Wednesday, 18 March, 2009
Effective Usage: Running Wuala on a Debian-based server
There is a simple and quick possibility to turn unused storage of your linux-based home- or nas-server into Wuala online storage. The only thing you have to do is to run Wuala from the command line and configure it to trade your unused gigabytes.
First of all you need a Debian-based linux server like Ubuntu server, which is connected to the internet. You must have rights to access this server (via ssh or directly), to add users and to configure portforwarding on your router if it isn't fully UPnP-enabled.
WUALA INSTALLATION:
WUALA CONFIGURATION:
Further information:
About the author
I'm a German student and freelancer, who's currently studying electrical engineering at the University of Karlsruhe. As i'm crazy about Ubuntu and of course Wuala :-P, i wrote this step by step guide to show you the wonderful and really useful features of Wuala's command line. :) You can find me either at wuala.com/defcon or at patrickleibold.de.
First of all you need a Debian-based linux server like Ubuntu server, which is connected to the internet. You must have rights to access this server (via ssh or directly), to add users and to configure portforwarding on your router if it isn't fully UPnP-enabled.
WUALA INSTALLATION:
- To run Wuala you have to install the following packages: wget, screen and of course sun-java6-jre:
user@server:~$ sudo apt-get install wget screen sun-java6-jre - Add a new user 'wuala' and set up a password for it:
user@server:~$ sudo adduser wuala - Terminate your current session and log in with the new user 'wuala'.
- Download the latest version of Wuala directly from wuala.com:
wuala@server:~$ wget http://www.wuala.com/files/wuala.tar.gz - Unzip the tar.gz archive to your home directory:
wuala@server:~$ tar xfz wuala.tar.gz - Change to the unzipped directory 'wuala':
wuala@server:~$ cd wuala - Start Wuala in a new screen session. It's important that you use the wualacmd script for command line usage!
wuala@server:~/wuala$ screen /home/wuala/wuala/wualacmd - After Wuala update is finished, detach the screen session with [Ctrl]+[A]+[D]. Wuala is now running as a background process.
- Now you are able to send commands to this background instance of Wuala and start configuring!
WUALA CONFIGURATION:
- To use Wuala via command line, make sure that you've changed to the directory '/home/wuala/wuala'. To execute a command use the following syntax:
wuala@server:~/wuala$ ./wuala [command] - The command 'help' will list all available commands:
wuala@server:~/wuala$ ./wuala help
These commands are currently supported:
--help, -help, benchmark, connectionCheck, connectionInfo, download, exit, feedback, help, list, login, logout, ping, printStackTraces, restart, setBindAddress, setDataPath, setInrate, setOutrate, setPort, setRestartOnUpdate, setSuperNodeAllowed, setTempPath, setTradingLimit, showPaths, showQuota, showSettings, showStatus, shutdown, startTrading, stopTrading, trade, tradeStats, undoSetDataPath, upload, version - To prepare your server for trading, check the connection to the wuala network:
wuala@server:~/wuala$ ./wuala connectionCheck
If you don't have a UPnP-enabled router you have to configure portforwarding manually. The 'connectionCheck' command should give you the correct port. - If the connection is properly working, log in to your Wuala account:
wuala@server:~/wuala$ ./wuala login [username] [password] - To start trading, simply use the 'startTrading' command:
wuala@server:~/wuala$ ./wuala startTrading - If you don't want to trade up to 100 GB (default value) of your server storage you can change this setting to XY GB:
wuala@server:~/wuala$ ./wuala setTradingLimit XY - Furthermore you should enable restart after update:
wuala@server:~/wuala$ ./wuala setRestartOnUpdate true - To check online time and earned gigabytes, use the 'tradeStats' command:
wuala@server:~/wuala$ ./wuala tradeStats - Finally you can check your current status using 'showStatus' or for detailed information 'connectionInfo':
wuala@server:~/wuala$ ./wuala showStatus
wuala@server:~/wuala$ ./wuala connectionInfo - You can now terminate your session, Wuala is still running as a detached screen process in background. The next time you log in to your server, simply execute commands as described in step 1 of the Wuala configuration tutorial.
Further information:
- If you restart your server you have to start Wuala again as described in step 7 of the Wuala installation tutorial or you should add this procedure to your boot script. Attention! Wuala will change the port used for trading! You also have to change it in your router configuration!
- If you want to use Wuala with your virtual private server, make sure that you have enough memory to run java! Many virtual private servers don't support such memory intensive applications like the java runtime!
About the author
I'm a German student and freelancer, who's currently studying electrical engineering at the University of Karlsruhe. As i'm crazy about Ubuntu and of course Wuala :-P, i wrote this step by step guide to show you the wonderful and really useful features of Wuala's command line. :) You can find me either at wuala.com/defcon or at patrickleibold.de.
Post Comments
Is there any difference between wualacmd and wuala -nogui? Nice guide, been using much the same method for some headless servers here.
No, there is no difference between wualacmd and wuala -nogui. The wualacmd-script simply executes wuala -nogui internally. ;-)
"Paket sun-java6-jre ist nicht verfügbar, blablabla" - ???
Vermutlich müsste ich noch andere Quellen einbinden oder so - welche denn?
I followed the tutorial and everything seems to work fine, except that, after one week, my average bandwidth utilization is 0%, locally stored data are 0B and I haven't earned any storage. On the other hand, the average online time is 26% and the current limit is set to 100G. Any clue to make me really earn storage?
Thanks for you help.
@Sebastien: The systems waits some time until it starts putting data on your storage node. However, you should have already earned some storage even if your locally sotred data is still zero.
I wrote a small init.d script to start wuala atomaticaly under Debian/Ubuntu. It can be found here:
http://pascal.nextrem.ch/2009/10/20/wuala-init-d-script/
@pascal
Great! Thanks a lot!
This is a good Dropbox alternative with enough space for my files, without having to locate your files on third party servers, to my opinion better collaboration features, and a better web access (one disadvantage is you need to have installed Java). I gave iFolder a try as well (Gigatribe doesn't have a Linux version yet), and couldn't get the server to install on Ubuntu Linux. Another
Running on a PowerBook G4 550Mhz powerpc with Ubuntu 9.04 server and kaffe for java since ppc isn't supported by sun.
Using the ./wuala cmd, wuala tried to start multiple instances and complained about the bound sockets that the other instance was using but works fine if you leave out screen and just run this:
java -ea -Xmx256m -jar ./loader2.jar -installed -nogui &
hello!
which is the difference between "exit" and "shutdown" commands?
thanks!
Hey!
One more question:
how do I find out what kind of connection type I have when using the cmd version (Connection type A, B,...)?
Thanks!
Ich habe eine Fehlerausgabe in der Bash:
Eingabe:
wuala:@xxxxx:~/ screen /home/wuala/wuala/wualacmd
Ausgabe:
Cannot exec '/home/wuala/wuala/wualacmd': Permission denied
Habe exemplarisch die Reihenfolge abgearbeitet und hänge bei Wuala Installation Nr: 7.
Habs gelöst!
mit dem Befehl
chmod +x wuala
chmod +x wualacmd
und mit ./wualacmd gestartet
der Versuch hat geklappt!
How to download files via console? I wanna download files from groups. But ./wuala download Group/pathtofile/filename . does not work for me...
The easiest and mentioned way to transfers files without gui is to mount the WualaDrive and do it herein. This is usually done automatically.
Please note that the nogui version without mounted WualaDrive is conceived mainly for trading.
I set up Wuala exactly as described above. Wuala now is started for the user wuala and the WualaDrive is mounted and contains my files. Good.
But: Normally I am logged in as another user. If I cd to /home/wuala/wuala I can not access the WualaDrive. If I ls -l the directory I get the following:
d????????? ? ? ? ? ? WualaDrive
How can I
Hello Holger,
it is not possible to access the Wuala drive when Wuala ist started with a different unix-user. Please install wuala in your usual userhome and run it with your usual userrights when you want to access the WualaDrive.
Hi,
ich habe das Problem, dass sich Wuala immer mal wieder schließt und sich nicht mehr startet. Ich muss es immer wieder von Hand starten.
Möglicherweise nach einem Update. Gibt's dazu eine Lösung?
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