etc/selinux/config

Change the following line:

SELINUX=disabled

Step 2 – Install Apache/MySQL/PHP

To set up ownCloud you must have running LAMP server on your CentOS 8 system. If you already have running LAMP stack skip this step else use the following commands to install it.

Install Apache2

sudo dnf install httpd

Install MySQL

sudo dnf install @mysql
sudo mysql_secure_installation

Use this tutorial for the complete MySQL installation steps on CentOS 8.

Install PHP

Let’s start with the installation of PHP 5.6 or higher version.

sudo dnf install php php-gd php-curl php-zip php-dom php-xml php-simplexml php-mbstring php-intl php-json

Step 3 – Download ownCloud Source

After successfully configuring lamp server on your system, Let’s download latest ownCloud from its official website.

cd /tmp
wget https://download.owncloud.org/community/owncloud-10.4.0.tar.bz2

Next, extract downloaded archive under the website document root and set up appropriate permissions on files and directories.

cd /var/www
sudo tar xjf /tmp/owncloud-10.4.0.tar.bz2
sudo chown -R apache:apache owncloud
sudo chmod -R 755 owncloud

ownCloud keep its data under the separate directory. We suggest to keep this outside of ownCloud application directory. So create directory like below, and set proper permission to allow web server to write files.

mkdir -p /var/owncloud/data
sudo chown -R apache:apache owncloud
sudo chmod -R 755 owncloud

Step 4 – Create MySQL User and Database

After extracting code, let’s create a MySQL database and user account for configuring ownCloud. Use following set of command to login to MySQL server and create database and user.

mysql -u root -p
Enter password:

mysql> CREATE DATABASE owncloud;
mysql> CREATE USER 'owncloud'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY '_password_';
mysql> GRANT ALL ON owncloud.* to 'owncloud'@'localhost';
mysql> FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
mysql> quit

Step 5 – Configure Apache

Now, create a Apache configuration file and setup owncloud alias. This will allow us to access ownCloud as sub-directory url.

Create and edit file:

sudo vim /etc/httpd/conf.d/owncloud.conf

Add the below content:

Save and close file. Then restart the Apache service to reload configuration file.

sudo systemctl restart httpd

Step 6 – Run ownCloud Web Installer

Now access the ownCloud in the web browser as below. Change the webhost.tecadmin.net to your server IP address or domain name.

 http://webhost.tecadmin.net/owncloud/

Enter new admin credentials to create an admin account and provide the location of the data folder.

Now slide your page down and input the database credentials and click on Finish Setup.

After completing the setup you will get the admin dashboard. Where you can create a user, groups, assigned them permissions, etc.

Conclusion

Congratulations, You have a working ownCloud instance on your CentOS 8 Linux system.