XBackBone

Sign in to the Azure Portal, choose Create a resource, search the Marketplace for XBackBone by SecureAnyCloud, and select Create.

On the Basics tab, pick your subscription, resource group, region and size. Under Administrator account, choose SSH public key and paste your key. Under Inbound port rules, allow SSH (22) and HTTP (80).

Select Review + create, then Create.

Run these commands to create the network resources, accept the Marketplace terms and create the VM:

RG="xbackbone-prod"; LOCATION="eastus"; VM_NAME="xbackbone-01" IMAGE_URN="sac1647283583153:xbackbone-ubuntu-24-04:default:latest" SSH_KEY="$(cat ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub)" az group create --name "$RG" --location "$LOCATION" az network vnet create -g "$RG" --name xbb-vnet --address-prefix 10.100.0.0/16 --subnet-name xbb-subnet --subnet-prefix 10.100.1.0/24 az network nsg create -g "$RG" --name xbb-nsg az network nsg rule create -g "$RG" --nsg-name xbb-nsg --name allow-ssh --priority 100 \
  --source-address-prefixes "<your-mgmt-cidr>" --destination-port-ranges 22 --access Allow --protocol Tcp az network nsg rule create -g "$RG" --nsg-name xbb-nsg --name allow-http --priority 110 \
  --destination-port-ranges 80 --access Allow --protocol Tcp
# Accept the Marketplace terms once per subscription (required before the first CLI deploy)
az vm image terms accept --urn sac1647283583153:xbackbone-ubuntu-24-04:default:latest
az vm create -g "$RG" --name "$VM_NAME" --image "$IMAGE_URN" \
  --size Standard_B2s --storage-sku StandardSSD_LRS \
  --admin-username azureuser --ssh-key-values "$SSH_KEY" \
  --vnet-name xbb-vnet --subnet xbb-subnet --nsg xbb-nsg --public-ip-sku Standard

Connect over SSH as azureuser, the Ubuntu 24.04 login user for this image:

ssh azureuser@<public-ip>

nginx serves XBackBone on port 80 in front of php-fpm. Confirm that the units are active and that nginx is listening:

systemctl is-active php8.3-fpm nginx xbackbone-firstboot

ss -tlnp | grep ':80 '

Each unit reports active, and nginx listens on 0.0.0.0:80.

On first boot, a one-shot service builds the database and creates a single administrator account with a password unique to this VM. It writes the details to a root-only file. Read the file with:

sudo cat /root/xbackbone-credentials.txt

The file records the instance URL, the admin login name and the generated password. These credentials are unique to this VM and are never baked into the image.

The login page is public, but the dashboard requires authentication. Run these commands to check both. An unauthenticated request to the dashboard is redirected to the login page:

curl -s -o /dev/null -w 'login page: HTTP %{http_code}\n' http://127.0.0.1/login

curl -s -o /dev/null -w 'dashboard: HTTP %{http_code} -> %{redirect_url}\n' http://127.0.0.1/home

The login page returns 200. The dashboard returns 302 and redirects to /login, which shows that the backend is protected.

The generated administrator password logs in with a 302 redirect to /home, while a wrong password is sent back to /login. The first command reads the real password from the credentials file:

PW=$(sudo grep '^xbackbone.admin.pass=' /root/xbackbone-credentials.txt | cut -d= -f2-)
curl -s -o /dev/null -w 'correct password: HTTP %{http_code} -> %{redirect_url}\n' \
  --data-urlencode "username=admin" --data-urlencode "password=$PW" http://127.0.0.1/login

curl -s -o /dev/null -w 'wrong password: HTTP %{http_code} -> %{redirect_url}\n' \
  --data-urlencode "username=admin" --data-urlencode "password=wrong-password" http://127.0.0.1/login

Browse to http://<public-ip>/. Sign in at http://<public-ip>/login with the username admin and the generated password from Step 5.

After you sign in, the home dashboard lists every upload with an inline preview, filename, size, public flag, owner and date. Per-item actions let you open, download, copy the link, embed, star or delete. Use the search and order controls to find items quickly.

Open the Upload page, which accepts files up to 512 MB. Drag and drop, click to choose a file, or paste an image or video. Each upload returns an instant shareable link.

Open your profile from the top-right menu. There you can set your email and password, generate an upload token and choose the copy URL mode. You can also download a ready-made client configuration for ShareX, Screencloud or the Linux script.

Import the downloaded configuration into your client, and every capture uploads straight to your server.

As an administrator, open the Users menu to create additional users. Each user has their own upload token, storage quota and admin flag, so a whole team can share one server while keeping uploads separate.

The image runs a lean PHP stack:

• nginx serves the front controller on port 80. It denies direct access to the application files, the SQLite database, the storage directory and the configuration file.
• php8.3-fpm runs the XBackBone application, tuned to accept uploads up to 512 MB.
• SQLite stores users, uploads and settings in a single file under /var/www/xbackbone/resources/database.
• Local storage keeps uploaded files under /var/www/xbackbone/storage. XBackBone can also use S3, Google Cloud, Azure Blob, Dropbox or FTP, configured in the System settings.

To confirm the installed version at any time, run:

jq -r '"XBackBone " + .version' /var/www/xbackbone/composer.json

Restart the stack and read the nginx logs with:

sudo systemctl restart php8.3-fpm nginx

journalctl -u nginx --no-pager | tail -n 20

Restart the stack after configuration changes. Review the nginx logs when you troubleshoot.

For production, point a DNS record at your VM and put the site behind HTTPS. Set base_url in /var/www/xbackbone/config.php to your https:// domain with no trailing slash. Then install a certificate with certbot and reload nginx:

sudo certbot --nginx -d files.your-domain.com

After the certificate is issued, edit base_url to https://files.your-domain.com and reload nginx. Links and the ShareX configuration then use your domain.

• Restrict network access. Limit 22/tcp to your management network in the NSG. Expose 80/tcp, and 443/tcp once TLS is configured, only to the networks that need it.
• Change the administrator password. Sign in after first launch and set a new password. Create individual non-admin users for day-to-day uploads.
• Use HTTPS. Put the site behind HTTPS with your own domain before you share links publicly.
• Keep the OS current. Unattended security upgrades are enabled by default.
• Back up your data. Back up /var/www/xbackbone/resources/database (the SQLite database) and /var/www/xbackbone/storage (your files).

XBackBone is free and open source software distributed under the GNU Affero General Public License v3.0 (AGPL-3.0). The full source ships unmodified on the image under /var/www/xbackbone. This image is produced by SecureAnyCloud and is not affiliated with or endorsed by the XBackBone project. SecureAnyCloud provides 24/7 support for the image and its deployment with a guaranteed 24 hour response SLA.

Deploy on Azure

Launch XBackBone on Ubuntu 24.04 from the Azure Marketplace or with the Azure CLI as shown above, and you will have a private, self-hosted file and screenshot sharing server in minutes.

Deploy on Azure

Launch XBackBone on Ubuntu 24.04 LTS on Azure with 24/7 support from SecureAnyCloud.

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Need Help?

Our support team is available 24/7.

sales@secureanycloud.com