Install Tonido on a Debian (32 bit) Sunday, 21 August 2011 22:26 Written by Stuart Mathews

I’m going to show you how to install Tonido on a Debian LInux Server. To be honest we don’t really need to worry about the version of debian as this installation routine is pretty generic but to be on the safe side, I’ve tested it on Debian Lenny.

First we need to download the server side software that will provide you with a nice web ui for managing your files and stuff in ‘the cloud’ – the cloud being your debian server. Head over to http://www.tonido.com and grab a copy:

This is what their website looks like on the doanload page, slect the linux download and when its downloaded make sure you copy it to your linux server.

Now once its on your linux box install it:

Once the dpkg command is finished, you should start it up from /usr/local/tonido/ like this: (by the way, don’t be root when you do this, be a regular user)

Once you’ve successfully started it, you can verify that its started by seeing that its listening on the local port 10001. All you really need to do now is browse to http://localhost:10001 to see the first signs of the web ui. Now, we want this web ui to be there out on the internet, not just accessible via localhost:10001, so you have two options:

1. Open your firewall on your linux server and open port 10001 (i dont like this solution because its touching my ports – i dont like anyone touching my ports…even me
2. Create a virtual host in Apache and make it perform a reverse proxy on http://localhost:10001 and then bind that to an external url. I’ve decided to do with this and the url I’ll be using to get to http://localhost :10001 is http://cloud.stuartmathews.com – I’ll show you how to do this later…

Right, so the first thing to notice is that a tonido/ directory exists now in your home folder, or the user’s folder that  ran tonido.sh start. Go and have a look:

See that tonido folder, thats going to have all tonidos configuation in it and it will also contain other stuff that you’ll need to modify next.

Ok moving along now, we’ll need to modify some files in that foler, so go into it and you’ll see these contents:

Now go into the data folder… and edit the file called configex.xml:

You’ll need to change “RemoteAdmin” option value which be default is 0. Changeit to 1

Now locate the value of “WebAccess” and set it from 0 to 1

Alright, in order for tonido to recognise these changes we’ve made – stop it and then start it again:

Ok now we want to see our handy work. We know that Tonido is running on the localhost on port 10001 and we want to expose that to the internet without opening port 10001 to the world. I’ve done this by using apache and creating a virtual host that will forward requests from cloud.stuartmathews.com to http://lcoalhost:10001 and back again. Here is my configuration:

However you get to http://localhost:10001 you’ll see this web ui as the result of our work thus far:

What we need to do is create an account.

Now, this account is a local account BUT the name of the account is sent to tonido.com.

What that means is while all your data is stored on your linux box, your user name or as they like to call it, your “Tonido ID” is known to them. Why exactly this is done I dont know but the consequence is that you must have a unique account name and they’ll tell you if you’ve got an account name that they’ve already got registered..

From what I can deduce the account name allows tonido.com to provide you with a few additional services(of which I’m not too  sure). If you want to get going, fill in these detail and press the create button and you’ll be instantly transported into your own personal cloud(via the web interface..)

Creating an account and logging you in.

Right, we’re in. This is the portal into managin your cloud. You can browse files on your server, upload files, stream mp3, townload torrents(via the installable extension applications) and pretty much view images also. The other great feature is being able to share files with people…

You can browse files in your cloud/server:

You can upload files.

PS: if your upload button doesn’t work properly try pressing down shift and then click on the upload button..

Here you can install additional applications that make your cloud do more stuff – like downloading torrents on your behalf, taking notes etc…

All you need to do is go to applications and click install:

Here I’ve just installed the torrent application:

Now need to activate it by clicking on the green plus sign

Now we can download torrents into our cloud!

Another cool feature is searching the cloud in one easy step – click on search and you get google-style search in your cloud.

When browsing the files on the cloud, you can change your view from “list” to “gallery”(show image previews) and “music”(shows media player and music files in directory)

Once you’re done, logout and you’ll be presented with this screen next time you want to login. Note the account name is shown.

To make sure tonido starts up with your server, edit the /etc/rc.local file:

Tell it to run tonido as you(my user name is stuart)

And that pretty much sums it up for me. I’m not a great supported of the cloud hype and speculation but i can definetly see some use in having a easy way to access and upload files to my server.