Deploying Seafile with SQLite

Deploying Seafile with SQLite is no longer supported since version 11.0

Download binary package

Visit our download page, download the latest server package.

Choose one of: - Generic Linux - Server for Raspberry Pi

Click the tarball link and save it.

Deploying and Directory Layout

NOTE: If you place the Seafile data directory in external storage, such as NFS, CIFS mount, you should not use SQLite as the database, but use MySQL instead.

Supposed you've downloaded seafile-server_8.0.* into your home directory. We suggest you to use the following layout for your deployment:

mkdir /opt/seafile
mv seafile-server_8.0.* /opt/seafile
cd /opt/seafile
tar -xzf seafile-server_8.0.*

Now you should have the following directory layout

root@5575983a9804:/opt/seafile# tree . -L 2
.
|-- seafile-server-8.0.*
|   |-- check_init_admin.py
|   |-- reset-admin.sh
|   |-- runtime
|   |-- seaf-fsck.sh
|   |-- seaf-fuse.sh
|   |-- seaf-gc.sh
|   |-- seafile
|   |-- seafile.sh
|   |-- seahub
|   |-- seahub.sh
|   |-- setup-seafile-mysql.py
|   |-- setup-seafile-mysql.sh
|   |-- setup-seafile.sh
|   |-- sql
|   `-- upgrade
`-- seafile-server_8.0.*_x86-64.tar.gz

Benefits of this layout are

• We can place all the config files for Seafile server inside "/opt/seafile/conf" directory, making it easier to manage.
• When you upgrade to a new version of Seafile, you can simply untar the latest package into "/opt/seafile" directory. In this way you can reuse the existing config files in "/opt/seafile/conf" directory and don't need to configure again.

Setting Up Seafile Server

Prerequisites

The Seafile server package requires the following packages have been installed in your system

# on Ubuntu 20.04 server

apt-get install -y python3 python3-setuptools python3-pip memcached libmemcached-dev pwgen sqlite3

pip3 install --timeout=3600 django==2.2.* future Pillow pylibmc captcha jinja2 psd-tools django-pylibmc django-simple-captcha pycryptodome==3.12.0 cffi==1.14.0

# on CentOS 8 server
yum install epel-release -y

yum install python3 python3-setuptools python3-pip memcached libmemcached libffi-devel pwgen curl python3-devel gcc gcc-c++ sqlite -y 

pip3 install --timeout=3600 django==2.2.* future Pillow pylibmc jinja2 psd-tools django-pylibmc django-simple-captcha captcha pycryptodome==3.12.0 cffi==1.14.0 lxml

Setup

cd /opt/seafile/seafile-server-8.0.*
./setup-seafile.sh  #run the setup script & answer prompted questions

If some of the prerequisites are not installed, the Seafile initialization script will ask you to install them.

The script will guide you through the settings of various configuration options.

Seafile configuration options

Option	Description	Note
server name	Name of this Seafile server	3-15 characters, only English letters, digits and underscore ('_') are allowed
server ip or domain	The IP address or domain name used by this server	Seafile client program will access the server with this address
Seafile data dir	Seafile stores your data in this directory. By default it'll be placed in the current directory.	The size of this directory will increase as you put more and more data into Seafile. Please select a disk partition with enough free space.
fileserver port	The TCP port used by Seafile fileserver	Default is 8082. If it's been used by other service, you can set it to another port.

Now you should have the following directory layout:

root@5575983a9804:/opt/seafile# tree . -L 2
.
|-- ccnet
|   |-- GroupMgr
|   |-- OrgMgr
|   |-- PeerMgr
|   `-- misc
|-- conf
|   |-- __pycache__
|   |-- ccnet.conf
|   |-- gunicorn.conf.py
|   |-- seafdav.conf
|   |-- seafile.conf
|   `-- seahub_settings.py
|-- logs
|   |-- controller.log
|   |-- seafile.log
|   `-- seahub.log
|-- pids
|   |-- seaf-server.pid
|   `-- seahub.pid
|-- seafile-data
|   |-- httptemp
|   |-- library-template
|   |-- seafile.db
|   |-- storage
|   `-- tmpfiles
|-- seafile-server-8.0.5
|   |-- check_init_admin.py
|   |-- reset-admin.sh
|   |-- runtime
|   |-- seaf-fsck.sh
|   |-- seaf-fuse.sh
|   |-- seaf-gc.sh
|   |-- seafile
|   |-- seafile.sh
|   |-- seahub
|   |-- seahub.sh
|   |-- setup-seafile-mysql.py
|   |-- setup-seafile-mysql.sh
|   |-- setup-seafile.sh
|   |-- sql
|   `-- upgrade
|-- seafile-server-latest -> seafile-server-8.0.5
|-- seafile-server_8.0.5_x86-64.tar.gz
|-- seahub-data
|   `-- avatars
`-- seahub.db

The folder seafile-server-latest is a symbolic link to the current Seafile server folder. When later you upgrade to a new version, the upgrade scripts would update this link to keep it always point to the latest Seafile server folder.

Running Seafile Server

Before Running

Since Seafile uses persistent connections between client and server, you should increase Linux file descriptors by ulimit if you have a large number of clients before start Seafile, like:

ulimit -n 30000

Starting Seafile Server and Seahub Website

• Start Seafile:

./seafile.sh start # Start Seafile service

• Start Seahub:

./seahub.sh start <port>  # Start Seahub website, port defaults to 8000

Note: The first time you start Seahub, the script is going to prompt you to create an admin account for your Seafile server.

After starting the services, you may open a web browser and type in

http://192.168.1.111:8000

you will be redirected to the Login page. Just enter the admin username and password.

Congratulations! Now you have successfully setup your private Seafile server.

Run Seahub on another port

You can assign the port of Seahub by setting the conf/gunicorn.conf.

• stop the Seafile server

./seahub.sh stop
./seafile.sh stop

• modify the value of SERVICE_URL in the file ccnet.conf (or seahub_settings.py if you use 9.0.0+ version), like this: (assume your ip or domain is 192.168.1.100). You can also modify SERVICE_URL via web UI in "System Admin->Settings". (Warning: if you set the value both via Web UI and ccnet.conf, the setting via Web UI will take precedence.)

SERVICE_URL = http://192.168.1.100:8001

• modify the conf/gunicorn.conf

# default localhost:8000
bind = "0.0.0.0:8001"

• restart Seafile server

./seafile.sh start
./seahub.sh start

See Seafile Server Configuration Manual for more details about ccnet.conf.

Manage Seafile and Seahub

Stopping

./seahub.sh stop # stop seahub website
./seafile.sh stop # stop seafile processes

Restarting

./seafile.sh restart
./seahub.sh restart

When the Scripts Fail

Most of the time, seafile.sh and seahub.sh work fine. But if they fail, you might want to

• Use pgrep command to check if Seafile/Seahub processes are still running

pgrep -f seafile-controller # check Seafile processes
pgrep -f "seahub" # check Seahub process

• Use pkill to kill the processes

pkill -f seafile-controller
pkill -f "seahub"

That's it!

For a production server we highly recommend to setup with Nginx/Apache and enable SSL/TLS.

That's it! Now you might want read more about Seafile. - Administration