ownCloud or NextCloud

ownCloud/Nextcloud is very heavy and requires devices with relatively powerful processors, while it will run well even on weak PC and servers, it is too heavy for low-power devices like a router or a NAS.

It's recommended to have at least a dualcore ARMv7 processor if you are not running OpenWrt on PC/server hardware.

I've installed ownCloud on an TP-Link TL-WR2543ND, using lighttpd and sorry, it's dead slow!

--- unknown

I've also installed it on a more powerful TP_Link TL-WDR3500 but it's still very slow, 4-5 secs per page...

--- motherjoker 2014/06/05 15:41

Internally both NextCloud and ownCloud are using a WebDAV protocol with some extensions for basic file operations and Web UI to it. For a better performance you can use just pure WebDAV webdav

ownCloud is around 30 MB and you will like to store your data somewhere. So best both is done on some external storage because small routers don't have that much. Have a look in the OpenWrt-Wiki at usb.essentials [1] and usb.storage[2], and figure out what USB-mode your device is using (ohci or uhci) and know what filesystem is on your storage (here: ext4).

You have to run an update of the package-lists before you can install any software

opkg update

Install USB-support (this is for USB 2.0, see usb.essentials for USB 1.1 support)

opkg install kmod-usb2
insmod ehci-hcd

If you see messages like “unresolved symbol usb_calc_bus_time” try loading usbcore and then try ehci-hcd again:

insmod usbcore
insmod ehci-hcd

Install USB-storage support

opkg install kmod-usb-storage kmod-usb-storage-extras block-mount kmod-fs-ext4 kmod-scsi-generic

Create a mount-point like this

mkdir /mnt/sda1

Figure out which device is your USB-stick/drive and mount it. It helps to list /dev with the USB-device and without - in this case its /dev/sda1.

mount -t ext4 /dev/sda1 /mnt/sda1 -o rw,sync

Get fstab to auto-mount the usb-stick on startup, otherwise your webserver won't come up and you have to start it after mounting manually. ( Insert how-to here) Even if auto-mounting on startup works, it probably ends too late when the webserver tries to start. To make sure the webserver is up after booting, insert this line into /etc/rc.local before “exit 0”:

/etc/init.d/lighttpd start

If your device has only 8 MB of flash-memory (or even less), it is too small to get all the dependencies on it. You'll need to put the operating-system on the USB-device as well. Have a look at extroot_configuration and follow the instructions for trunk. The flavour “New external overlay variant (pivot overlay)” worked for me on a TP-Link WR1043ND quite well. Remember to use both steps while “Duplicate Data”: pivot overlay and pivot root.

ownCloud can't be installed on uhttpd (default web server on OpenWrt). You need to install and configure lighttpd.

I had trouble moving Luci from uhttpd to lighttpd so I recommend keeping uhttpd running for Luci on a different port and assign port 80 to lighttpd for ownCloud.

Edit /etc/config/uhttpd file and change http port to 81 and https port to 8443:

config uhttpd main
  list listen_http  0.0.0.0:81
  list listen_http  [::]:81

  list listen_https  0.0.0.0:8443
  list listen_https  [::]:8443

Restart uhhtpd.

/etc/init.d/uhttpd restart

You should be able to reach luci under e.g. http://192.168.1.1:81

Install Lighttpd webserver packages:

opkg install lighttpd lighttpd-mod-cgi lighttpd-mod-fastcgi lighttpd-mod-access

Now configure lighttpd for ownCloud. Edit the config-file /etc/lighttpd/lighttpd.conf

Set www-root for ownCloud:

server.document-root = "/www/owncloud"

see errors on syslog:

server.error-log-use-syslog = "enable"

Uncomment the mod_cgi and add modules:

server.modules = (
	"mod_access",
        "mod_cgi"
)

Assign port 80 for the ownCloud Server:

server.port = 80

Add these lines to secure the access to the data according to ownCloud WebServer-notes[3], beware that in this example the ownCloud-folder is our www-root

$HTTP["url"] =~ "^/data/" {
	url.access-deny = ("")
}

$HTTP["url"] =~ "^($|/)" {
	dir-listing.activate = "disable"
}

Start the server:

/etc/init.d/lighttpd start

Enable server for next boots:

/etc/init.d/lighttpd enable

Get the dirty part: php and sqlite. I am not sure if really all of these packages are necessary, but it seems so:

opkg install php7 php7-cgi php7-fastcgi php7-mod-json php7-mod-session php7-mod-zip libsqlite3 zoneinfo-core php7-mod-pdo php7-mod-pdo-sqlite php7-mod-ctype php7-mod-mbstring php7-mod-gd sqlite3-cli php7-mod-sqlite3 php7-mod-curl curl php7-mod-xml php7-mod-simplexml php7-mod-hash php7-mod-dom php7-mod-iconv php7-mod-xmlwriter php7-mod-xmlreader php7-mod-intl

Those packages are also suggested:

opkg install php7-mod-mcrypt php7-mod-openssl php7-mod-fileinfo php7-mod-exif

Configure /etc/php.ini to our needs and change the doc_root to our www-root:

;open_basedir=

error_log = syslog

doc_root =
cgi.fix_pathinfo=1

memory_limit = 32M

Check that the extensions are enabled:

/etc/php5/<extension>.ini should contains extension=<extension>.ini

Play around with memory_limit, I reduced the value form 8MB to 4MB ... but maybe 50MB might be better with 64MB RAM.

Run php:

/etc/init.d/php7-fastcgi enable
/etc/init.d/php7-fastcgi start

Uncomment to enable the fastcgi and access module

server.modules = (
	"mod_access",
	"mod_fastcgi",
	"mod_cgi"
)

Add “index.php” to the list of index-file.names:

index-file.names = ( "index.php", "index.html", "default.html", "index.htm", "default.htm" )

static-file.exclude-extensions = (".php, ".pl", ".fcgi")

Include php by using fast-cgi (gample against max-procs for performance):

fastcgi.server = (
	".php" => ((
		"bin-path" => "/usr/bin/php-fcgi",
		"socket" => "/tmp/php.socket",
		"max-procs" => 1
	))
)

Only if you are using normal cgi mode for PHP, you'll need the following line

cgi.assign = (".php" => "/usr/bin/php-cgi")

Restart the webserver with

/etc/init.d/lighttpd restart

Now point your browser to http://yourhost/index.php (first create a helpful content to this file) and see if this manual missed something. If so, please contact the author (see details below) or get an account for this wiki and fix the how-to yourself.

Probably you want to run lighttpd with SSL/https to get your traffic crypted. These instructions are taken from [4]. For generating a key you need to install libopenssl and the openssl-util

opkg install libopenssl openssl-util

Now you can create a folder for your key like this

mkdir /etc/lighttpd/ssl/YOURDOMAIN -p

Within that you can create your key with the following command. You will be asked to provide some information for the certificate.

openssl req -new -x509 -keyout server.pem -out server.pem -days 365 -nodes

Make the file only accessable to root

chmod 0600 /etc/lighttpd/ssl/YOURDOMAIN
chmod 0600 /etc/lighttpd/ssl/YOURDOMAIN/server.pem

Now we can uncomment the lines for SSL in lighttp.conf and modify the path to the server.pem:

ssl.engine = "enable"                             
ssl.pemfile = "/etc/lighttpd/ssl/YOURDOMAIN/server.pem"

Restart the webserver afterwards - don't wonder if it isn't anymore reachable via http:

/etc/init.d/lighttpd restart

ownCloud is installed with SQLite by default. However SQLite is only good for testing and lightweight single user setups. It has no client synchronisation support, so other devices will not be able to synchronise with the data stored in an ownCloud SQLite database. MariaDB is the ownCloud recommended database.

Install the recommended MySQL/MariaDB database:

opkg update
opkg install mysql-server mariadb-client-extra php7-mod-pdo-mysql

Configure the database server:

sed -i 's,^datadir.*,datadir         = "/srv/mysql",g' /etc/my.cnf
sed -i 's,^tmpdir.*,tmpdir          = "/tmp",g' /etc/my.cnf

mkdir -p /srv/mysql
mysql_install_db --force

Start MySQL:

/etc/init.d/mysqld start
/etc/init.d/mysqld enable

Set password for root user:

mysqladmin -u root password 'password'

Connect to MySQL database:

mysql -uroot -p

Create user for web server and set its password:

CREATE USER 'http'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'password';

Create database for ownCloud and set privileges:

CREATE DATABASE IF NOT EXISTS owncloud;
GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON owncloud.* TO 'http'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'password';
FLUSH PRIVILEGES;

For more information, please refer to the documentation: https://doc.owncloud.org/server/10.4/admin_manual/installation/installation_wizard.html#post-installation-steps-label.

Download and unpack the newest revision:

cd /tmp
wget https://download.owncloud.org/community/owncloud-X.X.X.tar.bz2
opkg update
opkg install tar
cd /www
tar -xjf /tmp/owncloud-X.X.X.tar.bz2

Now you should cleanup:

rm /tmp/owncloud-X.X.X.tar.bz2
opkg remove --autoremove tar

You have to configure the rights of the /www/owncloud in addition.

chown -R root:root /www/owncloud
chmod 770 -R /mnt/sda1/owncloud/data

cd /mnt/sda1
mkdir owncloud
cd owncloud
mkdir data
chown -hR http /mnt/sda1/owncloud
chmod 770 -R /mnt/sda1/owncloud

create the following folder after installation and change its permissions:

cd /www/owncloud
mkdir apps-external
chmod 777 apps-external

Open your Website http://192.168.1.1/ and configure your first steps, then wait for a loooonnnnngggg time and you'll see the result.

ownCloud requires background jobs like database cleanup. For best performance, it is recommended to enable background jobs.

Enable Cron job:

opkg install sudo
crontab -u http -e
* * * * * /usr/bin/php-cli /www/owncloud/occ system:cron

For more information, please refer to the documentation: https://doc.owncloud.com/server/admin_manual/configuration/server/background_jobs_configuration.html.

If you don't want to set up a extroot, you can install ownCloud on a different location Opkg Package Manager - Non-standard Installation Destinations

Install php on another location, then

If you still get errors related timezones and calls to undefined functions:

Page was initiated by wetterfrosch

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but a lot of modifications are done by others...

• [0] http://downloads.openwrt.org/snapshots/
• [1] Installing and troubleshooting USB Drivers
• [2] Using storage devices
• [3] http://owncloud.org/support/webserver-notes/
• [4] http://www.cyberciti.biz/tips/howto-lighttpd-create-self-signed-ssl-certificates.html
• [5] http://www.gizfun.com/content/install-owncloud-your-openwrt-router-3-steps