OwnCloud Server 9.0 Officially Released (softpedia.com)

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OwnCloud Server 9.0 Officially Released (softpedia.com)

Posted by BeauHD on Tuesday March 8, 2016 @10:16AM from the self-hosting-cloud-server dept.

prisoninmate writes: OwnCloud Server 9.0 is without any doubt the biggest release of the world's leading file sharing and sync solution, which is used by over 8 million users around the globe. It promises to bring the collaboration and federation features to new levels thanks to the addition of new, innovative tools, as well as to improve the software's scalability. One of ownCloud 9.0's new features is code signing, which promises to offer users with a safer home for all their data by verifying the integrity of their ownCloud installations during upgrades or when installing apps, which also need to follow the new code signing specifications. The community edition of ownCloud Server 9.0 is available for download right now via Softpedia as a source package that you can deploy on your Linux kernal-based server, or straight from the project's website as binary packages for various GNU/Linux operating systems. OwnCloud Server 9.0 Enterprise Edition will be released in April 2016.

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Linux by 110010001000 · 2016-03-08 10:20 · Score: 2

Nice! I know this: it is a Linux kernal system!
Does it scale better now? by Anonymous Coward · 2016-03-08 10:24 · Score: 2, Interesting

One of Owncloud's key failings in the past is that it has a horrible time dealing with a share that has tens of thousands of files in it. (Seafile, OTOH, deals with that easily.)
Has its sync improved in the last few years, or is it still limited to less then a few thousand files per share?
1. Re:Does it scale better now? by 110010001000 · 2016-03-08 10:30 · Score: 4, Funny
  
  Did you not read the summary? It is world leading. Without any doubt.
2. Re:Does it scale better now? by TheRaven64 · 2016-03-08 21:23 · Score: 2
  
  No, performance still sucks because the designers still have absolutely no idea how to design a network filesystem. If they bothered to read the AFS papers then they'd know that all of the 'hard' problems that they're struggling with were solved decades ago (and have open source implementations). Like so many other related projects, they're far too concerned about building a platform without thinking about the underlying protocols. If I had to pick one out of open source or open protocols, I'd pick open protocols: if you start from there then you're far more likely to end up with both.
  
  --
  I am TheRaven on Soylent News
3. Re:Does it scale better now? by Troed · 2016-03-09 00:00 · Score: 2
  
  ... or just install Seafile instead. I use an RPi for my server, which then mounts storage over NFS. The whole hosting is thus self-contained running of a single SD-card on an RPi.
  And is still plenty fast.
  I see no benefit with ownCloud. Also less secure than Seafile.
  http://seafile.com/
  
  --
  it's in my head
4. Re:Does it scale better now? by hoggoth · 2016-03-09 05:43 · Score: 1
  
  > It is world leading.
  It may be world leading, but is it web-scale?
  
  --
  - For the complete works of Shakespeare: cat /dev/random (may take some time)
5. Re:Does it scale better now? by jospoortvliet · 2016-03-10 07:32 · Score: 1
  
  Well, considering how ownCloud probably does more than seafile to secure seafile... https://seacloud.cc/group/3/wi... yeah, that's reported by our security guy. The other reports got silently fixed - there's not much of a proper, transparent security process there. But if you believe it's more secure than ownCloud, good luck with earning money on ownCloud's lack of security: https://owncloud.org/security - check the hackerone program.
6. Re:Does it scale better now? by jospoortvliet · 2016-03-10 07:38 · Score: 1
  
  We're working with CERN, AARNet and others to bring ownCloud to a higher level of scalability. right now, petabyte level filesystems are no problem but going beyond that is hard. ownCloud 9.0 introduces changes to break through that barrier. See https://opensource.com/busines... for more info. Of course, if you're merely talking about a few hundred terrabyte of data, ownCloud won't have any issues with it if it's set up properly. I suggest you check out the deployment recommendations: https://doc.owncloud.org/serve... There is ONE performance issue left: very many (thousands) of very small (under 100 KB) files syncing with the client. With very large files and fat network pipes, you probably also should increase the chunck size in the client to improve network performance.
7. Re:Does it scale better now? by Troed · 2016-03-10 07:58 · Score: 1
  
  My comment was based in that Seafile [can have] client side encryption. Has ownCloud added that now? Else I don't see how your comment negates that fact.
  
  --
  it's in my head
Or you could post the direct links. by Anonymous Coward · 2016-03-08 10:24 · Score: 5, Informative

Ironic, since the news mentions code signings and you're pointing us to Softpedia.
News: https://owncloud.org/nine/
Download: https://owncloud.org/install
Is this an ad? by JustAnotherOldGuy · 2016-03-08 10:27 · Score: 4, Informative

Is this an ad? Because it sure reads like an ad.

--
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
1. Re:Is this an ad? by Potor · 2016-03-08 10:28 · Score: 1, Informative
  
  This is an ad.
2. Re:Is this an ad? by 110010001000 · 2016-03-08 10:28 · Score: 2, Informative
  
  It is probably a malware laden download from Softpedia. Otherwise they would just link to the direct download from owncloud.
3. Re:Is this an ad? by Anonymous Coward · 2016-03-08 10:37 · Score: 3, Informative
  
  If you follow the story link, it has a brown bar.
  This "prisoninmate" seems to have a 100% submission history.
  Guess it's an in-house (maybe "outhouse"?) spam submitter account.
  Captcha: "disobey" OK, will do...
4. Re:Is this an ad? by Banana+Slamma · 2016-03-08 10:51 · Score: 2
  
  I mean an ad for an open source project on /. wouldn't be too offensive, which is what is is.
5. Re:Is this an ad? by Tailhook · 2016-03-08 11:02 · Score: 1
  
  The softpedia link puts some stink on the story. Otherwise, yes, this appears to be a fairly inoffensive story about an open source alternative to Dropbox et al. It's gotten to the point where being mentioned on Slashdot is bad thing; it's assumed to be a slashvertishment for some commercial unicorn wannabe.
  
  --
  Maw! Fire up the karma burner!
Vote for Hillary by Anonymous Coward · 2016-03-08 10:30 · Score: 1

She uses owncloud for all her to secret documents. Because ya know...when you need to share 'em.
Why link to softpedia? by dbc · 2016-03-08 10:32 · Score: 4, Insightful

Why do all the link point to the scumbags at softpedia, instead of to owncloud.org?
Don't forget about SeaFile by Hadlock · 2016-03-08 10:35 · Score: 4, Interesting
SeaFile is OwnCloud (which are both basically DropBox), except, Sea is a play-on for C programming language (and some Python). So it's way fast. OwnCloud is written in PHP and you get what you pay for in performance as a result.
--
moox. for a new generation.
1. Re:Don't forget about SeaFile by Anonymous Coward · 2016-03-08 11:47 · Score: 2
  
  Although I agree with you, Owncloud is a much more feature rich system than Seafile. Owncloud can be your caldav server for synchronizing calendar clients (e.g. thunderbird or solcalendar on android). Owncloud can be your OPDS server for accessing all of your ebooks remotely using any OPDS compatible ebook reader.
  However, I have personally abandoned Owncloud. It is way too much of a pain to upgrade (running it on a Freenas system). The built in automatic updater never works. Manual updates are fraught with issues and their own documentaton, when followed to the letter does not always work. Backups are a must, and you WILL have to restore from them at times when you screw up and the entire database gets hosed (unless you want to dive in and do manual corrections to the database). Owncloud is just way too much effort to upgrade and maintain as a home user and is something I can't be bothered with anymore unless I'm being paid to maintain it.
2. Re:Don't forget about SeaFile by Hadlock · 2016-03-08 12:07 · Score: 2
  
  SeaFile is about 8x faster than OwnCloud when running on something like a Raspberry Pi. Using a Pi as a file server is an awful idea due to a number of issues with bus sharing but it's a fantastic example to show how much of a cow OwnCloud is from a performance standpoint.
  
  --
  moox. for a new generation.
3. Re:Don't forget about SeaFile by jabuzz · 2016-03-08 12:28 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  I abandoned Owncloud shortly after installing when I discovered like all free software of this type I have evaluated it had no fucking idea about operating on your normal home directory without purchasing the "enterprise" version and then some horrible kludges.
  The whole think is clearly written by a bunch of web jocks who have no fucking idea about Unix development and want to reinvent the bloody wheel.
  I have a user model and file system that I trust to get the permissions things right. I don't trust some crappy PHP code to do it correctly, and I don't fucking want to have all my files in Owncloud separate from my normal home directory because what's the fucking point in that and then stored under the Apache user in /var. It's a total fucking joke.
4. Re:Don't forget about SeaFile by dbIII · 2016-03-08 12:38 · Score: 1
  
  I'm planning to do a quick and nasty sync thing to android devices from an orange pi so thanks for pointing out an alternative.
5. Re: Don't forget about SeaFile by bill_mcgonigle · 2016-03-08 14:38 · Score: 1
  
  Does Owncloud handle symlinks? Seafile can't seem to understand we need files, directories , and links. All modern filesystems work this way.
  
  --
  My God, it's Full of Source!
  OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
6. Re: Don't forget about SeaFile by kwalker · 2016-03-08 17:05 · Score: 1
  
  The ownCloud (Linux) client does not support symlinks. I wish it did, believe me. There's not even an option, and it doesn't treat them like normal files. But as it is, I just have to reverse-symlink (file lives in ownCloud, symlink lives elsewhere and points back to it).
  
  --
  Improvise, adapt, and overcome.
7. Re:Don't forget about SeaFile by jabuzz · 2016-03-08 21:35 · Score: 1
  
  If you want a "private youtube" then Plex or Emby(aka MediaBrowser) make far more sense and do everything that you want.
  My criticism of OwnCloud, Seafile and all the similar products I have seen in this space is that they have literally been written by web jocks who have no fucking idea about doing this sort of thing properly.
  It would be like if Samba stored all your files for your home directory under /var/samba all owned by the samba user and then maintained a database of actual owners and permissions.
  The whole space is a complete and total fuckup.
8. Re:Don't forget about SeaFile by Coren22 · 2016-03-09 02:14 · Score: 1
  
  Owncloud has more features
  Seafile is faster
  Of course it is faster, it can't do half the shit Owncloud can. SeaFile is also damn expensive, 44 euro per user per year for file sharing software; Dropbox costs less than that for the pro version.
  
  --
  APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
9. Re: Don't forget about SeaFile by jabuzz · 2016-03-10 00:34 · Score: 1
  
  I quote from the landing page for ownCloud "A safe home for all your data. Access & share your files, calendars, contacts, mail & more from any device, on your terms". It's on big letters plastered across the page.
  I have a server at home it has my home directory on, NFS/Samba shared to machines in my house. The reasonable expectation is that ownCloud will let me access those same files.
  However even if I was misconstrued into what ownCloud was I would still fucking rail at the developers for developing their own security model where every file in ownCloud is owned by the ownCloud user and some crappy PHP code and a database determines what belongs to who, and who can access what.
  It's done like this because the web jocks who developed it would otherwise have to deal properly with the Posix user security model and being web jocks who code in PHP have no fucking idea how to do that.
10. Re: Don't forget about SeaFile by jospoortvliet · 2016-03-10 07:47 · Score: 1
  
  The reason we don't support it is because it woudn't work on all platforms. Seriously, yes. If you know of a decent solution - let us know.
11. Re: Don't forget about SeaFile by jospoortvliet · 2016-03-10 07:52 · Score: 1
  
  Hmm, I wrote the page, but didn't expect somebody to take the "a safe home for all your data" to mean you can sync your entire home. ownCloud is a replacement for the big proprietary end user 'clouds' like Google, Dropbox etc - give it one or multiple folders and the sync client syncs them between devices; you can share files, comment on them in the web UI, edit them online or locally and so on.
  Sharing an entire home folder on Linux, no, that won't work. Lots of 'special' files and folders that won't be synced (eg symbolic or hard links, dotfiles and all that) because that would not work cross-platform, for one. And if you'd use two systems at once, you get loads of conflict files. Oh, and yes, permissions and user settings... probably wouldn't work either. The POSIX stuff is great but doesn't work on Windows or Mac so we just can't support that - lowest common denominator, sad but that's how it is - most of our 8 million users are on Windows.
  Sorry that it didn't work out - and isn't designed that way. Hope you find another solution which can help you better.
12. Re:Don't forget about SeaFile by jospoortvliet · 2016-03-10 07:54 · Score: 1
  
  Sorry, ownCloud currently does no transcoding and things like that. While such functions could be added, it isn't there today. It can play videos - by providing them to your browser. Works for most formats, but not perfect. The music player is cool but doesn't scale, at least not to my collection (100 GB mp3's).
  This is mostly meant as a 'file sync and share', that's the base of ownCloud: make your files available wherever you are, and wherever those files are (you can mount ftp, samba, webdav, dropbox and other things in ownCloud and get at your files in one place).
13. Re:Don't forget about SeaFile by jospoortvliet · 2016-03-10 07:56 · Score: 1
  
  Well, it depends on what you want I suppose. ownCloud does a lot of things with external storage, where we obviously have to store information about the files to offer search, sharing and all the other functionality. ownCloud 9.0 actually introduces the ability for ownCloud to use such features in the filesystem if they're there - or at least, a API to make the storage plugins do that. This is needed as we want to scale through the Petabyte storage barrier - see https://opensource.com/busines...
14. Re:Don't forget about SeaFile by jospoortvliet · 2016-03-10 08:01 · Score: 1
  
  Well, in all fairness, there's a open source version, though it is rather limited, and the project itself seems to slowly wither away.
15. Re: Don't forget about SeaFile by kwalker · 2016-03-10 10:46 · Score: 1
  
  All modern filesystems (Even NTFS) handles symlinks. If mobile is the issue, then treat links like their target type (file or directory), like everyone else has since the inception of links.
  At least give us (users) the option to ignore links or treat them like normal (maybe with a warning about it not working on mobile or whatever platform is giving you heartburn).
  
  --
  Improvise, adapt, and overcome.
Re:Misleading press release masquerading as story by Anonymous Coward · 2016-03-08 10:41 · Score: 2, Informative

Can you show me where to download the dropbox server install then? Not the client. The actual server.
Slashdot's New Owner Was Supposed to Improve It by Bruce+Perens · 2016-03-08 10:44 · Score: 5, Informative

Remember, hey it was just last month, how Slashdot's new owner said they'd listen to us, and get rid of the problems that had cropped up with Dice, etc.?
Well, listen guys. This doesn't have a red bar or any indication that it's paid, but it's obviously a press release, it points to people we don't trust for file downloads rather than the people who make the software that is being discussed, and it contains obvious falsehoods (like OwnCloud's acceptance next to things like DropBox).
So, this is just an isolated problem that slipped through the cracks, right?

--
Bruce Perens.
1. Re:Slashdot's New Owner Was Supposed to Improve It by dbIII · 2016-03-08 12:12 · Score: 1
  
  but it's obviously a press release
  True but it's an announcement of a new release of software that people on this site are interested in and so it would have fit in on Slashdot at any time since this site started. The rest can be put down to nothing more malicious than poor editing and may even end up being fixed.
2. Re:Slashdot's New Owner Was Supposed to Improve It by Bruce+Perens · 2016-03-08 12:33 · Score: 1
  
  These types of problems don't happen with Open Source software, do they?
  You must trademark your project name to fight this sort of abuse, and have an acceptable use policy for the mark. Open Source licensing was not meant to fight this, but Open Source does work along with a trademark.
  
  --
  Bruce Perens.
3. Re:Slashdot's New Owner Was Supposed to Improve It by Harlequin80 · 2016-03-08 13:32 · Score: 1
  
  Maybe its been edited since you read it but the summary contains links to the developer as well now. It even points out that the binaries have been compiled by softpedia.
  Personally I don't have a problem with this article. It is about a great piece of software that lots of us have a use for. Ideally it wouldn't have come via softpedia but that doesn't make the news not worthy.
4. Re:Slashdot's New Owner Was Supposed to Improve It by turbidostato · 2016-03-08 13:58 · Score: 2
  
  "It even points out that the binaries have been compiled by softpedia."
  Binaries!? AFAIK OwnCloud is 100% PHP code.
5. Re:Slashdot's New Owner Was Supposed to Improve It by thegarbz · 2016-03-09 03:22 · Score: 1
  
  but it's obviously a press release
  90% of news IS a press release. If you judge by that metric you may as well shut down slashdot.
6. Re:Slashdot's New Owner Was Supposed to Improve It by Bruce+Perens · 2016-03-09 07:08 · Score: 1
  
  90% of news IS a press release. If you judge by that metric you may as well shut down slashdot.
  No, you'd shut down PR Newswire. Editors and reporters may be incited to cover a story by PR people, but they are supposed to report the story rather than simply repeat the propaganda.
  
  --
  Bruce Perens.
7. Re:Slashdot's New Owner Was Supposed to Improve It by thegarbz · 2016-03-09 21:00 · Score: 1
  
  Slashdot is a news aggregator, not investigative journalism. The purpose of this site is and always has been repeat propaganda be it from corporations or someone else with an agenda. The exception is Ask Slashdot columns.
8. Re:Slashdot's New Owner Was Supposed to Improve It by Bruce+Perens · 2016-03-10 17:33 · Score: 1
  
  Read what you wrote. Slashdot is a news aggregator. News is different from press releases. News is carried by news sites. Press releases are carried by a corporation's own web site and by venues like PR newswire.
  Slashdot editors have mostly been smart enough to be able to tell one from the other, up until now. If they aren't able to do that, they aren't going to hold the audience either.
  
  --
  Bruce Perens.
9. Re:Slashdot's New Owner Was Supposed to Improve It by Bruce+Perens · 2016-03-10 17:41 · Score: 1
  
  One of the goals was not to do the same old stuff, especially where it was stuff that Tio Paco did 19 years ago that doesn't have any relevancy to today. So, quality content from real people was what interested me. Not really being a news integrator at all. And then I ended up with another, more interesting, project.
  
  --
  Bruce Perens.
10. Re:Slashdot's New Owner Was Supposed to Improve It by thegarbz · 2016-03-11 05:47 · Score: 1
  
  News is different from press releases. News is carried by news sites. Press releases are carried by a corporation's own web site and by venues like PR newswire.
  Errr not even close. Do you even understand what the "press" part of "press release" means?
11. Re:Slashdot's New Owner Was Supposed to Improve It by Bruce+Perens · 2016-03-11 07:56 · Score: 1
  
  Yes. I have a professional PR person who does my press placements and am married to another, and discuss their work quite a lot. Press releases are meant to incite a news venue to create a story. Corporations also make announcements on their web sites. But everyone should know that these things are in general hyperbolic if they don't just plain lie. So, in general any self-respecting person of normal competence working in a press venue will not copy these things, but will write their own story.
  Slashdot has also maintained a greater level of competence than that, other than the not-very-often screw-up. In general those screw ups involve new staff who are completely untrained.
  
  --
  Bruce Perens.
Re:Misleading press release masquerading as story by plover · 2016-03-08 12:03 · Score: 3, Funny

Is that a docker interface?

--
John
Re: Slashdot's New Owner Was Supposed to Improve I by Bruce+Perens · 2016-03-08 12:22 · Score: 4, Insightful

Whoever it is must learn not to send us to Softpedia, and it's ilk, but to the developers. That's critical. The rest is learning to filter the story out of the promotion.

--
Bruce Perens.
Re: Slashdot's New Owner Was Supposed to Improve I by yzf750 · 2016-03-08 13:18 · Score: 1

Meet the new boss, same as the old boss...
SeaFile vs Ownclowd (tried both) by walterbyrd · 2016-03-08 13:51 · Score: 1

I have tried both. I find Seafile far superior to Owncloud, in terms of features, and speed.
But, Ownclowd runs on a standard $10 a year webhost. Whereas, Seafile requires python, and deep access to the webserver.
Practically none of the plugins for Ownclowd work correctly. Also, Ownclowd does not have markdown, whereas as Seafile has an excellent markdown implementation.
1. Re:SeaFile vs Ownclowd (tried both) by kwalker · 2016-03-08 17:21 · Score: 1
  
  Speed sure, but features?
  I looked at SeaFile's website but their feature set seems to be entirely about file sync. That's all well and good, but my crew primarily uses ownCloud to do contact, task, and calendar sharing, doc editing (sometimes), and gallery/picture sharing. All plugins. It is kinda a shame about the markdown support not working in Notes though.
  And it's pretty fast if you've tuned the webserver properly.
  
  --
  Improvise, adapt, and overcome.
ODF shared editing by manu0601 · 2016-03-08 14:31 · Score: 1

One killer feature that was not completely done previously was ODF collaborative editing. How far did it go now?
1. Re:ODF shared editing by jospoortvliet · 2016-03-10 07:45 · Score: 1
  
  It's been improved but the company and community behind it are nearly dead (it wasn't primarily developed by ownCloud). So things were quiet until - Liberoffice Online came along and now Collabora is working on integrating that in ownCloud ;-)
Re: Slashdot's New Owner Was Supposed to Improve I by hoggoth · 2016-03-09 05:54 · Score: 1

Whoever it is, is a user that has only ever submitted links to Softpedia...

--
- For the complete works of Shakespeare: cat /dev/random (may take some time)
9.0 Upgrade has been a disaster by itsme1234 · 2016-03-09 21:20 · Score: 1

I'm getting like plenty of other users (as reported on github) TableExistsException when doing what is really a vanilla upgrade for a minimal system with one user... So I'm stuck; other than that there are tons of other 9.0 bugs reported...
Feature-wise it was really underwhelming, I've been expecting quite a few more things from it, especially that it has been for years mentioned on slashdot. Online editing exists only for plain texts, even previews on documents are really hard to get. Thumbnails on pdf's (and mostly everything else) are not supported for security reasons (yea, we can't get to render pdfs securely in 2016...).
On the other hand speaking about security you can't add read-only external storage (which would be extremely desirable if you have some GBs of pictures for example you would like to be able to see and share in owncloud but don't want to expose them rw to security or other owncloud issues).