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Thursday, 1 October, 2009

Effective Usage: Wuala on Ubuntu

This post is written by guest blogger Juri Hudolejev. Having graduated from Tallinn University of Technologies with a MSc in Computer Systems Engineering, he is currently working as Java developer in the field of cryptographic timestamps. He's a F/OSS enthusiast, and permanently interested in new technologies.

The following post describes how to get the Wuala client running on an Ubuntu machine. These steps have been tested on Ubuntu 9.04 Jaunty and should apply to any recent version of Ubuntu, however, this tutorial could also be helpful for other Linux distributions with various graphical desktop environments.

This tutorial is focused on GUI. For purely command-line how-to, read about running Wuala on a Debian-based server.

apt://-links work only in Firefox with apturl installed.

0. Installing Java Runtime

The Wuala client requires Java Runtime. Sun Java 6 is recommended, but OpenJRE or Sun Java 5 should also be OK.

Click apt://sun-java6-jre, or run:
sudo apt-get install sun-java6-jre

1. Get the Wuala client

Visit the Download section and follow the link Wuala for Linux, or use the direct link. You will get file named wuala.tar.gz. Open it and unpack its contents to ~/wuala, say, /home/elvis/wuala. This is where your Wuala installation will reside, including storage you'll possibly decide to trade.

Alternatively, you can run this:

cd ~

wget http://wuala.com/files/wuala.tar.gz

tar -xzf wuala.tar.gz

2. Create an account

Go to ~/wuala and start loader.jar (right-click, 'Open with Java Runtime'). On first run, the Wuala client creates all needed infrastructure in its folder, loads updates and proposes you to create an account if you don't have one:

Click 'Create your own free account' and fill in the required fields.

A promo code is optional. You've got one if you were invited, this will add extra 1GB to your initial storage, and the one who has posted an invite will also get extra 512MB (if he's a pro user). If you have no promo code, you will still get 1GB to start with.

After the account is created, the Wuala main window will open. Drag some files there, and while they are being uploaded, let's create a startup entry.

3. Add Wuala to startup

In the main menu, select 'System', 'Preferences', 'Startup Applications', click 'Add' to create startup entry. Name and comment may be whatever sensible strings you want, command should be bash /home/elvis/wuala/wuala -silent (or whatever your username is). -silent key will prevent Wuala client from opening its window on startup:

Click 'Save', then 'Close'. Now on your next login, Wuala will start and red 'W'-icon will appear in system tray. To stop Wuala, right-click that tray icon and hit 'exit'.

If you are happy with the Wuala Java client, stop here. If you want Wuala to be easily accessible from command line or integrate Wuala more tightly with your file system, there is some more magic to be invoked.

[optional] 4. Create shortcut for command line

In order to call Wuala from console with one single command, the shortcut to the launcher should be added to path. There are several possible locations for this script to reside, here the user's home folder is chosen.

If you don't have a ~/bin folder, create one. This is where the Wuala launcher script will be called from.

With you favourite text editor create file named ~/bin/wuala with the following contents:

#!/bin/bash
# Wuala loader

bash ~/wuala/wuala "$@"

It will start the Wuala client, namely calling ~/wuala/wuala script that will in turn fire up the Java virtual machine and call loader2.jar. If an instance of the Wuala client is running already, parameters of ~/bin/wuala will be passed to it, for example, wuala help will just print all available options that Wuala loader would accept.

Now make sure the launcher is executable:

chmod +x ~/bin/wuala

Or if you prefer the GUI-way, right-click, 'Properties', 'Permissions', and check 'Allow executing file as program'.

Done. You can try it out by opening terminal and typing

wuala

It should open the Wuala main window. You can now also start Wuala from 'Run Application' dialog (Alt+F2).

[optional] 5. Install NFS and portmap

First of all, have a look at ~/wuala/readme.txt if you haven't done it yet. Well, always read ReadMe-s ;-)

Install portmap and nfs-common -- click apt://portmap,nfs-common or run:

sudo apt-get install portmap nfs-common

Backup existing /etc/fstab so you can get revert it if something goes wrong, then modify it:

sudo cp /etc/fstab /etc/fstab.bak

sudo nano /etc/fstab

Add the following line to the end of the file (should be one line, better if you to copy it directly from ~/wuala/readme.txt; anyway, don't forget to put you real user name):

localhost:/wuala /home/elvis/wuala/direct nfs
defaults,users,noauto,rsize=8192,wsize=8192,timeo=60,acregmin=10,noac,intr,nolock,soft

NFS connections from localhost only will be accepted. You may need to restart Wuala for changes to make effect.

Now go to ~/wuala/direct. You should see three folders: myfiles, myfriends and mygroups. Names are pretty self-explaining, aren't they? ;-)

We're finished. Enjoy!