Seafile Community

Seafile file syncing service is installed on the [[smarthome]] VM. The professional version is used which offers more features and is free for up to 3 users.

Make sure a share has been created in QNAS with the name Seafile . Uncheck Enable Windows Previous Versions. Check Instant sync to disks when requested by SMB clients. Uncheck Enable Folder Aggregation on the Folder Aggregation tab.

Create a seafile user. Add this user to the group services.

Remove all application privileges from this user since none are needed for NFS only.

Configure NFS for this share on QNAS:

Select permission type: `NFS host access`
Check `Access right` and `sync` with `wdelay`
Allowed IP Address or Domain Name: `192.168.1.19/32` (smarthome VM), security: `sys`, Squash Option: `read/write`, `Squash all users`, Anonymous Group: `services`, Anonymous User: `seafile`

Grant the user seafile access to the Seafile share.

Guest OS preparation¶

Install NFS on the smarthome VM:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install portmap nfs-common

Configure the share:

sudo mkdir /mnt/qnas-seafile

Create an entry in /etc/fstab:

192.168.1.12:Seafile /mnt/qnas-seafile nfs rw,bg,rsize=32768,wsize=32768,noatime,hard,timeo=600,retrans=3,tcp,_netdev 0 0

Mount the share:

sudo mount -a

Docker compose setup¶

The installation follows the official guide. 2 cores and 2 GB RAM are the minimum requirements.

Download the latest docker-compose.yaml (URL might change with newer versions):

mkdir seafile && cd seafile
wget -O "docker-compose.yaml" "https://manual.seafile.com/11.0/docker/docker-compose/ce/11.0/docker-compose.yml"

Update the compose file as needed: move secrets into an .env file, update the directory paths, switch the main port to 3333.

The .env file should look similar to this:

  DOCKERDIR=/home/davosian/sf-test2
  NASDIR=/mnt/qnas-seafile

  HOSTIP=192.168.1.19

  TZ=Europe/Zurich

  MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD=somepw

  SEAFILE_ADMIN_EMAIL=seafile@davosian.com
  SEAFILE_ADMIN_PASSWORD=somepw
  SEAFILE_SERVER_HOSTNAME=smarthome

Add an entry for the correct timezone to every container:

...
environment:
    - TZ=${TZ}
    ...

Start up the container and watch for error messages:

docker compose up

The initial startup creates the necessary files and database tables. However, since not everything is ready from the get-go, some post installation steps are necessary.

Enabling non-root process¶

Source: https://manual.seafile.com/latest/docker/deploy_seafile_with_docker/#run-seafile-as-non-root-user-inside-docker

Shut down the container:

docker compose down

Then update the permissions:

sudo chmod -R a+rwx $PWD/sf-data/seafile/

Move the seafile-data directory over onto the nfs share:

sudo mv $PWD/sf-data/seafile/seafile-data /mnt/qnas-seafile

You will get a few errors since nfs does not support the user permissions with squash all users enabled. Ignore them.

Prepare non-root permissions: uncomment or add the environment flag - NON_ROOT=true in docker-compose.yaml. Also, add a second volume entry pointing to the /mnt/qnas-seafile share:

seafile:
    ...
    volumes:
      - ${DOCKERDIR}/sf-data:/shared
      - ${NASDIR}/seafile-data:/shared/seafile/seafile-data
    environment:
      - TZ=${TZ}
      ...
      - NON_ROOT=true
    ...

Recreate the container:

docker compose up -d && docker compose logs -f

Enable notifications¶

Source: https://manual.seafile.com/latest/deploy/notification-server/

This helps with improving the performance.

Generate a jwt token with the following command：

openssl rand -base64 32

Add it into $PWD/sf-data/seafile/conf/seafile.conf and make sure notifications are enabled:

[notification]
enabled = true
...
jwt_private_key = LSaCwxnHt+t3u/QhgFD3JouvEv0T1iBjOtqHheWL16Y=

Restart the server:

docker compose restart

Note: the reboot can take about 10 minutes.

Test the notification server by going to https://files.siebensprung.ch/notification/ping.

Enable e-mail sending¶

Source: https://manual.seafile.com/latest/config/sending_email/

Add the following lines to seahub_settings.py to enable email sending.

EMAIL_USE_TLS = True
EMAIL_HOST = 'smtp.eu.mailgun.org'        # smtp server
EMAIL_HOST_USER = 'seafile@mail.davosian.net'    # username and domain
EMAIL_HOST_PASSWORD = 'password'    # password from https://start.1password.com/open/i?a=7ZOAIC2B6RAYLJ2Y4AGDZ3JEOY&v=pmqldrwi4lbv4opojaf6u4hlwu&i=jgirot63gegr4yh4nxlfppp3na&h=staigers.1password.com
EMAIL_PORT = 587
DEFAULT_FROM_EMAIL = EMAIL_HOST_USER
SERVER_EMAIL = EMAIL_HOST_USER

Note: you cannot configure this information in two places simultaniously: through the configuration file as well as through the Web UI.

Add external access¶

Follow the setup from Tailscale to expose the service through Caddy running on Hetzner by adding a configuration block to the Caddyfile.

First, make sure the domain points to the IP of the Hetzer VPS with Cloudflare by creating an A-record:

A    sf     138.201.185.144       Proxy: DNS only

Check that the entry propagates correctly:

nslookup sf.davosian.ch

Now update the Caddyfile:

- friendly_name: files
    fqdn: files.siebensprung.ch
    upstream: "smarthome:3333"
    tls_insecure: false
    tls_provider: cloudflare

Make sure that the terraform user's API token for Cloudflare includes the domain you want to use: https://dash.cloudflare.com/profile/api-tokens

Deploy the changes and wait a bit for the SSL certificate to be created:

just run caddy

Go to the web interface through Tailscale at http://smarthome:3333/sys/web-settings/ and modify the two entries:

SERVICE_URL: https://files.siebensprung.ch
FILE_SERVER_ROOT: https://files.siebensprung.ch/seafhttp

Back on the seafile box, configure the server by adding/updating the following to $PWD/sf-data/seafile/conf/seahub_settings.py:

SERVICE_URL = "https://files.siebensprung.ch"
FILE_SERVER_ROOT = "https://files.siebensprung.ch/seafhttp"
CSRF_TRUSTED_ORIGINS = ["https://files.siebensprung.ch"]

Reboot the server:

docker compose restart

Note: the reboot can take about 10 minutes.

Creating users¶

Go to http://smarthome:3333/sys/users/ and create the required users (davosian and greenfrog).

Fine tuning¶

Modify the information on http://smarthome:3333/sys/web-settings/ to get a nice fit.

Importing data¶

Source: https://manual.seafile.com/latest/deploy_pro/seaf_import/

Existing files can be imported using the seaf-import.sh script but only when using the Pro edition. Therefore, we need to do a manual import by mounting the smb share for Nextcloud and copying the files over to the Seafile share.