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Seafile?
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➔ Seafile website
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56 reviews of this app found across Reddit:
Pff they missed the best one: Seafile. It can sync anything, even Git repositories, which the other ones can't handle because they use Git internally themselves. Also you can run your own server locally.
Always great to see more services accepting bitcoin, and I hear a lot of good things about seafile. But calling it "open source" might not be accurate. At least even their self-hosted/on-premise solutions talk about user limitations and license files. https://shop.seafile.de/en/faq/
Edit: Okay, maybe I was a bit to harsh, they seem to offer a community and a professional edition, see [0,1]. So maybe not full FOSS but okayish... just like owncloud, orangehrm, and many others, just they are not very clear on that.
[0] https://www.seafile.com/en/product/private_server/ [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seafile
Seafile offers baked in E2EE
offers both iOS and Android clients, as well as a bevy of desktop clients (including a "drive" client that doesn't involve a full sync)
Nextcloud is another option but if you only need file storage and not all the other stuff NC offers, Seafile is nice.
It is possible to map Seafile Shares as network drives. Just enable Wedav in Seafile and then in the Explorer add the WebDAV Share as network share https://manual.seafile.com/extension/webdav.html Or use the Drive Client https://www.seafile.com/en/download/
The general consensus on owncloud vs nextcloud is that nextcloud is the better option due to various reasons. This question is asked here regularly so if you want more detail you can look it up. I've heard others mention that seafile is a better option for larger files but I have no personal experience with it.
In my experience, the speed of the USB 2.0 ports are not usually the limiting factor when it comes to performance of next/owncloud. The upload speed of your internet connection, for example, is much more likely to limit you.
Transferring the files to the harddrive without using next/owncloud will not make them immediately accessible. You will need to ssh into the pi and run an occ command to tell next/owncloud to scan the drive.
You can access your files outside of your home network using various methods (including VPN). Since I own my own domain I personally use a DNS to point cloud.mydomain.com to my home network.
My dad uses his MacMini daily and he likes it. It is powerful enough to do video editing (he has the 2014 i7 with 16gb of ram). He also runs some Windows VM for when he needs Windows app only throught VirtualBox. It really depends on the use case.
The only reason I'd tell you to stay away is if there is a new mac mini announcement soon.
Otherwise, depending of your usage, its a good machine.
I got my hand on a 2014 i5 with 8GB of RAM for 150$ CAD and I have no regrets. I use it as a cloud server (https://www.seafile.com) and a calendar/contacts/reminders server (http://www.radicale.org). It is also a HTPC for the basement connected to my TV.
I was previously using VMware Workspace which had on-premise "Dropbox" functionality, VMware later killed this feature so I had to find and alternative. I tested ownCloud but I was not happy with, colleague of mine recommended Seafile (https://www.seafile.com/en/home/) and this is what I have been using since. Works fine with Windows 10 desktops and Android phone.
One reason why I chose Seafile over ownCloud was simplicity of deployment, ownCloud felt overly complex for my needs.
This is available in the community edition of Seafile for ages : you create a directory, generate a Share Link (with upload), and files uploaded by your users get synced to your library, in the corresponding folder.
Note that this upload links in Seafile can also have password protection.
Edit : live example at https://files.eliotberriot.com/u/d/14752217c7/
I've been using Seafile for a couple years now. Had a few minor hiccups, but I've been generally satisfied. I picked it partly because it has explicit support for encrypted-on-the-client libraries that are inaccessible to the server. You can use EC2-backed instances from the developers, or host your own.
https://www.seafile.com/en/home/
Very similar feature set to Dropbox. Can be authenticated against LDAP (or AD?). Has web interface and numerous clients. Can be integrated with OnlyOffice for online editing.
Seafile. It's fast, desktop client works great and it has mobile apps. Have been using for a while now and never ran into problems.
It's a little bit of a bitch to set up, but if you managed to install arch then you should be able to to get seafile up and running without much trouble.
I've recently made the switch to Seafile, which I'm really happy about. It's definitely a lot faster, though it loses a bit of versatility of the Nextcloud plugins. For everyday storage it's great, and it works perfectly fine with OnlyOffice, making it a great tool for multi-user document editing as well.
It's written mostly in C, with a bit of Python, and fully open source.
> The Drive client regularly cleans up unused cached files in the background. You can also limit the local cache space. >
From here.
Not sure if that does what you mean though.
You could try stopping SeaDrive on your PC and remove the folder/file while SeaDrive is not running and start it again afterwards. I would suggest doing this on a test folder/file because I have not tested this ;)
Decom the whole thing and move the remaining users to OneDrive or similar. It's not worth the time and effort to run such a thing.
If you want to modernize it, for play toy use, move to something like seafile.
I can't give you an answer for NextCloud, I never tried it myself, in my case I run with Seafile since... 4 years maybe now? Compared to NextCloud, it's a file storing and sharing application since the start, and since it does only that, it does it really well at least for my uses. Not really heavy on ressources, installation and updates are easy and quick. And finally it provide some useful integration/tool like LDAP, SSO, an integrated editor, encryption if wanted, a webdav access, etc..
>* Seafile (heard it's better than Nextcloud in overall performance and security)
Seafile is great with snappy performance, navigating the UI and Delta syncing. The only limiting factor for the opensource Free version, is up to 3 users. If you want more people to connect, be prepared to shell out 100 dollars a year.
Syncthing is great but it's more device to device sync focused then Seafile's server based approach. It's also great for sharing files with friends, even overseas of course. The only limit would be yours or your friends storage capacity.
I run them both on my Synology without a hitch.
I'm currently trying the self hosted path with Seafile.
It's OSS and a bit hard to setup via docker but I'm enjoying it so far...
https://www.seafile.com/en/home/
p.s.: Pro is free under 3 users!
SpiderOak Share and Seafile both offer free solutions with paid upgrades to storage. They are also both encrypted on your machine before uploaded to their servers so they have no idea what you're storing.
Self-hosted solution that works really good: Seafile (https://www.seafile.com)
if selfhosted server is not an option, forget it otherwise it'll make you happy.
but I agree with /u/robvas , svn/git is better in this case
In my experience so far, Seafile is as close to Dropbox as I've used. All of the clients work great for me, desktop clients have sync indicators in the native OS file browser, sync is fast on LAN and WAN, can easily share file links publicly or with other users just like Dropbox. Currently hosting it on a CentOS server with an NFS share to my storage server and use iOS, macOS, and Windows clients. It's easy to get up and running out of the box, with minimal configuration. I currently have mine set up with everything running behind an NGINX reverse proxy, which took some tweaking, but it works great now.
I think Seafile would be close to most of what you're looking to do. Each library you create can be selectively synced, but you can't choose to sync on a per file basis as far as I know. Libraries that are synced show up in Windows Explorer. The desktop client allows you to browse and download remotely stored files that aren't synced locally. They also have a beta client that allows you to sync nothing, but interact with all files as if they were stored locally (like a network drive).
The community edition is free. The pro edition is $48/user per year and offers additional features like 2FA, AD integration, remote wipe, auditing, antivirus integration, etc.
Checkout Seafile ( https://www.seafile.com/en/home/ ) Works like dropbox and its free to use if you host the server. It supports auto picture upload with mobile app, android/ios/windows/linux. It also has a webgui page which is nice.
Nextcloud was already mentioned as a self hosted cloud. But I switched to Seafile years ago because i had stability issues with nextcloud. And i am pretty happy with this. But as i said my experience with nextcloud is some years old.
Probably the fastest way to do that is the Seafile sync client. Be sure to set MacOs to save screenshots to a synced folder. If there's another similar tool that does what you're talking about, I'd love to know about it.
Perhaps you can try a SeaFile provider from their partner page:
https://www.seafile.com/en/partner/
Luckycloud (it has an english website) appears to be the cheapest if you switch the the lowest tier to "single user". Yoursecurecloud also appears to be decently priced. If you think Tresorit is expensive, then these options are not good for you though. You're going to have to pay for services.
Nextcloud also has people who run it for you, you just need to make an account and usually pay above a certain storage size:
Nextcloud does not offer E2EE most of the time, as the plugin for that is still experimental.
I have switched from NC to SeaFile and I'm not coming back. Way faster, way more stable, desktop/mobile apps just work, web interface does not take ages to load. The only drawback is that data is saved in blobs on the server. It supports themes.
https://www.seafile.com/en/home/ you can read more about it here.
I switched to it because nextcloud felt bloated and was way too sluggish (especially searching - I sometimes had to wait upwards of a minute when simply searching for a file). Seafile honestly feels so much better - interacting with it is so much smoother. Searches are fast, the sync clients don't suck (performance and speed wise) as much, and so on. The only thing I'm missing is simple uploading of files via cURL. It's possible somehow, but I didn't look into it yet.
Have you checked out commercial nextcloud/owncloud hoster?
Or Seafile?
https://www.seafile.com/en/partner/
I use seafile on my own server and I am happy with it for the last 4 years or so.
I would suggest Seafile. It’s essentially just the cloud storage part of Nextcloud. Per your requirements it has:
- 2FA and encryption
- multiple user support
- webapp if you don’t want to use a client
- built in PDF/txt file preview (as well as some basic editing)
- super easy to use
https://www.seafile.com/en/home/ look in to that.
in short it would sync files between your computer and your friends (think OneDrive, dropbox etc) or use the remote folder option to mount a drive like a share in windows for remote access to data.
this would at least give some security for your options.
tho you still need to open a required ports and forward it to the seafile server.
Sorry, I don't have answers to any of that. I tried it once and it worked (synced fine) for me. I didn't get as far as looking at how good the encryption was. Cryfs vault was just one option I was evaluating.
I settled instead on making my own private Dropbox like sync server out of some old hardware and seafile. It's faster, more convenient, more flexible, and cheaper.
It can sync several different folders so that you can have some that only sync on some machines. And you can have it do encryption in the sync agent software so the server doesn't know what it has but the files are unencrypted on the client machines. I don't know how good that encryption is, but can say that it does say least sync. I mostly don't bother with that since I also control the server.
If you want only something where you can upload/download files and does it well (because it is only made for that) without any other features (so really light too for the server). You can give a try to minio,
It is an equivalent of Amazon S3 server but self-hosted, available in a single Go binary, it may have a docker image too if needed not sure. And on the configuration side, it is pretty straight forward. You just need a reverse proxy in front of it with your favorite webserver or HAproxy/Traefik.
Another option is seafile that is nice if you want to add some file sharing with other people without it being to heavy on your resources and have some nice features like groups, (temporary) public sharing for downloading and uploading, etc...
Depends if you use the full featureset of own/nextcloud.
Personally I'm totally happy with Seafile. But it is basically just a file cloud, but it is way faster then my old owncloud instance. Also provides lot types of clients for syncing.
You may want to run your own server for a few bucks per month. That depends on whether you have the knowledge or the privacy requirement. Alternatively, there are hosting providers: https://www.seafile.com/en/partner/
I think ssh https://www.openssh.com/ would be a good start. To transfer files you can then use scp or rsync. These protocols are all included in osx via terminal. There are also gui options for file transfer via scp and rsync if you prefer that.
I don't think you can easily transfer OSX gui via ssh but you can access locally hosted services such as https://www.seafile.com/en/home/ which in turn can allow you to access files graphically
My server is a refurbished Dell Optiplex with a 5th gen i5 and 5 sata connections. The Optiplex line is a tried and true line of business class computers that can be had refurbished for extremely cheap (I got mine for less than the price of a Win 10 key). It runs Ubuntu server.
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I access it remotely with a VPN that the server hosts. This way I can connect into my network securely and only have to open one port on my router.
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I use Seafile (sqlite) as a file server and it has worked great so far and is dead easy. I struggled with Docker/owncloud in the past. I also use Plex media server which is very popular.
It's not Open Source but I believe SeaFile's Desktop Drive Client can do that.
>The Drive client enables you to access files on the server without syncing to local disk. It works like a network drive.
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Maybe this:
– although I don't know whether there's an unlimited option.
FWIW, in 2017, <https://github.com/haiwen/seadrive-gui/issues/13#issuecomment-277260079>:
> We've raised the virtual disk size to 100TB if it's unlimited on the server.
Earlier <https://github.com/haiwen/seafile/issues/1699#issuecomment-228250128> mentions an unlimited quota but I can't tell whether that related to service, or a local cache.
I actually have a seafileserver running on my pi and it works fine. It is a little work to instal an configure everything but it comes with clients for win, Mac and Linux and apps to Conner the for android and iOS. It’s quite similar to Dropbox, if you configure it properly like online document editing and so on... https://www.seafile.com/en/download/#server You will find a lot of tutorials on the web, even in other languages than English if preferred. Good luck to you!
For what its worth: owner of a 2012 Mac Mini Server 2.6 Ghz quad core 8GB (soon 16GB).
I use my Mac Mini in different ways and I had to build from sources many libraries to be able to run Seafile (https://www.seafile.com/en/home/) and OnlyOffice ( https://www.onlyoffice.com)
I dont know if its because I come from an ancien world when I had to send cobol code in a queue on a VAX system to be compiled only after a 20-30 min range (if you made a typo in your code you only know after this period), but all the process involved earlier is fast and I dont mind waiting a couple of minutes.
Mind if I ask you what you intend to compile? Big projects? Because usual programming has almost no impact beside a blink of the eye.
My 2 cents.
Take a look at Seafile, it is a selfhosted cloud service like Nextcloud, but without all the PHP stuff. It's great for sharing, managing permissions and allowing external parties to use certain (upload/download) folders as well.
Curious: What do you use your Mac mini for?
I use mine for:
- filesync with seafile (https://www.seafile.com)
- Calendar/contacts sync with radicale (http://www.radicale.org)
- TV HTPC with Kodi Leai for NetFlix in 1080p and watch OTA TV via a HDHomerun
I like the J3455. But I'd make doubly sure that you aren't pushing the limits of that power supply when you power up. Not exactly sure what the number is, but let's say 20 watts each at the moment they start spinning - that is ~150-200 watts from the spinning drives alone. CPU+memory should draw ~15. SATA card draw a little more. Plus PSU capacity can degrade over time and you are buying a used PSU?
Also it sounds like you don't want to tackle Linux right now, which I think is fair. The majority of folks here are on FreeBSD or Linux for better options, but you have to be comfortable with what you're hosting your data on after all. I can't imagine running a Win10 file server and being happy with it these days though. Windows Server is almost certainly a better bet. Also if data integrity is important, have you considered running SnapRAID over your data drives? You'd have to dedicate a data drive to parity, but you will be able to detect and recover from some forms of data corruption, as well as as hard drive failure. That gives you some of the benefits of ZFS while remaining on Windows.
>The reason for Windows based system is I know nothing for Linux. Do you have any idea how to build up a cloud system (on Windows) which I can access data in safe way by WLAN and sync data from cell phone, ipad (android and IOS app)
The J3455 isn't exactly the beefiest CPU so I do wonder just how well you'll perform running a VM and occasionally playing back content on a TV. That said if you are on a recent version of Windows Server or are on Windows 10, you should be able to use WSL (https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wsl/faq) for a lighter virtual Linux environment. For self hosting some kind of file cloud, SeaFile (https://www.seafile.com/en/home/) is generally well regarded here and there is a Windows server version (and Android/iOS apps).
We have been using Seafile for a few years now. I rolled it out as a replacement to Egnyte that our owners considered too expensive. It's really easy to stand it up just about anywhere you need it. We run the free version, so I can't speak to the enterprise features or support.
https://manual.seafile.com/deploy_pro/seaf_encrypt.html >Since Seafile Professional Server 5.1.3, we support storage enryption backend functionality. When enabled, all seafile objects (commit, fs, block) will be encrypted with AES 256 CBC algorithm, before writing them to the storage backend.
https://www.seafile.com/en/help/encrypted_libraries/ >Note that encrypted library only encrypt the contents of the files, but not the folder and file names.
Currently, I'm still using it. One thing about my experience I wanted to add, if you pay with paypal there's an additional 40 cent transaction fee but if you use a credit/debit card there are no fees. Using Boxcryptor or Cryptomator is really up to you. After reading about quantum computers, we are all SOL when it comes to encryption.
Personally I use Nextcloud / Syncthing. I've heard really good things about SeaFile. /u/Kernellinux was talking about it on LAS (before they ended it) and again on his new show. Even to the point of where he's offering free setups for people who call in to /r/AskNoahShow. So that might be a good route to look into too.
Really it just depends on what you need. If you're just looking to sync files with as little overhead as possible you can't go wrong with syncthing. If you're trying to sync more than 10 devices syncthing can get a little awkward so just keep that in mind. My use case for it has been to migrate Windows servers and it works really well for that.
It's open-source, you can find the sources for the community edition here: https://github.com/haiwen
A comparison of the features can be found here: https://www.seafile.com/en/product/private_server/#feature-list
h5ai can be configured with .htaccess so it's gonna work fine even on a shared server. However, I don't think shared hosting can be used as a file server (not that it's impossible, it's just that your host will really, really, hate you), so VPS is the only way to go.
The cheapest option would be to use something like Arubacloud, for 1EUR/month you get your own IP address, 20gb of storage and 2tb of bandwidth. Or, you can go for the usual suspects, DO, Linode, Vultr, etc. I fell asleep just typing those names.
The other plus side of using VPS is you might not have to use H5ai after all, you can run your own real storage-sync dropbox-like solution like Seafile if you want to. :)
Managed to figure it out, with a bit of work. Apparently, file changes made on the NAS end(mounted via CIFS) are not reported to the Seafile.
The key was to change the Sync Interval. While easily doable using the GUI, there is no easy way to do so via CLI.
From what I understood, this could be achieved in the seafile database but I am not too familiar with it.
So, I ended up using SSH X11 forwarding in order to invoke GUI on my client machine to change above sync interval on CLI client.
Very bizarre method, yes I am aware.
My hope that at some point Seafile incorporates this setting into the config file that can be easily changed. That of course IF CLI is something they'll be supporting going forward.
Depending on how tech savvy you and your cousin are, you could set up a server using seafile. It's like having your own personal cloud storage that you can just keep adding hard drives to.
Nextcloud also keeps a local copy, just like Dropbox, onecloud and icloud does. I'm not too familiar with seafile, but with nextcloud you can also share files hosted there with other people without an account, and nextcloud also supports anonymous uploads (upload to someones nextcloud account, without requiring a password, this is also in the commercial edition of owncloud).
As an aside: it's terrible practice to only have a file in 'some cloud' without a local copy or two.
Seafile also has a paid plan, which means that you could do the same, requiring login.
[edit]in owncloud you can selectively sync folders per device, but the same is true for seafile.
I'm honestly having trouble understanding why you seem to want to do this in the first place.
This may be a little more hands-on than you'd like, but I just set up a solution for myself that looks like this.
Phone uses Dropbox (with Carousel) to upload photos to Dropbox and keep the phone clean. I then regularly organize them into another directory on my system. This other directory is a mounted library using Seafile running on an EC2 instance and Syncing to S3 buckets.
Seafile is free and I already had an EC2 instance that I just tossed the server on, so the result is that I'm only paying for the new S3 storage... you could also just run Seafile on a home system.
I know this doesn't solve your immediate issue but perhaps it can spark some similar ideas. I needed the ability to organize my photos before they get archived in S3.
I logged in just to say this:
It works over the browser. It's very easy to self-host and set up accounts. It is infinetely faster and more reliable than Owncloud. It does versioning. It syncs automatically. It's got smartphone apps. Pretty awesome overall.