Cloud storage

The University of Vienna offers a cloud storage called u:cloud with 50 GB of storage for University employees. For general information and terms of use see zid.univie.ac.at/en/ucloud.

Since this service is provided by the University, you need your u:account for accessing it.

By the university's policy, you should not use Dropbox or other cloud storage services for work related data. However, sometimes this is unavoidable, so see below for more information.

Access via browser

The easiest way to use u:cloud is to open a web browser and navigate to ucloud.univie.ac.at. After logging in with your u:account you have direct access to all your cloud-stored files. You can create and delete files, share data with collaborators etc. via an easy to use graphical interface.

Access via managed clients

• For managed Windows clients, the u:cloud client is installed per default. Please start it via the Windows menu.
• On managed Linux clients, the cloud software already comes pre-installed. Please enter ucloud in a terminal or start it via the graphical menu. Use your u:account credentials to configure the application.

Access via smartphones and tablets

Of course, you may access your u:cloud data also via smartphone or tablet. Both Android and iOS are supported. Please install the u:cloud client from the appropriate app store:

• Android: Install via the Google Play Store
• iOS: Install via the Apple App Store

For further information, refer to the u:cloud information page.

While you should primarily use u:cloud for cloud storage, we acknowledge that for some projects or private usage you still might need to install Dropbox. So here are short step by step instructions for Linux:

1. Please visit https://www.dropbox.com/en/install and scroll down to the “Headless Install” section.
2. Open a terminal and execute the command that is given on that website under "64-bit".
3. Start the Dropbox daemon now: $HOME/.dropbox-dist/dropboxd
4. It will complain that you are running it on an unsupported file system. Choose "Move" and select "Computer" and the directory /scratch/USERNAME (of course, replace USERNAME with your actual math:account user name). Click on "Choose" and Dropbox will begin to sync your data to /scratch/USERNAME/Dropbox.
5. For convenience, you can create a symbolic link into your home directory with the following terminal command: ln -s /scratch/USERNAME/Dropbox $HOME 
   This allows you to access your Dropbox data from inside your usual home directory. Again replace USERNAME with your actual user name.

Note: If you have some previous version of Dropbox that stopped working for some reason, remove the directories $HOME/Dropbox (if you have some unsynced local changes, save them outside of the Dropbox directory), $HOME/.dropbox and $HOME/.dropbox-dist and follow the instructions above.