How to Install Pydio File Manager on Vesta CP

Comes with no built-in File Manager, Vesta CP is absolutely a great free Control Panel for your VPS allowing you to install all necessary software (Apache, Nginx, PHP5, FTP, MySQL, DNS, etc) to make your VPS ready-to-use for hosting websites. The only way you can upload, organize and manage your files on your server is only via FTP. For some people who are already familiar with cPanel (which is not free control panel), they may prefer to use web based file manager than using FTP client.

With that issue in mind, so here it is I share a nice simple guide with screenshot pics on how to install free web-based File Explorer called Pydio on a VPS running Vesta CP. I’ll try to make this tutorial as clear as possible so you can follow each step confidently because I put screenshot pic on each step.

About Pydio: Formerly known as AjaXplorer, it is an Open Source file manager with a bunch of advanced features like ability to act as file sharing platform. While AjaXplorer itself has been ported for zPanel as a module, Vesta CP users need to install it manually.

Prerequisites

1. Ability to use Putty or Terminal or similar SSH client app
2. Basic knowledge about common Linux command.
3. A VPS or Dedi with Vesta CP installed. Read:
   • How to install Vesta CP on CentOS
   • How to add new website on Vesta CP

p.s: This guide is done on CentOS 6.5 x86_64 minimal hosted by DigitalOcean, my favorite playground server.

How to Install

Step 1 – Login to your server as root or as a user with root privilege (sudo) via SSH.

Step 2 – Next, define or create a public directory where you can put all Pydio files so you can access it via internet on your browser.

mkdir -p /var/www/pydio

Step 3 – Now download Pydio files to that directory but you need to firstly check Pydio’s official download page to check its latest stable version available. In my case it is Pydio v5.2.3. Click on the download link and wait till a download dialog box appears then copy the download url (because you don’t have to download it locally):

Step 4 – Go to Pydio directory and use wget to grab the file. In my case it is:

cd /var/www/pydio
wget http://softlayer-sng.dl.sourceforge.net/project/ajaxplorer/pydio/stable-channel/5.2.3/pydio-core-5.2.3.zip

Step 5 – Now extract the Pydio package using simple unzip command:

unzip pydio-core-[version-number].zip

## example of mine
unzip pydio-core-5.2.3.zip

Step 6 – You’ll now have one .zip file and one folder in that directory. Now get in the newly extracted folder and move all the files and folders up:

cd pydio-core-5.2.3
(shopt -s dotglob; mv -- * ..)

Once done, you can go back to upper directory and delete the pydio-core-[version-number] directory

cd ..
rmdir pydio-core-5.2.3

Step 7 – Now you need to chown the directory to your VestaCP username (in my case is admin):

chown -R admin:admin /var/www/pydio

Step 8 – In order for Pydio can be accessible via Internet, you have to firstly add Virtual Hosts entry (Apache .conf) which in Vesta CP can be done by editing httpd.conf:

nano /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf

then scroll down the configuration file to the bottom part and add these:

Alias /pydio /var/www/pydio

<Directory "/var/www/pydio">
        Options FollowSymLinks
        AllowOverride Limit FileInfo
        Order allow,deny
        Allow from all
  	php_value error_reporting 2
</Directory>

Save it and exit (in Nano it is Control+O then Control+X):

Step 9 – Now restart Apache:

service httpd restart

Step 10 – Open up your favorite web browser and access Pydio for the very first time either using your domain.tld/pydio or ip-address/pydio:

http://domain.tld/pydio

http://xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx/pydio

You’ll then see Pydio Diagnostic Tool. Check it and you should find everything is OK. Few warning messages are fine. Next, simply click the “Click here to continue to Pydio” link. That page will appears once and I’m sorry I forgot to take screenshot and the page has been redirected to this one:

Configure Pydio

Step 11 – In the next page, click the “Start Wizard” link:

Step 12 – Next, you’ll be asked for series of question to setup your Pydio installation including Admin login and password:

Step 13 – Next, click on Global Options and adjust as necessary. I’ll leave it as it is for now.

Step 14 – Now go ahead and click the “Configurations Storage”. Choose Database in Storage Type and fill all necessary fields (you can firstly login to Vesta CP admin page and create new database and database user):

Click the “Try connecting to the database” button and you should see connexion established message.

Step 15 – You can also add some users by clicking “Add some users”:

Step 16 – Once done, click the Install Pydio Now and you should see the success message:

Step 17 – You’ll then redirected automatically to the login page:

Step 18 – In your first login, you’ll be asked to select a workspace:

You can select Settings to adjust few settings.

Step 19 – Create your very first Workspace, a core feature which can be seen as a virtual drive mounted to access a set of data. You can read the complete article about what is it and how to set it up here.

That’s it for now and I’m so sorry if the end of this tutorial may not be too satisfying because the whole configuration steps will be too long if I put all in one page. Hence I simply link to its official documentation page (Step 19 above).