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ownCloud Infinite Scale

ownCloud is the best file sharing software I've found yet. It is extraordinarily clean and well "self contained". nextCloud is comparatively extremely bloated and requires a lot of setup and maintenance. The devs for this also seem to care a lot about the software and actively consider tradeoffs of various soltions. The "caveat" with this or other file sharing software of similar caliber is they need to implement their own filesystems, so without a driver/app you cannot directly access file data as you would hope to.

Server Installation

Download

Get the latest owncloud version from here: https://download.owncloud.com/ocis/ocis/stable

its an all in one binary that you can just run directly. The following block shows downloading it, setting it as executable, and symlinking it (easier to keep track of specific version while having a clean run command)

sudo wget -P /usr/local/bin https://download.owncloud.com/ocis/ocis/stable/7.1.3/ocis-7.1.3-linux-amd64
sudo chmod a+x /usr/local/bin/ocis-7.1.3-linux-amd64
sudo ln -s -f /usr/local/bin/ocis-7.1.3-linux-amd64 /usr/local/bin/ocis

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User Guide

Web UI is always accessible. Android and iPhone apps available.

Desktop Client

Desktop client download (Windows/Linux/Mac): https://owncloud.com/desktop-app/

Go through the setup welcome wagon like normal. Next we will go through wrangling the application.

There are two ways you can handle how your storage works on your desktop. With virtual files, or without.

Virtual Files

With virtual files you will be able to see and manage all the files in your storage regardless if they're actually downloaded or not.

You will see status icons on each folder/file if its not downloaded (blue cloud), downloading (blue cycle), or available (green check).

Individual files will download automatically if you try and open them, for example a pic/image.

You can decide to download something, or remove it locally by right clicking the file/folder and selecting "always keep on device" to force download it, or "free up space" to remove it locally.

HERE IS THE TRICK You need to keep in mind that deleting something normally, i.e. not clicking "free up space", will delete the folder/file on the cloud server too, and every single client that synchronizes to it.

Context menu free up space

Without Virtual Files

If you want a more explicit approach you can disable virtual files by performing the following operation in the client UI:

Disable virtual file support

Now everything will be downloaded on your desktop for real, which can ruin the point of a giant cloud storage! To stop this happening, you can de-select files/folders from downloading/synchronizing. You'll see that once you disable virtual files, you now get this expanded menu of your data store folder in the app's UI:

Disabled virtual file support

Android App

Download: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.owncloud.android&hl=en_US

Autosync

The photo/video auto sync in the ownCloud android app is completely broken. I highly recommend this instead: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.ttxapps.autosync

It costs $10 (14 day trial) but you get some goodies beyond just working auto sync. You can set some very fancy rules for file synchronization such as two-way, mirroring, upload-then-delete (with time specification) etc. It is a very nice app with a lot of polish (battery exclusion so files always upload), networking rules, it has it all.