help needed: owncloud contacts on vmware with IIS

[superboyac]

OK, I don't know much about this stuff.  I'm testing out owncloud on vmware as a contacts/calendar syncing solution.

host machine: win7 x64
vmware machine: win7 x64, network is bridged
owncloud v6, installed in AMPPS
IIS is enabled on the virtual machine
AMPPS Apache had a conflict with port 80, so IIS is enabled on port 8080

everything works fine in the virtual machine.  On the host machine, i can login to owncloud, but the contacts gives an error "failed loading groups" and basically doesn't work, contacts don't show up and it hangs.

It's not clear to me from google searches what the issue or resolution is, so I'm turning to you guys here.

[Stoic Joker]

Why are you trying to run both Apache and IIS??

[40hz]

Why are you trying to run both Apache and IIS??

This.

[superboyac]

Is that bad?  lol.  I don't know!

Well, I'll explain...i was only running apache initially, but it wouldn't work outside the vm.  then i read i need to enable iis for owncloud in windows, so i did.  Then it worked outside the vm, but with that error.  Also, on my android phone, i can use owncloud outside the vm with no errors!  i don't get it.

i guess i can forget the vm and just try owncloud on my main machine with ampps.  without iis i suppose.

[Shades]

The error description is not too clear. Are you very sure nothing else is blocking the port(s) required by Owncloud/IIS?

You might want to use NAT networking instead of bridged networking. Networking can be fidgety sometimes when working with VMWare or any other virtualization software for that matter.

Which VMWare software are you using? Player? Workstation? There are some networking limitations in the Player software that could have an effect as well. Especially when you are using 192.168.x.x networking on your normal host/LAN and 10.0.x.x networking in VMWare/VirtualBox/etc.

In that case it could help to disable bridging and use the NAT functionality of VMWare to handle the network traffic between these different type of networks.

[Stoic Joker]

You might want to use NAT networking instead of bridged networking. Networking can be fidgety sometimes when working with VMWare or any other virtualization software for that matter.

Really? Granted I'm not that familiar with VMware as I've always used the MS (Virtual PC/Hyper-V) offering. But for a cursory search it appears that VMware's "bridged networking" is equivalent to Hyper-V's "Shared Virtual Switch", which I've used extensively. Our productions systems have 20 virtual servers running on a virtual switch, some of which have public IPs and some are behind the router's NAT ...(yes, that is two different virtual switched)... and I've never had a problem with any of it.

Now granted this could be a VMware quirk I'm unaware of (I am honestly curious about this), but it seems to me - from a networking standpoint - that having the route to a hosted service double NAT'ed would be much more problematic to maintain.

The error description is not too clear. Are you very sure nothing else is blocking the port(s) required by Owncloud/IIS?

I was actually headed here myself being that 8080 probably is not allowed by the Windows firewall by default. Also if for some reason they have a port hardcoded somewhere in the code it could be failing to find itself for that functionality. Page refresh and a netstat -n on the server might bring that to light.


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@SuperboyAC - Please keep in mind that anything I say in here going forward will be tainted by my prejudicial assertion that Apache does not belong on Windows. Having spent the last decade as an IIS admin, I just wanted to be fair coming out of the gate in case anyone ends up geting that impression later on in the thread.

[skwire]

You might want to use NAT networking instead of bridged networking. Networking can be fidgety sometimes when working with VMWare or any other virtualization software for that matter.

Really? Granted I'm not that familiar with VMware as I've always used the MS (Virtual PC/Hyper-V) offering. But for a cursory search it appears that VMware's "bridged networking" is equivalent to Hyper-V's "Shared Virtual Switch", which I've used extensively.

Agreed.  I use VMs extensively as well and ALWAYS choose bridged networking over the NAT options.

[40hz]

Nirsoft's CurrPorts utility can also be handy for rooting out port issues.

Grab a copy here

[Shades]

When you use another PC to access the host with VMWare guest bridging works best. With the Workstation product so much more is possible than with Player, with regards to networking.  

I recently had to do a test with setting up a Domino/Lotus Notes and that system wouldn't work properly using the Bridged networking features of VirtualBox (my software of choice). But enabling NAT solved that. That made me realize 2 things. First: never, ever (!) use use Domino / Lotus Notes. And second, switching from a networking feature set only took a reboot and would have saved me an hour puzzling why Domino/Lotus Notes couldn't be accessed.

This might be a peculiarity of the VirtualBox software and not even occur in VMWare/Hyper-V. Bridging is the default option to use, I am completely onboard with that, I just wanted to mention that a simple switch between networking features helped me to get Domino / Notes going.

[superboyac]

OK, so I'm back to trying this out.  This time I used the owncloud-bitnami pre-packaged vmware file.  So I'm no longer installing it myself on a windows OS, I'm just launching that bitnami server directly.

i still can't get the freaking contacts part of owncloud to work, and it's the only part i'm interested in!  Argh.  If I go to contacts, it says "Server error! Please inform your administrator".  I have no idea what to do.  I had this problem on the windows setup earlier, and I had to do some things with webdav and mysql.  It worked for like a few minutes, then AMPSS stopped being able to start mysql, which is why I'm giving this bitnami a try.  But same issue.

I can't believe how many hours I've spent trying to get control over contact syncing in recent months.  Every single solution for trying to keep your contacts in your control (not on someone's cloud) has proved to be an immense pain in the butt.

[superboyac]

I think I'm starting to understand the issue.  Check out this thread, which is my problem exactly:
http://forum.owncloud.org/viewtopic.php?f=26&t=18623

the final response:

Hi,

i don't think that any user in here can fix/solve this underlaying issue.

Call me a conspiracist, but I believe the problem may be that this is intentionally done to have users pay for the enterprise version of owncloud.  In the enterprise version they say:

This appliance is a fully prepared OVA file containing the ownCloud 7.0 Enterprise Edition virtual image, and the additional software you need to get you up and running on ownCloud in minutes – including ownCloud 7 Enterprise Edition, Apache2, PHP and MySQL. Get started in no time providing a complete ownCloud environment, fully setup and ready to go!

The bolded is exactly my problem.  i thought the bitnami download would have taken care of that, but it seems not.  I have no idea how to fix this, I just want owncloud working on my local intranet, nothing else is needed.  i thought the mysql and apache bit would have been included with bitnami, but perhaps not.  The response above is vague enough where it seems there is something like this going on.

[4wd]

I'm running ownCloud 7, (the community edition), on a VPS and it doesn't cause any errors if I go to Contacts, just says I don't have any and would I like to add some.

There's also Turnkey ownCloud if you want to try a bootable ISO or a different VM implementation, (older version of ownCloud though).

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Another alternative for you, no installation required.

Download this: USBWebserver8.6 + ownCloud ~49MB (~160MB when extracted)  It's on my ownCloud server.

Extract to a flash drive, (make it a fast one), or an empty folder, run usbwebserver.exe, when the interface comes up, choose your language, and then click the Localhost button.



It will open the home page of USBWebserver in your browser, eg.



Change the address adding owncloud to the end, hit Enter, the ownCloud setup page will open:



Fill in a username and password for the Administrator,  then click the Finish Setup button.

A NOTE HERE: The database that the setup creates is absolute addressed.  This means that if you used a flash drive and you plug it into another computer, make sure it has the same drive letter assigned to it as it had when the ownCloud setup ran.

All being well, you'll end up with this:



Here's Contacts and Calendar:




NOTE: You'll need to open the firewall, (Private domain is OK for local testing), for both USBWebserver and MySQL.  If you want to see it from outside your network, just open the public port for USBWebserver.

Feel free to call me names if it doesn't work  

PS. I'd recommend trying it on a computer that you haven't been screwing with Apache, MySQL, PHP, and ownCloud on first.  It should be OK, but why take chances  

This community announcement was brought to you by:
USBWebserver - For when you absolutely need a working webserver by yesterday.
ownCloud       - For when you need your own cloud service by the day after yesterday.

[Stoic Joker]

Just out of curiosity, are you using only a few test contacts? Or did you toss the entire phone book at it out of the gate? It's possible a corrupt entry - or the massive size of you legendary contacts list - may be causing the issue.

[superboyac]

Just out of curiosity, are you using only a few test contacts? Or did you toss the entire phone book at it out of the gate? It's possible a corrupt entry - or the massive size of you legendary contacts list - may be causing the issue.

Good question.  I definitely have had issues with corrupt cards, but I have and am able to fix them with various tools now.  But that's not the problem, I'm almost sure of it.  It's the mysql, or apache issue (or something along those lines).

4wd!  Thanks for that advice.  I will try this tonight.  It looks very similar to AMPSS, which initially worked, but then had apache/mysql issues that couldn't be fixed.

I am also going to try the apple contacts server implementation, which may work.  The apple route has worked previously when I was struggling with not losing the contact photos of my addressbooks.

[4wd]

No problem, let me know if it doesn't work and I can always set up an account on my ownCloud server if you want to do some testing with it.