So, I’m so confused by this app. I’m not at all competent in coding or digging into Terminal, and that seems to be what shows up when I search for help. I don’t even understand the terminology to search for. I have Plex running all the time on a spare Mac mini. It’s super easy to set up. All I have to do is select folders with the media that I want available in the app anywhere I go. Boom, done. Plex’s limitation is that it doesn’t allow access to add or remove files. In searching for something to function similarly with all file types and full access, I found Seafile and it sounds like it should work. But I can’t seem to figure it out. With both the Client and the Drive, it keeps asking for a server address. I don’t have a server, I’m trying to use sea file to create one on my Mac mini like Plex does. Perhaps this is the wrong app for what I’m trying to do. I’m looking for a self hosting for dummies kind of app. Plex is easy, simple, and free… isn’t there a way to do the same thing, just with all file types? It’s an older Mac mini still running Monterey because the most recent system it can install.
I guess I should add my purpose. My buddy and I collaborate on writing music. I’m trying to figure out how to use the old Mac mini that sits around doing nothing as a place to store the sessions. In an ideal world, we’d be able to download the file to our laptops (him from his house, me from wherever my work has me that week), work on them, then upload them back to the Mac mini. That way, we are always working on the most recent version of the file.
This can totally be done with Seafile. Are you using macOS as the main server OS? Or are you dual booting another OS beside Monterey? The setup that Seafile describes in the documentation is for Linux. Unfortunately, the easiest route would be a bit of an involved process that would entail you using Linux as the main OS on the server and hosting Seafile via a Docker container on that server.
This may come as an issue pretty quickly since deploying your own apps would mean that you need to use the Terminal quite often but you don’t need to code anything. The technologies you need to learn to self-host apps and stuff would be pretty much just learning some basic bash commands (terminal stuff) and then using Docker (highly recommended) to deploy things, like Plex and other apps. You’d also run into a little bit of networking but for a basic setup, it’s really easy since the bare minimum is just opening ports on your firewall to allow outside traffic to communicate with your apps that you would be hosting.
I will add a bit to what Jukelyn said above. Seafile is a system to host your own server for file sync/sharing, like Dropbox, but you own the server.
It can definitely do what you are describing, but for such a simple use case, it might be overkill (or harder to set up than you are willing to go though for that use).
I would suggest you first try running syncthing. You and your buddy would install it on your computers (and maybe also a copy on that mac mini too if you want). On one you make a shared folder, and then add that folder to the others (it will give you a long ID to copy and paste into the other machines). Then it will automatically sync changes between machines. The sync happens with the computers talking to each other, there isn’t a copy of the files on a sever too (which is why I say you might want to also sync to that mac mini).
Thanks for the advice. I’m thinking Seattle is too complicated for me took with. Hopefully there’s a simpler solution. I just refuse to pay for cloud storage when I have so much available storage at home that I’d like to utilize. Apple used used to have this feature. Even after they ended their server OS, they incorporated the ability to access one’s computer remotely for a long time. I’m guessing because of the security risk it posed, they ended the ability to do it natively.
Thanks tomservo! I’ll look into that.