OwnCloud

So, instead of doing my Fall Fedora Upgrade this Thanksgiving weekend, I messed around with getting an instance of Owncloud working on Centos 6.3 on Virtual Box.  I spent a lot of hours on it an am not yet satisfied.

Owncloud is a very cool idea which has been around for a few years.  With the advent of Cloud Computing out in the corporate world, it is nice to see something become available for the End User people.  So what does it do?

Owncloud is a cool alternative to the ever popular DropBox.  What you do is install it on a computer dedicate has a home file/web server.  It installs fairly easy for an advance end user.  And for those of use who are not so advanced, there are tons of people who don't mind helping out.  All you have to do is Google or Bing or whatever.

My OC is a test version just to see if I could do it and what it would look like.  First, I installed the latest Centos.  I then added the necessary files.  Finally, I installed and configured OC.  There are instructions all over the web for this as, I suppose, folks just like the security of having all their precious files and pics on their own server open to only those who the specifically invite.

So, this weekend, I learned that Centos is an awesome choice for a web server, Owncloud is a promising replacement for DropBox, and finally I learned how to make my Web Server available to the outside world by configuring ports and Virtual Box accordingly. 

You might just be asking me where's the tutorial.  You're not going to get much from me except for this list:

#1 Choose your computer for your web server
#2 Configure your hardware (i.e. multiple Ethernet ports, more ram etc)
#3 Choose your operating system (Centos 6.3 is nice...hint, hint)
#4 Install your OS
#5 Configure your OS
#6 Install OpenCloud
#7 Configure (config files and hardware firewalls etc.)
#8 Have fun.

One thing you might also do is create a "home page" for your web server that links to your OC for those whom you invite.  Then the OC could be a secure site...I still have to figure some of this out.  Oh, by being secure, that means by invitation only. Don't publish your OC on Facebook or any other place unless you want your system to be cracked within the first day of operation.

Just for fun, you might just try testing it on Virtual Box before you give it more room.  One other cool thing about it, you can do your VB test and the migrate it to a larger system almost like what the aliens did to with brains in the movie Skyline.

Follow the hyperlinks to get started:
Owncloud
OC Forum
Centos
VirtualBox