Category: Free as in Freedom

Tutanota – anonymous and free email

Everyone has the need for an anonymous email account i.e. an email account that can not be traced back to your real world identity.

These email accounts work great when they are the only information required to successfully create an online account. They don’t really work so well if you are required to also provide a name and you use your real world name (doh!).

Tutanota is an anonymous and free email service. It will cost you nothing to create an email account and the only information you need to provide is the email username (don’t use anything that can be linked back to your real world identity) and a long, strong password. The Tutanota website is Tor friendly, meaning that you can use the Tor browser with the Tutanota website and no functionality breaks and you don’t have to solve any annoying captchas. The website does require the use of javascript during the registration process so you can’t use the Tor browser on the safest security settings (no big deal).

Unfortunately Tutanota don’t accept payments via cryptocurrencies e.g. Bitcoin, so you can’t pay them anonymously. This isn’t a show stopper because as I’ve previously mentioned they do provide free accounts.

Tutanota is open source (GNU General Public License v3.0) so if you are so inclined you can read through the source code.

Upgrade Nextcloud from version 10.0.2 to 11.0.0

To upgrade Nextcloud is actually pretty simple. The instructions are very similar to my post on Migrate from ownCloud 9.1.1 to Nextcloud 10.0.2.

Please note that I have created a directory “/opt/owncloud-install/” which I use to backup files to when performing an upgrade. You can have a directory named something else, the name isn’t important. Also my Nextcloud installation is in a directory named “/var/www/owncloud”, I found it easier to leave the directory name exactly the same when I migrated from ownCloud to Nextcloud.

1. Download Nextcloud server version 11.0.0

wget https://download.nextcloud.com/server/releases/nextcloud-11.0.0.tar.bz2

2. Stop your webserver

sudo systemctl stop apache2.service

3. Backup (move) your config.php file and your data folder

sudo mv /var/www/owncloud/config/config.php /opt/owncloud-install/

sudo mv /var/www/owncloud/data /opt/owncloud-install/

4. Delete your ownCloud folder

sudo rm -rf /var/www/owncloud/

5. Extract Nextcloud 11.0.0 (please note that the tar ball doesn’t include a data folder or a config.php file)

sudo tar -xf nextcloud-11.0.0.tar.bz2 -C /var/www/

6. You now have a folder named nextcloud, I’m going to rename this folder to owncloud

sudo mv /var/www/nextcloud /var/www/owncloud

7. Move the config.php file and your data folder which you backed up in Step 3

sudo mv /opt/owncloud-install/config.php /var/www/owncloud/config/

sudo mv /opt/owncloud-install/data/ /var/www/owncloud/

8. Set the correct ownership for your Nextcloud instance (the files in the tar ball are owned by nobody)

sudo chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www/owncloud/

9. Start your webserver

sudo systemctl start apache2.service

10. Complete the upgrade to Nextcloud 11.0.0

sudo -u www-data php /var/www/owncloud/occ upgrade

Done!

Migrate from ownCloud 9.1.1 to Nextcloud 10.0.2

These instructions are based on the assumption that you have a working ownCloud (version 9.1.1) instance. To make the migration process easier I decided not to rename any existing ownCloud folders.

Some of the steps I document may not be necessary for a successful migration but they are the exact steps I used and they worked.

My server environment is as follows:

Operating System:		Debian 8.6 (jessie)
ownCloud version:		9.1.1
Webserver:			Apache 2.4.10
ownCloud install location:	/var/www/owncloud
ownCloud backup location:	/opt/owncloud-install

1. Download Nextcloud server version 10.0.2

wget https://download.nextcloud.com/server/releases/nextcloud-10.0.2.tar.bz2

2. Stop your webserver

sudo systemctl stop apache2.service

3. Backup (move) your config.php file and your data folder

sudo mv /var/www/owncloud/config/config.php /opt/owncloud-install/

sudo mv /var/www/owncloud/data /opt/owncloud-install/

4. Delete your ownCloud folder

sudo rm -rf /var/www/owncloud/

5. Extract Nextcloud 10.0.2 (please note that the tar ball doesn’t include a data folder or a config.php file)

sudo tar -xf nextcloud-10.0.2.tar.bz2 -C /var/www/

6. You now have a folder named nextcloud, I’m going to rename this folder to owncloud

sudo mv /var/www/nextcloud /var/www/owncloud

7. Move the config.php file and your data folder which you backed up in Step 3

sudo mv /opt/owncloud-install/config.php /var/www/owncloud/config/

sudo mv /opt/owncloud-install/data/ /var/www/owncloud/

8. Set the correct ownership for your Nextcloud instance (the files in the tar ball are owned by nobody)

sudo chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www/owncloud/

9. Start your webserver

sudo systemctl start apache2.service

10. Complete the migration/upgrade to Nextcloud 10.0.2

sudo -u www-data php /var/www/owncloud/occ upgrade

Done!

If you use the ownCloud desktop client to sync files between your ownCloud instance and your computer (mobile device) the good news is that there is no need to install the Nextcloud desktop client. Your existing ownCloud desktop client should keep working as normal after migrating to Nextcloud.

Learn more about Nextcloud

ownCloud 9

I’ve just recently setup a server running ownCloud 9. The OS of the server is Debian 8 and this is the installation guide I followed Run your own cloud: Installing OwnCloud 9 on Debian 8.

To have HTTPS running on my server I used the service provided by Let’s Encrypt.

The user interface is familiar and intuitive plus the functionality for sharing files, calendars, contacts, and bookmarks is very useful. I can also share this ownCloud instance with my family and friends by creating separate accounts for them.

I was able to configure Amazon S3 as a source of external storage. I’m also utilising the ownCloud desktop client. The desktop client syncs your ownCloud folders (you can choose which folders to sync) with your computer which makes it very convenient to access and update your ownCloud from your computer.

ownCloud website –https://owncloud.org/

MediaGoblin

I’ve been having a play with MediaGoblin and this software looks very promising.  If like me you feel uncomfortable with the amount of data you are sharing with 3rd parties e.g. Flickr, Dropbox, YouTube etc. then MediaGoblin like ownCloud could be a way forward.

I will admit that installing and getting MediaGoblin working isn’t straight forward but it’s not too hard.  I like the idea of sharing my media with friends, family and others without having to also share it with Google, Facebook and Dropbox etc. and of course without all of the advertisements that come along with that.

I’m using the most basic DigitalOcean droplet (512MB memory, 1 core, 20GB SSD) to host my MediaGoblin instance. For the Operating System I’m using Debian 8.

I used the following guides to install and get MediaGoblin working. The official MediaGoblin documentation is very good.

I didn’t install PostgreSQL as suggested in the documentation, I’ve stuck with the default SQLite database.

Here are some live MediaGoblin sites to give you some ideas.

https://wiki.mediagoblin.org/Live_instances

This is my MediaGoblin site:

https://media.bscable.info

Register with Goblin Refuge and start using MediaGoblin without having to install your own instance.