ownCloud

Read an English announcement at Danimo's. Das Release von ownCloud 6 ist keine Woche mehr entfernt. Der letzte Release Candidate ist veröffentlicht, die nächste Version klopft an der Tür. Dies gilt es gebührend zu feiern! Release Party Mittwoch, 11. ... [More] Dezember, 19 Uhr BeLUG, Lehrter Str. 53, 10557 Berlin (ca. 10min vom HBf) Programmatisch wird es zwei kurze, knackige Vorträge zu ownCloud 6 und dem ownCloud Desktop Client 1.5 geben. Es folgt eine Demonstration des neuen ownCloud an einem real existierenden Beispiel. Anschließend gilt es sich gemütlich bei Freipizza auszutauschen. Bitte sagt per Kommentar an, ob ihr dabei seid! Das erleichtert es, die richtige Menge Futter zu beschaffen ;) Andere Städte Release Parties wird es auch andernorts geben, voraussichtlich in Stuttgart, Nürnberg und München. Details werden dann über die Events-Mailingliste bekannt gegeben. Update München, 11. Dezember Stuttgart, 16. Dezemeber Tags: BerlinownCloud [Less]

You want to build the ownCloud client yourself for Windows? Well it is pretty good explained already in the official docs: http://doc.owncloud.org/desktop/1.4/building.html But what to do if you don’t use openSUSE? Fire it up in vagrant! $ mkdir ... [More] {folder where the vagrant configuration will live AND the mirall and ocsync sources} $ vagrant box add openSUSE_12.3 http://sourceforge.net/projects/opensusevagrant/files/12.3/opensuse-12.3-64.box/download $ vagrant init openSUSE_12.3 $ vagrant up Once nice feature about vagrant is that this folder will be available with the openSUSE box under /vagrant . Cloning the csync and miral code into this folder and also keep the build folders in here will allow file manipulation on the local system – e.g. use QtCreator. Only for building the win32 you ssh into the vagrant box. Let’s first get the sources: $ git clone -b ocsync git://git.csync.org/users/freitag/csync.git ocsync $ git clone git://github.com/owncloud/mirall.git $ mkdir mirall-build-win32 $ mkdir ocsync-build-win32 Let’s have a look at them in the vagrant box: $ vagrant ssh # now we are in the openSUSE box $ ls /vagrant mirall mirall-build-win32 ocsync ocsync-build-win32 Let’s prepare the box with all necessary tools and packages required to build mirall and ocsync: # take the wheel $ sudo su - # update the system - always a good idea $ zypper update # setup mingw repositories $ zypper ar http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/windows:/mingw:/win32/openSUSE_12.3/windows:mingw:win32.repo $ zypper ar http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/windows:/mingw/openSUSE_12.3/windows:mingw.repo # install required packages $ zypper install cmake make mingw32-cross-binutils mingw32-cross-cpp mingw32-cross-gcc \                mingw32-cross-gcc-c++ mingw32-cross-pkg-config mingw32-filesystem \                mingw32-headers mingw32-runtime site-config mingw32-libqt4-sql \                mingw32-libqt4-sql-sqlite mingw32-libsqlite-devel \                mingw32-dlfcn-devel mingw32-libssh2-devel kdewin-png2ico \                mingw32-libqt4 mingw32-libqt4-devel mingw32-libgcrypt \                mingw32-libgnutls mingw32-libneon-openssl mingw32-libneon-devel \                mingw32-libbeecrypt mingw32-libopenssl mingw32-openssl \                mingw32-libpng-devel mingw32-libsqlite mingw32-qtkeychain \                mingw32-qtkeychain-devel mingw32-dlfcn mingw32-libintl-devel \                mingw32-libneon-devel mingw32-libopenssl-devel mingw32-libproxy-devel \                mingw32-libxml2-devel mingw32-zlib-devel # install Nullsoft Scriptable Install System) $ zypper install mingw32-cross-nsis # and NSIS plugins required rpm -ihv http://download.tomahawk-player.org/packman/mingw:32/openSUSE_12.1/x86_64/mingw32-cross-nsis-plugin-processes-0-1.1.x86_64.rpm rpm -ihv http://download.tomahawk-player.org/packman/mingw:32/openSUSE_12.1/x86_64/mingw32-cross-nsis-plugin-uac-0-3.1.x86_64.rpm Let’s build ocsync: $ cd /vagrant/ocsync-build-win32 $ mingw32-cmake ../ocsync $ make Let’s build mirall $ cd /vagrant/mirall-build-win32 $ cmake ../mirall \ -DCSYNC_BUILD_PATH=/vagrant/ocsync-build-win32 \ -DCSYNC_INCLUDE_PATH=/vagrant/ocsync/src \ -DCMAKE_TOOLCHAIN_FILE=../mirall/admin/win/Toolchain-mingw32-openSUSE.cmake $ make $ make package And we are done! The windows installer is available under /vagrant/dev/mirall-build-win32/ . But the installer is also available within your local file system! As I use a VirtualBox for Windows testing I that mirall-build-win32 folder is a shared folder on the Windows box as well – the installer can be tested right away! Take care! [Less]

This morning I appear to have done something semi-interesting to a lot of people. Because of it Ive got 20+ new followers on twitter, and a bunch of people subscribing to my youtube channel (not that there is much there!) I didn't think it was much ... [More] of a big deal .... I was just tinkering before everyone got out of bed! If you want to cut the the final result...this is what caused the fuss: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ggo1W39TrQM&feature=youtu.beBlog tags: nokiajollan950mernemo [Less]

It’s been quite a while since my last post about ownCloud Client 1.4. Now that ownCloud Client 1.5 beta1 has been released, it’s time to demonstrate what’s in for you this time. The New Propagator First of all, we have completely redesigned The ... [More] Propagator. It’s the component that is responsible for actually performing all the changes that earlier phases in a sync run have determined to be required. It is vital that the propagator does things in a clever way, and the new design allows just that. The new propagator writes changes to the sync journal as they happen, and does not rewrite the journal after every run. This means that sync runs can be paused or even terminated, and on the next start, the client will pick up where we left it. This is especially important for the initial sync which may take quite a while. Next, we sped up sync runs significantly. If you are using an up-to-date server version, ownCloud Client 1.5 only requires one instead of three round trips to get a simple file uploaded, since the server can now accept the modification time as a header value. This will especially help with small files. Another thing this release gets straight is support for remote moves: The old propagator handled them in terms of delete and re-download, which is a bit silly to begin with. Finally, with the new propagator, we can correctly handle moves for what they are, which turns pushing Megabytes of files into a simple mv instruction. In order to detect moves reliably, we now use file IDs next to ETags other meta data, which requires ownCloud 6.0 on the server side. When you deleted folders, the old propagator would work strongly recursive, meaning a deletion one-by-one. This had several implications, as the non-atomic way of the old approach was problematic as it allowed for unexpected errors to happen. Also every file would be moved to the trash separately (assuming you had the trash app activated), making restore rather painful. The new propagator does away with all this: If you delete one directory, only the directory with all its structures will be moved to trash. As a side effect, this makes the delete operation on the wire much faster. Handling Error Conditions Ignored and blacklisted files now get featured more prominently.There are some situations where syncing a file cannot succeed, for instance when the shared folder on the server cannot be written to. Previously, we would try again and again and again which caused system load. Now in cases like read-only shared folders we actually know that we will never succeed — until someone changes permissions on the server, that is. So now the client will put files it cannot write to on a black list. Only when the file or one of its parent directories changes, we check again if we are now allowed to write. This should improve traffic and CPU load a lot. Another issue we addressed was our new handling of files that are on the local ignore list or which contain characters that cannot be replicated to other operating systems (which is an ongoing discussion). Most people were well aware that it would never work, making the (i)-indicator we were showing an annoyance. We also indicated the failure in a log dialog, which turned out to be too well-buried. In the new release, the sync log has been renamed “Sync Activity” and was placed more prominently as a top level item. It shows all files that have been synced, as well a items that could not be synced at all. The systray icon will not show the (i) icon anymore. One Account to rule them all Another major change won’t be visible to you until you look at the source: The Account. It has been introduced as a first step to implement support for multiple accounts in forthcoming versions. For now, it suffices to say that this change has made the internals easier to understand and extend. Password handling and Signing out The client when singed in…A direct implication is that the client now has a folder-spanning notion of being on- or offline. In addition to that, you can now also sign out. This means your password will be locally discarded. Should the password change or should you have signed out and want to sign back in, you will be queried to enter your password. The Statistics … and when signed out.This release addresses more than 50 issues (features, enhancements, bugs), so this tour is by no means complete. We hope you like the new client, and we appreciate your feedback. Please head over to the issue tracker to tell us about bugs or regressions. [Less]

We just released the Beta 1 of the upcoming ownCloud 6 series! It is spiced up with two new features. The most exciting one is probably collaborative editing of ODF documents. However, I do not want to write about it, ownCloud Documents is already ... [More] covered by Frank. The other feature that just went inside is revamped LDAP settings in a wizard-like fashion. Now, the minimum number of required fields you need to fill in is *drumrolls* 3! Of course without loosing the flexibility you are used to. Providing the LDAP server host, a user DN and a password is usually enough. ownCloud will take care of everything else. Some settings will be suggested, you can just accept them, and more will be auto-detected. New wizard-like LDAP configuration The necessity If you remember the old settings dialogue, it consisted of three tabs (one with a couple sections). Usually it was enough to fill out the first, the "basic", tab. It took more effort when you tried to connect to AD. There were also settings that required LDAP information – and often ownCloud admins lack that and get only a little information from their LDAP admin. As a consequence we needed to handle bug reports (and support tickets on the company side) which were caused by wrong configurations. I played around with thoughts about some kind of assistent, then product management approached me with the same desire. So I sat down, sorted out which settings could be detected or semi-detected and which required direct input by the ownCloud admin. Hiding complexity It gave us a great overview and good basis to work from. Configuration details that are detected do not need to be presented anymore (the user-group-associtation for example). Semi-detectable details will be set to a default value, but can be controlled and adjusted by the ownCloud admin (the Base DN or the user filters for example). I drafted some mockups and refined them with our incredible designer Jan. The most interesting part was how to hide the complexity of LDAP filters. If you take a step back and have a look at the common cases, you really can reduce a lot. It costs you the ability to define complex conditions, but the possibility to enter raw filters is maintained. The most common options can be casted into checkboxes with easy to understand labels. Also certain values, for instance about proper objectClasses, can be auto-detected, pre-selected and offered in a multiselect box. The result is that we now have a really easy to use configuration tool where the ownCloud admin does not need to have deep knowledge of LDAP. For those who still want to be able to fine-grain any setting it is still possible. The Advanced and Expert tab still exists, if you really, really want to use them. Feel for sharp edges Unfortunately, after the Beta release I found a couple of annoying bugs, which are now fixed. For a proper testing, I recommend to use the daily build. Mind, this is based on a Beta release and actually the first version of this LDAP configuration "wizard". It works, however you may see some glitches or edges. I would be amazing if you have the time to test it out, give feedback, report bugs, or even better, provide patches ;) I am very curious to hear your opinions! If you are interested in helping out ownCloud with testing you may consider joining the ownCloud Test Pilots. Tags: PlanetUbuntuownCloudPlanetOwnCloud [Less]

A couple of weeks ago I blogged about the new features in ownCloud 6. I promised a special surprise in the coming weeks. And here it is. ;-)In the past few month we have worked on a feature that will be super useful and popular. All the development ... [More] happened in a public repository on github but we haven't talked about it in public and perhaps it wasn't obvious what it was for people who found it by accident.I'm talking about collaborative editing! This feature is implemented in an app called "ownCloud Documents" and will be part of ownCloud 6. People can view and edit their ODF text documents directly in the browser, inside your ownCloud. Another cool thing is that you can invite users from the same ownCloud to work collaboratively on the same document with you. Or you can send invitation links by email to  people outside your server to collaborate with you on the document.Several people can navigate in the same document with different  cursors at the same time and you can see the changes that are done by the different users in different colors. Every user is identified by the name and the nice avatar picture that we also introduced in ownCloud 6.We implemented this feature together with our friends from KO GmbH. The browser part is based on WebODF with a new ownCloud backend to load, save, share documents and a system to distribute the document changes.This feature is special in several ways:It runs purely on your server. No communication with centralized services like Google -- so your data is always protected against surveillance.We didn't introduce any new server requirements here. Just take  ownCloud and put it into your web server document root and you have your own collaborative editing server. This is far easier to install and run than for example Etherpad.All the documents are based on ODT files that live in your ownCloud. This means that you can sync your documents to your desktop and open them with LibreOffice, Calligra, OpenOffice or MS Office 2013 in parallel. Or you can access them via WebDAV if you want. You also get all the other ownCloud features like versioning, encryption, undelete and so on. This is very unique I think.All the code is completely free software. The PHP and the JS components are released under the AGPL license. This is different than most other solutions. Some of them claim to be open source but use creative commons as a code license which is not free software.Please note that this is only the first version of this great feature. Not every ODT element is supported but we are working on improving this considerably in the future. We will invest significantly in this because we think that this is a very important feature that is useful for people.More information about this feature including a demo video and all the other new ownCloud 6 features can be found here:https://owncloud.org/sixownCloud Documents is part of the ownCloud 6 beta 1 that you can download here: ownCloud 6 beta 1Thanks to the awesome ownCloud community who implemented this innovative feature. Special thanks to our friends from KO GmbH. It's great to work with you. And thanks to ownCloud Inc. who sponsors the development of free software.ownCloud is built by a great community with a completely open  development process. Everyone is welcome to join us and help to build software which can protect all of us from surveillance. Please join us at https://owncloud.org if you want to make the world a little bit better. [Less]

Kubuntu 13.10 has been released a day before yesterday! Hooray! I did an upgrade a little bit prior to the final release, and everything went smooth and works properly. There is just one thing where I needed to put hands on manually. This is my ... [More] Apache (used for development only) configuration which seemed to be incompatible with the version brought with 13.10. This however is nothing Kubuntu specific, but related to all Ubuntu-flavours. I published information on how I got it working again on Diaspora, but I want to share it with you here as well. The vhost files now need to have a ".conf" extensions. So "example.tld" needs to be renamed to "example.tld.conf" in /etc/apache2/sites-available/ and reactivated by sudo a2ensite example.tld.conf. The Actions module was somehow disabled. I needed to re-enable it by sudo a2enmod actions. Permission handling changed. You need to specify "Require" as shown on the dabase blog. There may more things you could face. I do not have a complete overview, but it is all I was confronted with. I hope this is of help for you. ownCloud server packages Kubuntu 13.10 (as any Ubuntu flavour) provides ownCloud 5.0.10 in the repositories. While it is not the latest release, it's a version containing all security fixes in the 5.x series. If you prefer Ubuntu repositories over ownCloud OBS repository, you are good to install ownCloud from there as well. As I have been informed by Kubuntu icon Jonathan Riddell, he is preparing packages for ownCloud server 5.0.8 for earlier Ubuntu releases that are supported by the Updates repository. 5.0.8 is the last version that contains security fixes. It is supposed to hit the repos in about 1.5 weeks from now. Happy Saucy Salamander! Tags: PlanetUbuntuKubuntuownCloudPlanetOwnCloud [Less]

Photo: Dominik Wagenführ, CC-BY-SA Last weekend I attended Ubucon, an Ubuntu user conference organized by the German Ubuntu community. I was giving a talk about, surprise, ownCloud. If you are interested in my talk, please find the slides in PDF on ... [More] the program page. Beware, they are in German! Those who have seen my talk, please give your honest feedback on the Ubucon feedback page! A detail that is not on the slides is that I was wearing my "I am the first one" Jolla T-Shirt (like this). It provoked the question about an ownCloud mobile client for SailfishOS. I want to answer it here as well. Jolla/SailfishOS app for ownCloud First, and as far as I know, in the ownCloud community, no is one working on an app for SailfishOS… yet. But SailfishOS has an Android compatibility. And with regard to the screenshots seen so far, the F-Droid app store will be shipped. There you find free software only, including the ownCloud app and the ownCloud news reader. However, I have no idea whether they work seamlessly and without any issue. However, native apps are to be preferred. Given the nature of Android, I am scared those apps or the compatibility layer will eat too many resources. That said, the Android app – if working – might be OK to bridge some time, but a native app is the way to go. There are three approaches for an ownCloud app for SailfishOS: Write an app from scratch Port the Android app Port the ownCloud desktop client Writing another similar piece of software is kind of tiresome. I do not know too much about Android and Sailfish app programming, but my feeling is that it could also cost quite some time. Now, porting the desktop client might sound odd at first, but it is already written in Qt and uses a lib written in c for syncing. Plus, SailfishOS (respectively its base Mer) is a "real" Linux. So I asked our client developers. ogoffart and Dragotin told me that csync, the sync lib, should work on any Linux-based operating system. The only thing that need to be adjusted is the GUI, to work properly on the smaller screen and make use of the Sailfish-features. Since the GUI is seperated from the actual application, it really "only" takes writing a GUI for SailfishOS. Who really is missing, is someone going to step up and do it ;) Although I would find it interesting to dive into it I lack the skills (sure, can be learned) and foremost the time. If you, Dear Reader, are looking for a SailfishOS app idea, here it is ;) Already one native ownCloud app for SailfishOS ownCloud is not only files, but can be so much more, like Calendar and Contacts and Bookmarks and News and whatnot, there is a lot of room for all kinds of mobile apps to interact with different ownCloud functionality. It is great to see that there is already a note-taking ownCloud app for SailfishOS ownNotes from Benoît Hervier. Do you know more? Please comment! Tags: PlanetUbuntuownCloudPlanetOwnCloudJollaSailfishOS [Less]

Today we release the first Alpha of the latest (ownCloud 6) Community Edition and I'm extremely excited by the latest features. ownCloud 6 is the fastest, best looking, easiest to use ownCloud yet. Oh, and it has a ton of cool, new features that the ... [More] community can use to safely and privately sync and share files. We also spend a lot of energy on stabilizing and fixing bugs and we will keep on doing this in the future.The brave at heart can take a look at the Alpha 1 now (warning, may kill your hamster). I've listed some of the top features below (more detail to come), and there may be a surprise or two added in the coming weeks.A new era has begun at ownCloud, ownCloud 6 -- thanks to all who helped virtually and in-person in Berlin.Activity feed. See what is going on in your ownCloudImproved design. Less visual clutter and more space for better focusPerformance. Improved performance across the board.Avatars. People can upload pictures of themselves that augment their interactions, so users are easily recognized by others.Previews. Thumbnails for filetypes are shown in the interface.Conflict handling. A new web conflict dialog if a file is uploaded that already exists.ownCloud App API. Easier development of 3rd party apps, easier access to core functions for app development.Share file notification. Send an email if sharing a file or folder.Example files for new users. Load new user's with files, such as a tutorial on how to use ownCloud, which appears when they first log in.Sharing REST API. Control sharing from mobile apps and desktop clientsApp management. Improved management of 3rd party apps.Bug fixes. A ton of bugfixes went into this releaseMany smaller improvementsThanks a lot to everyone in the community who contributed and made ownCloud possible. ownCloud is an open free software community project. Everyone who wants to contribute is welcome. So join us. [Less]

Currently we speak a lot about performance of the ownCloud WebDAV server. Speaking with a computer programmer about performance is like speaking with a doctor about pain. It needs to be qualified, the pain, and also the performance concerns. To do a ... [More] step into that direction, here is a little script collection for you to play with if you like: the DAV torture collection. We started it quite some time ago but never really introduced it. It is still very rough. What it does The first idea is that we need a reproducable set of files to test the server with. We don’t want to send around huge tarballs with files, so Danimo invented two perl scripts called torture_gen_layout.pl and torture_create_files.pl. With torture_gen_layout.pl one can create a file that contains the layout of the test file tree, a so called layout( or .lay)-file. The .lay-file describes the test file tree completely, with names, structure and size. torture_gen_layout.pl takes the .lay-file and really creates the file tree on a machine. The cool thing about is that we can commit on a .lay-file as our standard test tree and just pass a file around with a couple of kbytes size that describes the tree. Now that there is a standard file tree to test with, I wrote a little script called dav_torture.pl. It copies the whole tree described by a .lay file and created on the local file system to an ownCloud WebDAV server using PUT requests. Along with that, it produces performance relevant output. Try it Download the tarball and unpack it, or clone it from github. After having installed a couple of perl deps (probably only modules Data::Random::WordList, HTTP::DAV, HTTP::Request::Common are not in perl’s core) you should be able to run the scripts from within the directory. First, you need to create a config file. For that, copy t1.cfg.in to t1.cfg (don’t ask about the name) and edit it. For this example, we only need user, passwd and url to access ownCloud. Be careful with the syntax, it gets sourced into a perl script. Now, create the local reference tree with a .lay-file which I put into the tarball: ./torture_create_files.pl small.lay tree This command will build the file tree described by small.lay into the directory called tree. Now, you can already treat your server: Call ./dav_torture.pl small.lay tree This will perform PUT commands to the WebDAV server and output some useful information. It also appends to two files results.dat and puts.tsv. results.dat just logs the results of subseqent call. The tsv file is the data file for the html file index.html in the same directory. That opened in a browser gives a curve over the average transmission rate of all subsequent runs of dav_torture.pl (You have run dav_torture.pl a couple of times to make that visible). The dav_torture.pl script can now be hooked into our Jenkins CI and performed after every server checkin. The resulting curve must never raise :-) To create your own .lay-file, open torture_gen_layout.pl and play with the variables on top of the script. Simply call the script and redirect into a file to create a .lay-file. All this is pretty experimental, but I thought it will help us to get to a more objective discussion about performance. I wanted to open this up in a pretty early stage because I am hoping that this might be interesting for somebody of you: Treat your own server, create interesting .lay files or improve the script set (testing plain PUTs is rather boring) or the result html presentation. What do you think? [Less]