Setting up Seafile

Introduction

This tutorial explains how to self-host Seafile Server Community Edition with Docker, as explained in the official documentation, and how to access the data from external machines via the Seafile sync client and the Seafile drive client.

Seafile is an open-source project. You can find the repositories for each component here:

	Server	Sync Client (desktop)	Drive Client (desktop)	Drive Client (mobile)
Backend engine	`seafile-server`	`seafile`	`seadrive-fuse`
UI	`seahub`	`seafile-client`	`seadrive-gui`	`seadroid`, seafile-iOS
Manuals	admin manual Docker image	admin manual	user manual

              ┌────────────────────────────┐
              │           Server           │
              │ -------------------------- │
              │ seafile-server  │ original │
              │     seahub      │   data   │
              └────────────────────────────┘
                      ↑↓           ↑↓
┌──────────────────────────┐   ┌────────────────────────┐
│  Windows machine (sync)  │   │  Linux machine (drive) │
│ ------------------------ │   │ ---------------------- │
│    seafile     │  synced │   │ seadrive-fuse │ cached │
│ seafile-client │   data  │   │ seadrive-gui  │  data  │
└──────────────────────────┘   └────────────────────────┘

Prerequisites

A server that fulfills the system requirements
Access to the root user or a user with sudo permissions
A domain
CLI tool

Note that you cannot view the files on your server because they are stored in blocks. If you need to access the files directly on the server, see the official documentation on the FUSE extension.

Example terminology

Username: holu
Server IP: <your_server_ip>

Please replace holu with your username, and <your_server_ip> with the actual IP of your server in all examples.

Step 1 - Preparing system for Seafile

Set up DNS

Before you start, point your domain to the IP address of the server on which you plan to install Seafile.
```
Type: A
Name: seafile.example.com
Value: <your_server_ip>
```
Note that it can take several hours for the changes to apply.

Now, connect to the server.
```
ssh holu@<your_server_ip>
```

Install Docker

Install Docker as explained in the official Docker documentation or use the installation script for a quick start:
```
curl -fsSL https://get.docker.com -o get-docker.sh
sudo sh ./get-docker.sh --dry-run
sudo sh ./get-docker.sh
```
Once Docker is installed, add your user to the docker group:
```
sudo usermod -aG docker holu
```
Run exit and reconnect to the server to update the user groups.

Prepare the system

Docker will use several directories for persistent data. These directories will be accessible both from the Seafile containers and from the host system. Create the following directories:
```
sudo mkdir -p /opt/{seafile,seafile-data,seafile-mysql/db,seafile-caddy,seadoc-data}
```

Step 2 - Installing Seafile

Download files

For the most recent version, see the official Seafile documentation and the Docker image seafileltd/seafile-mc.

Go to /opt/seafile and download the files needed for installation:

Replace 13.0 with the latest version.

cd /opt/seafile
RELEASE="13.0"

sudo wget -O .env https://manual.seafile.com/$RELEASE/repo/docker/ce/env
sudo wget https://manual.seafile.com/$RELEASE/repo/docker/ce/seafile-server.yml
sudo wget https://manual.seafile.com/$RELEASE/repo/docker/seadoc.yml
sudo wget https://manual.seafile.com/$RELEASE/repo/docker/caddy.yml

Generate a random string:
```
openssl rand -hex 32
```
Copy the output. This will be the value of JWT_PRIVATE_KEY in .env.

Now edit .env:

sudo nano /opt/seafile/.env

Edit the following values:

Replace the placeholders with your own information.

SEAFILE_SERVER_HOSTNAME=seafile.example.com
SEAFILE_SERVER_PROTOCOL=https
JWT_PRIVATE_KEY=<your_openssl_rand_output>

SEAFILE_MYSQL_DB_PASSWORD=YourSecretPassword
INIT_SEAFILE_MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD=ROOT_PASSWORD

INIT_SEAFILE_ADMIN_EMAIL=admin@example.com
INIT_SEAFILE_ADMIN_PASSWORD=AdminSecretPassword

When SEAFILE_SERVER_PROTOCOL is set to HTTPS, Seafile will use Caddy to manage Let's Encrypt certificates. For more information, see the official documentation.

Now that the environment variables are set, start Seafile:
```
cd /opt/seafile
docker compose up -d
```

Step 3 - Accessing the web interface

Check the logs of the web UI container, to see if it is already up:

docker logs seafile -f

When it says Seahub is started, go to your domain:

https://seafile.example.com

To log in, enter the information you set in .env for INIT_SEAFILE_ADMIN_EMAIL and INIT_SEAFILE_ADMIN_PASSWORD.

Step 4 - Adding new users and libraries

In the web UI:

Click on the user icon in the top right and click on "System Admin"
In the left menu bar, select "Users"
At the top, select "Add user" and create a new user. Example:
```
Email
holu@example.com

Name (optional)
holu
```

Now that you have a user, create a new library to test access from a client in the next step. In the web UI:

Click on the user icon in the top right and click on "System Admin"
In the left menu bar, select "Libraries"
At the top, select "New Library". Set the newly created user as the owner.
```
Name
test

Owner (If left blank, owner will be admin)
holu
```

Now that you have a user to test external access, you can set up a client and use it to connect to your Seafile server.

Step 5 - Installing the client

For this step, you'll need a machine with a graphical desktop environment. We will configure this machine as a Seafile client that can access the data stored on your Seafile server.

Note that there are two different types of clients — sync and drive. See the official Seafile documentation to learn more about each option and their differences.

Biggest difference is what happens when you close the client connection:

Sync client	drive client
Files in synced libraries are stored as normal local files, so they remain available when the client/server connection is closed. You can continue editing them offline.	Files are primarily stored on the server and accessed through SeaDrive on demand. They are not normally maintained as a complete local copy, although some files/data may be stored in the local cache, e.g. `~/.seadrive/data/file-cache` on Linux. See also cache management on Windows, for example.
When the connection is restored, local changes that were made offline are synchronized with the server.	Normal access to the libraries and synchronization requires SeaDrive to be running and connected to the server. If the connection is unavailable, you cannot normally browse or modify the remote libraries through SeaDrive.

Download the client

The easiest way to get the client, is to download the respective version for your machine from the official download list. For Linux, see also the note about AppImage.

After download, set up the client:

Set up sync client
Set up drive client

See also the official documentation for the sync client and the drive client.

Set up sync client

After installation, start the setup wizard.

Choose a default folder for Seafile

This will be the default storage location for synced libraries. Example:
```
/home/holu/Seafile/
├── synced-library-1
└── synced-library-2
```

Enter the information for your server and the login credentials of the user created in the previous step via the web UI.

You should now see the libraries available to this user. Note that the data is not stored on your local device yet.

You should see the library test which was created earlier.

To store the data of a specific library on your local device and have any changes within the library automatically synced between the server and your device, right click on the test library and select "Sync this library".

You will be asked to select a local path. You can keep the default path that you set directly after download, e.g. /home/holu/Seafile. Within this directory, Seafile will create a new subdirectory with the name of the synced library:
```
/home/holu/Seafile/
└── test
```
Once you see a green cloud with a tick next to the library name, data should be synchronised automatically.

To test the connection, you can create a new file on your local device, e.g. in /home/holu/Seafile/test, and check if that file appears in the web UI at seafile.example.com. Reversibly, you can delete the new file in the web UI and check if it disappears on your local device as well. Note that it may take a minute to synchronize.

For information on read-only syncing, see the official documentation.

Set up drive client

After installation, start the setup wizard.

Enter the information for your server and the login credentials of the user created in the previous step via the web UI.

You should get a confirmation that the files list was successfully downloaded.

You should find a mount in ~/SeaDrive, e.g. /home/holu/Seadrive. Go to that directory to browse the libraries of your user.

To test the connection, you can create a new file on your local device, e.g. in /home/holu/SeaDrive/My Libraries/test, and check if that file appears in the web UI at seafile.example.com. Reversibly, you can delete the new file in the web UI and check if if disappears on your local device as well. Note that it may take a minute to synchronize.

Conclusion

You should now have a running Seafile instance that can be accessed from remote clients.

Next steps:

Setting up Seafile

Author

Published

Time to read

Table of Contents