Am I the only dummy who likes Seafile?

Its stupid fast, reliable, and rarely has any conflicts. If it does it seems to work them out without intervention. I've tried Nextcloud including the AIO image and its just so clunky and slow. I was getting sync errors just on the simple Notes apps. Repeatedly. I mean I get why people like it, it can do way more than Seafile. But for a pure Dropbox replacement, I love it.

The fact I can reach any file on any device from any other device without syncing EVERYTHING is fantastic. I know Syncthing is also popular, but seems to require more manual settings if you want to be selective on what syncs.

I will say, I've tried and failed numerous times to get Collabora CODE and S3 storage integration to work with Seafile and that is a nightmare, at least for me. I cannot get my head around it. But standing Seafile up itself was fairly easy.

Does anyone else use it? If so, have you tried the CODE and/or multiple storage backend integrations?

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Their non-standard way of storing files, which makes them basically inaccessible without Seafile, is a disaster waiting to happen. With Nextcloud at least I can do normal filesystem level backups and access the files like any others if I really need to.
- ouh. thats a real hurdle. I was thinking about seafile lately.
  but thats a major nogo.
  probably I will look into a more comolex syncthing setuo.
  
  I really want to use Syncthing for something. I just haven't figured out what yet. Only thing I can think of is to sync games saves from my Steam Deck for non-Steam games, since they don't have cloud saves.
- I get that hesitancy. But I see two ways of addressing it. They have their own FUSE mount and it also works with Rclone's Mount function. But the way I've been doing it is pointing my iDrive account on my Windows desktop at the SeaDrive client. Since each client gets fully assembled files vs the git-like chunks that are server side, it backs up the flat files to my iDrive account without pulling every single file down to the Windows client. Note I'm not trying to convince you, just letting it be known there are options and they work. I did have a cronjob tht was using Rclone to mount then backup the data from the server running Seafile to my Backblaze buckets, but I want to address it and look at something like Borg to back it up first. My hope is to take up less space in the B2 side of things.
  EDIT: I just had a look again because I started doubting myself that Rclone mount worked for this purpose. I have a bit of a bad memory and apparently didn't write this down. But yes it does work. Rclone config is pointed at your seafile domain (even on the same server as is the case with mine). Then rclone mount : /path/to/mount/location. I'll have to double check once I get more than a few gigs in my seafile libraries but it works so nicely in this case. Kinda defeats the purpose of the chunking though, doesn't it? My understanding is that is for effective deduplication.
- This is one of the reasons I passed on Pydio Cells. I access files added to Nextcloud via some external services (e.g. music) and make extensive use of external (local) storage.
  If another service touted the speeds of Seafile/Physio without using a flat file, I would jump.
- There is no need to spread FUD like that. Their "disaster waiting to happen" way of chunking and saving files is actually what makes it superior to Nextcloud for my and many other usecases. Without the active chunking while up- or downloading one needs to sync the whole file all over again if one bit changed. By chunking and indexing every file, you have the benefit of delta sync. On top of that you get versioning which ironically can be used as kind of a backup function on file level.
  Besides that you can do proper backups of the Seafile data repositories and database for disaster recovery or use the FUSE mount for file backups.
- Damn, I didn’t know about this. I was about to install it this weekend to check it out.
  Are there any alternatives (excluding NextCloud as I don’t need it’s 1000 features) that provide mobile apps?
  
  https://github.com/kd2org/karadav
  Works with the Nextcloud apps.

I've been using Seafile for years and like it a lot. Simple, fast, easy to set up, apps for everything, well maintained. I keep regular device backups so am not worried about a bug wiping out the server.
I haven't tried any integrations, any recommendations?
- Well that's the thing...I haven't been able to get any to work yet. Their documentation isn't great. But the one I'd really like to get going is the multi storage backend. You can then specify hot and cold storage based on the library within Seafile itself, which is pretty great. But I need someone smarter than me to figure that part out 😆
  
  Oh right haha in that case I think I'll just wait until there are idiot proof instructions!

I gave up on using it when they dropped postgres support
- Can I ask you a question regarding that? I don't know enough about the various apps for databases. What is preferable about postgres over Mysql/Mariadb? I'm still learning, as you can tell.
  
  For Seafile, or in general?
  I couldn't say why they prefer PostgreSQL over MySQL for Seafile, but it may be just because they know PostgreSQL administration, and don't want to have to learn and remember two different sets of tools. I personally hate administering SQL DBs, and I prefer PSQL in most places because I'm most familiar with it, and even one is too much.
  PostgreSQL tends to lead MySQL in feature set: they had geoqueries first, and they added a NoSQL interface a while back. OTOH, many people probably consider this sort of thing to be bloat, and may prefer MySQL/MariaDB for being more lean.
  Me, I'm a SQLite guy: no server, no connection strings, no user or permission management, one file to back up.

Try FileRun
- I thought they got rid of the free version... Does look like a really cool project though.

28 comments