self-hosting Zotero sync WebDAV on Ubuntu via Docker

Introduction

Zotero is an open-source reference management software and an excellent tool for marking PDF files and tracking readings. Additionally, Zotero provides 300 MB of cloud space for storing PDFs on their servers, which can be synched in real-time to multiple devices. This option is particularly useful if you have a Tablet as it makes annotation and note taking easier, and all changes are updated on all devices.

You can get more cloud storage from Zotero for a low fee, but as I already have a VPS that I use to host my website, I wanted to host Zotero on my own server; in this post, I'm going to explain how I did that using NGINX, docker, and Apache WebDAV.

Prerequisites

📝NOTE
This tutorial assumes that you have a VPS server running Ubuntu, Docker and NGINX

• Ubuntu 22.04 cloud server with SSH enabled: Initial Server Setup with Ubuntu 20.04
• A domain name pointed to your server’s IP
• UFW firewall setup
• NGINX installed as a reverse proxy: How To Configure Nginx as a Reverse Proxy on Ubuntu 22.04
• Docker and Docker Compose: Install Docker on Ubuntu
• SSL with Let’s Encrypt: How To Secure Nginx with Let's Encrypt

Setup

I'm using the Apache WebDAV docker container maintained by bytemark. The setup is pretty straight forward, you need docker compose to set it up. Create a new folder in your server directory with mkdir webdav and create the compose file by nano docker-compose.yml.

mkdir webdav
nano docker-compose.yml

Paste the following in the file and replace <username> and <password> with the login information you want to use. You will use these credentials to setup a connection to your server from Zotero so make sure to save them.

version: '3'
services:
  webdav:
    image: bytemark/webdav
    restart: always
    ports:
      - "81:80"
    environment:
      AUTH_TYPE: Digest
      USERNAME: <username>
      PASSWORD: <password>
      LOCATION: /zotero/
    volumes:
      - /srv/dav:/var/lib/dav

📝NOTE
I'm using port 81 as port 80 is already in use in my server.

Next, from your project directory start up your application by running docker compose up.

docker compose up

Your Webdav server is now running! but we have to setup the domain for the server before we can configure the server in Zotero.

Domain Setup

Go to your domain registrar and create a new A record for your domain/subdomain. I'm going to use zotero.gorkyver.com as the domain for the server so I'm creating an A-record with zotero as host and my_server_ip_address as the value.

Reverse Proxy with NGINX

Now we have the domain setup but we need to route the incoming traffic to the server that's running in docker, we are going to use NGINX to do that. Simply create a conf file for routing:

sudo nano /etc/nginx/sites-available/<your-domain>

In the file paste the folllowing:

server{
	server_name your_domain www.your_domain
	location / {
		proxy_pass docker_container_ip #this should look something like: 0.0.0.0:81 etc.
        proxy_set_header HOST $host;
        proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Proto $scheme;
        proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
        proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
		}
}

Replace your_domain with your domain name and docker_container_ip with the address of your container, If you don't know the IP address of your docker container you can view it by

docker ps
docker inspect <CONTAINER NAME>

When NGINX proxies a request, it forwards the request to a designated server, retrieves the response, and then sends it back to the client. In this case we will re-route the traffic to the docker container that is running our webdav server.

Next enable file link to sites-enabled:

sudo ln -s /etc/nginx/sites-available/your_domain /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/

check syntax error in config file:

sudo nginx -t

restart nginx for changes to take effect:

sudo systemctl restart nginx

Secure connection with SSL

I'm going to use let's encrypt NGINX integration known as certbot to secure the server with SSL you can follow this guide if you have not set up certbot already.

With certbot installed, simply run

sudo certbot --nginx -d your_domain.com -d www.your_domain.com

Your server should be accessible on your_domain.com now! Next we'll setup Zotero to connect with the webdav server.

Zotero Configuration

Initial setup on PC/Mac

Launch Zotero on your computer, go to Edit->Settings and log-in with your Zotero account.

Next, uncheck the Zotero Storage option and check Sync attachment files in my Library and from the drop down select WebDAV.

and enter your host e.g. your_domain.com, and the login details you set-up for WebDAV in the Setup section and click Verify Server.

Increase file-size limit

The error “413 – Request Entity Too Large” indicates that Nginx was configured to restrict large file sizes. The default maximum file size is 1M and We have to edit Nginx conf file to allow larger file sizes. Edit the conf file by

nano /etc/nginx/nginx.conf

add this line to the http section

client_max_body_size 70M;

Next restart NGINX for changes to take effect:

sudo systemctl restart nginx

Now you can open Zotero and use the sync button at the top right to backup all your files onto your WebDAV server!