android

After an earlier failed attempt at owncloud 4 I’m prety happy with OC 5 now and succesfully sync contacts, calendars and some files in between a crunchbang netbook, a xubuntu notebook and my Android phone:

Sync Contacts

• Thunderbird: Sogo Connector + »more functions for address book« (optional)
• Android: CardDAV

Sync Calendar

• Thunderbird: Sogo Connector + Lightning
• Android: CalDAV

Desktop Client

• Setting it up:
  Somehow it only worked as root, chown did the trick (see here):
  sudo chown -Rc USER:USER /home/USER/.local/share/data  
• Syncing
  Syncing works pretty well – but unfortunately not well enough. I do like that one can connect random folders to sync (for example a local folder »Documents« may be called »docs« on OC). What I like not so much is that you can only run two-way-sync. There is no option »sync only from server to machine« or »sync only from machine to server«. It would be very helpful as I use Unison to sync very large parts of my hard drives among several machines – much more then I want or need in OC. Yesterday I lost some data and I think it was due to owncloud got confused with two machines syncing to it in addition to syncing directly in between each other.
• Android
  The oc-app allows syncing to the phone on a file-by-file basis, which is neat. It also adds an owncloud-option to the share-menu. What I find really convenient though is that owncloud allows es-file-explorer to connect.

Sharing Files

• needed tweaking

Further tutorials and resources I used

• Meinnoteblog
• Points of Interest
• SoGo
• Owncloud on Webdav and this support page (very slow at the moment)
• Jamie Flarity: Make Webdav persist in Nautilus
• Techdirt has a review of various solutions, including a selfhosted gmail style email – owncloud is missing though.

[article started in August 2012; final, rewritten version from January 2014]