Install OwnCloud 7 with Nginx and PHP-FPM on an Ubuntu VPS

OwnCloud is a web based application that provides services such as file storage, management and sharing. Using OwnCloud you can sync and share your files, calendar, contacts and much more. Everything will be accessible from all your devices from anywhere.

In this tutorial we will install the latest version of OwnCloud with Nginx and PHP-FPM on an Ubuntu VPS.

First of all, log in to your server as root and make sure that your Ubuntu Linux VPS is fully up to date

apt-get update
apt-get upgrade

Install MariaDB on your server

apt-get install mariadb-server

Run the following script to secure your MariaDB server and set a root password

mysql_secure_installation

- 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

Now, log in to your MariaDB server as user root and create a new user and database for OwnCloud.

mysql -u root -p
Enter password:
MariaDB [(none)]> CREATE DATABASE owncloud;
MariaDB [(none)]> GRANT ALL ON owncloud.* to ownclouduser@localhost identified by 'YOURPASSWORD';
MariaDB [(none)]> FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
MariaDB [(none)]> \q

Do not forget to change YOURPASSWORD with an actual strong password.

Install Nginx web server, PHP5-FPM and few additional PHP packages

apt-get install nginx php5-fpm php5-common php5-cli php5-json php5-mysql php5-curl php5-intl php5-mcrypt php5-memcache php5-gd

Now, download the latest stable OwnCloud release from their official website. At the moment of writing this article it is version 7.0.3

cd /opt/
wget https://download.owncloud.org/community/owncloud-7.0.3.tar.bz2

Unpack the downloaded file

tar -jxvf owncloud-7.0.3.tar.bz2

OwnCloud’s files will be unpacked in a new ‘owncloud’ directory under ‘/opt’. Change the owner of the directory

chown -R www-data:www-data /opt/owncloud

Create a new virtual block for your domain with the following content

nano /etc/nginx/sites-available/yourdomain.tld

server {
listen 80;
server_name yourdomain.tld www.yourdomain.tld;

root /opt/owncloud;
index index.php;

rewrite ^/caldav(.*)$ /remote.php/caldav$1 redirect;
rewrite ^/carddav(.*)$ /remote.php/carddav$1 redirect;
rewrite ^/webdav(.*)$ /remote.php/webdav$1 redirect;
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 / {
   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$ {
   try_files $uri =404;
   fastcgi_split_path_info ^(.+\.php)(/.+)$;
   fastcgi_pass 127.0.0.1:9000;
   fastcgi_index index.php;
   fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $document_root$fastcgi_script_name;
   include fastcgi_params;
}
}

Enable the server block executing the following command

ln -s /etc/nginx/sites-available/yourdomain.tld /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/

Open the /etc/php5/fpm/pool.d/www.conf file and change the ‘listen’ variable as you see below:

listen = 127.0.0.1:9000;

Restart Nginx and PHP-FPM for the changes to take effect

service nginx restart
service php5-fpm restart

Finally, head your browser to http:yourdomain.tld where you will need to create an admin account and the information of the MariaDB we’ve created in this tutorial. With this step the installation of OwnCloud 7 is completed.

Of course you don’t have to do any of this if you use one of our Linux VPS Hosting services, in which case you can simply ask our expert Linux admins to install OwnCloud for you. They are available 24×7 and will take care of your request immediately.

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