SeaDrive 2.0.3 is released!

Installed 2.0.3 over 2.0.2 but Seafile is still not showing up in MS Office or other apps that show Dropbox or OneDrive.

Forgot to mention: You have to delete the previous logged in account and re-login, in order to make the shortcut show up.

Has the odd issue, where all files would get deleted, been fixed?

Apologize for not giving you any logs when I experienced the issue, it frustrated me a bit.

I was also a victim of an earlier version of SeaDrive which deleted a great deal of my data.

This problems was addressed in version 2.0.2: SeaDrive 2.0.2 is ready!

I have been using version 2.0.2 for several weeks now and I haven’t encountered any problems. On the contrary, version 2.0.2 runs pretty smooth.

Thanks, good to know. I was actually convinced I had used 2.0.2 then, but judging from my downloads folder it seems to have been 2.0.1. I’ll try out 2.0.3 then

Thx, now it’s working fine.

SeaDrive 2.0.3 is a great step ahead. It feels that SeaDrive 2 grows in speed with every iteration. That’s great! Same things goes for stability: I have switched accounts multiple times and nothing unexpected happened. The programm has never shut down unexpectedly either.

Yet, reliability is an issue. Download and upload are a concern.

I have two examples - one for download and upload each:

Download: I had an entire library "always-keep-in-sync"ed. The download started and most of the files were downloaded, but the download was never fully completed. The status of the library remained “syncing”. So I found one file (“20180327-RDB-Gedanken.txt” in the screenshot below) that SeaDrive did not download and whose status kept in “sync pending” (see screenshot below - never mind the conflict files in the folder).

The file is not corrupt/damaged/unavailable. I can open it in Seahub and when I double click it in Windows Explorer, it also opens. So SeaDrive can download it when I do it manually. Once I do this, the file is also available offline (see screenshot below) and the library download is complete.

Long story short: The always-keep-in-sync sometimes stumbles.

Upload: I added a single file to a folder and the file’s status remains in sync status indefinitely. A reboot does not change the situation


In summary, dropping a file in SeaDrive is not guarantee that it ends up on the server.

Then language changes also remain a source unintended behavior. I cannot reliably reproduce it, but the duplication of all or some of the category folders is common. And: The problem is bigger than just cosmetic! The information I get from them is in conflict.

According to “My libraries”, the libraries are only in the cloud.

According to “Meine Bibliotheken”, the libraries are all synced:

When I copy files in category folders that do not correspond with the language setting of SeaDrive, they do not get uploaded. (Example: SeaDrive is set to English. Files I copy into libraries under “Meine Bibliotheken” are not uploaded.)

Regarding features, there is one thing that I seriously miss from SeaDrive 1.0: The possibility to create share links from the context menu. Unless the context menu item is added back, SeaDrive 2.0 is no real alternative to SeaDrive 1.0 despite SeaDrive 2.0’s many advantages!

Finally, there are two things that I want to suggest changing/amending:
a.) Could a time column be added to the transfer progress window? (Would help troubleshooting.)

b.) The use of 8-digit alphanumeric strings for the user accounts under seadrive_root is workable, but it is not at all elegant. For some it may be outright incomprehensible.

There was no problem if users didn’t get in touch with this number, but they do!

Is there a way to do it like OneDrive does it?

Last but not least: This post contains only a few words of recognition at the beginning and then a lot of suggestions/requests. This is not telling the entire story: I believe that SeaDrive is already a worthy successor of SeaDrive 1.0. From my point of view, it is one of Seafile’s greatest features (especially in comparison to ownCloud/Nextcloud). But for it to become a real killer feature, it needs to work like a charm. Please regard my comments as an attempt to help you make SeaDrive Seafile’s next killer feature.

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Could you also update the compatability list: https://cloud.seatable.io/dtable/external-links/a85d4221e41344c19566/?tid=YzYy&vid=pO5i

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This is a known issue and will be fixed in the next version. That’s because the cloud files API may fail when downloading a lot of files at the same time. We’ll retry failed downloads.

Please provide related seadrive.log messages.

The reason seems to be that the old folder is somehow locked by the system. The rename from old language to new language name failed. In the next version we’ll try to retry the rename operation. But there is no guarantee to success for every situation.

Yes. We realized that only recently. The context menu extension doesn’t work well with cloud files placeholder files. It won’t show up for placeholder files that aren’t downloaded yet. I think this is a limitation by the system.

The cloud files API has its own mechanism to add context menu. We originally planed to use that new mechanism. But we found that it’s required to build the package in MSIX format and upload it to Microsoft Store to make it work. That means the package cannot be downloaded and installed directly. It’s also very inconvenient to install MSIX packages for all users in a system. It’s much less flexible than the good old MIS way. So we decided against this approach.

Looks like Windows only support the new mechanism for placeholders files. So currently we haven’t found a way to make context menu work.

We’ll consider about it.

Having usernames and server name in the path is too long. It will make long file paths hard to work. Windows explorer has limitation on path length (266 characters). That’s why we use hash. OneDrive doesn’t have multiple server support so there names are shorter.

We’ll find a way to open the shortcut location (“SeaDrive”) in explorer when user clicks the system notification icon. That should hide the hash most of time.

When opening files or saving files in Word, you can find “SeaDrive” shortcut in the explorer dialog. So I don’t think users need to interact with the hash path.

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It could be a solution to only provide the context menu as MSIX. By adding an API to SeaDrive the context menu would only call that API and would rarely need an update.

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@Jonathan: Thanks for your detailed response!

It is great news that the always-keep-in-sync-issue will be addressed in the next version!

I was stupid enough not to save the log file for the update issue. So I won’t be able to send you one in the short term. Apologies!

I like @shoeper’s idea for the context menu! That’d be a great one!

Regarding the 8-digit user account hash: I understand the motivation for not using servername_username for ther user folder’s name - and I recall the discussion about this after the release of SeaDrive 2.0.0. I also realize that SeaDrive’s support of multiple user accounts adds a extra level of complexity - one that OneDrive does not have. All the more reasons to think about how to solve it in a user friendly way. :wink:

I think your suggestion is a good one as it mitigates the confusion problem. But it is not the entire story: Applications continue to use the full path (C:\Users.…) and they show it, no matter if a file was opened from the shortcut location or the seadrive_root folder (see screenshot below).

I don’t know if there is a technical solution to the problem. Maybe there isn’t. But rather than a hash, wouldn’t the local part of the account’s email address be better?

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Hi

The “always-keep-in-sync” option is not yet available for the MacOS Seadrive client, right?
Or does this “always-keep-in-sync” maybe not work with community edition?

@Jonathan Would it be possible (with limited development effort) to disable one or two category folders under the SeaDrive node? Specifically, I would like to disable (=do not show) the “Shared with all” folder and/or the “My Libraries”? Ideally via registry or an ini file?

This would be very convenient in an environment where shared-with-all libraries are not used and/or users are not meant to store files in private libraries (such as via a corresponding role with can_add_repo = FALSE).

Allowing admins/users to not display these categores would also be consistent with Seahub where these category folders can be easily disabled (especially the shared-with-all folder;
CLOUD_MODE = True).

With cloud files API, the context menu needs to be provided by seadrive.exe itself. There is no other way to do it.

We’ll change the folder name to be based on username. We need to handle duplicated user names on different servers. There will still be some confusions in such cases, but not so much.

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This is unfortunately Windows only feature.

Thanks Jonathan fore getting back to me.

Is this feature on the roadmap for macos?

It would be such a great feature.

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HI, many users are not like the numbers behind oft seafile_root is there a way to remove this complete.
With this number links that shared from one user to another are not Working.
All users has the same username.

Greetings Mario

Sorry this is not planed for MacOS, as the drive client works differently on OSX.

In 2.0.4 it will be changed to the user name on server.