Configuration Notes & Tips

SELinux

See SELinux Configuration for a suggested configuration for SELinux-enabled distributions such as Fedora and CentOS.

php.ini

Several core PHP settings have to be configured correctly, otherwise ownCloud may not work properly. Known settings causing issues are listed here. Please note that there might be other settings causing unwanted behaviours. In general it is recommended to keep the php.ini at their defaults.

session.auto_start && enable_post_data_reading

Ensure that session.auto_start is set to 0 or Off and enable_post_data_reading to 1 or On in your configuration. If not, you may have issues logging in to ownCloud via the WebUI, where you see the error: “Access denied. CSRF check failed”.

session.save_path

In addition to setting session.auto_start and enable_post_data_reading correctly, ensure that, if session.save_handler is set to files, that session.save_path is set to a path on the filesystem which only the web server process (or process which PHP is running as) can read from and write to.

This is especially important if your ownCloud installation is using a shared-hosting arrangement. In these situations, session poisoning can occur if all of the session files are stored in the same location. Session poisoning is where one web application can manipulate data in the $_SESSION superglobal array of another.

When this happens, the original application has no way of knowing that this corruption has occurred and may not treat the data with any sense of suspicion. You can read through a thorough discussion of local session poisoning if you’d like to know more.

suhosin.session.cryptkey

When suhosin.session.cryptkey is enabled, session data will be transparently encrypted. If enabled, there is less of a concern in storing application session files in the same location, as discussed in session.save_path. Ideally, however, session files for each application should always be stored in a location specific to that application, and never stored collectively with any other.

Note

This is only relevant if you’re using PHP 5.x.

post_max_size

Please ensure that you have post_max_size configured with at least the minimum amount of memory for use with ownCloud, which is 512 MB.

Important

Please be careful when you set this value if you use the byte value shortcut as it is very specific. Use K for kilobyte, M for megabyte and G for gigabyte. KB, MB, and GB do not work!

Note

Keep in mind that changes to php.ini may have to be configured in more than one ini file. This can be the case, for example, for the date.timezone setting.

php.ini - Used by the Web server

  /etc/php5/apache2/php.ini
or
  /etc/php5/fpm/php.ini
or ...

php.ini - used by the php-cli and so by ownCloud CRON jobs

/etc/php5/cli/php.ini

PHP-FPM

System Environment Variables

When you are using php-fpm, system environment variables like PATH, TMP or others are not automatically populated in the same way as when using php-cli. A PHP call like getenv('PATH'); can therefore return an empty result. So you may need to manually configure environment variables in the appropriate php-fpm ini/config file.

Here are some example root paths for these ini/config files:

Ubuntu/Mint CentOS/Red Hat/Fedora
/etc/php5/fpm/ /etc/php-fpm.d/

In both examples, the ini/config file is called www.conf, and depending on the distribution or customizations which you have made, it may be in a sub-directory.

Usually, you will find some or all of the environment variables already in the file, but commented out like this:

;env[HOSTNAME] = $HOSTNAME
;env[PATH] = /usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin
;env[TMP] = /tmp
;env[TMPDIR] = /tmp
;env[TEMP] = /tmp

Uncomment the appropriate existing entries. Then run printenv PATH to confirm your paths, for example:

$ printenv PATH
/home/user/bin:/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:
/sbin:/bin:/

If any of your system environment variables are not present in the file then you must add them.

When you are using shared hosting or a control panel to manage your ownCloud virtual machine or server, the configuration files are almost certain to be located somewhere else, for security and flexibility reasons, so check your documentation for the correct locations.

Please keep in mind that it is possible to create different settings for php-cli and php-fpm, and for different domains and Web sites. The best way to check your settings is with PHP Version and Information.

Maximum Upload Size

If you want to increase the maximum upload size, you will also have to modify your php-fpm configuration and increase the upload_max_filesize and post_max_size values. You will need to restart php5-fpm and your HTTP server in order for these changes to be applied.

.htaccess Notes for Apache

ownCloud comes with its own owncloud/.htaccess file. Because php-fpm can’t read PHP settings in .htaccess these settings and permissions must be set in the owncloud/.user.ini file.

No basic authentication headers were found

This error is shown in your data/owncloud.log file. Some Apache modules like mod_fastcgi, mod_fcgid or mod_proxy_fcgi are not passing the needed authentication headers to PHP and so the login to ownCloud via WebDAV, CalDAV and CardDAV clients is failing. Information on how to correctly configure your environment can be found in the forums but we generally recommend against the use of these modules and recommend mod_php instead.