Upgrading a really old seafile server (debian)

Seafile Server
1

Hey guys,

I have an old small seafile server, which was running incredibly well, but now I cannot postpone upgrades any longer:

  • debian 10 (buster)
  • seafile-server-7.1.5

my questions:

  1. upgrade seafile first? and if yes up to which version?
  2. or upgrade debian first? will run seafile 7 on debian 11?

which seafile server version supports which debian versions?

Best and many thanks,

Hp

2

For deployment using binary packages,Seafile versions 11 and below can all run on Debian 10.Starting from Seafile 12.0, Debian 11 or a newer version is required for support.Since version 13.0, binary-based deployment for community edition is no longer supported.

According to the standard deployment plan, we recommend deploying the Seafile service using Docker. This way, you can still use Debian 10 and do not need to upgrade your operating system.

Upgrading a very old Seafile instance to the latest version directly on the old instance machine is hard. So we suggest you follow backup and recovery process, i.e., running a new Seafile instance with newest version and migrate the data from the old instance. The related document is Backup and Recovery - Seafile Admin Manual . Our suggestion steps steps are below:

1. Deploy a new Seafile instance with Docker in the machine

2. Stop the new Seafile instance and clean its database (MySQL/MariaDB data)

3. Backup and restore database and seafile data from old instance to the new instance（you can also use the existing seafile-data directory Migrate from non-docker deployment - Seafile Admin Manual

4. Now the database tables in the new instance are for the old version. You need to run the upgrade scripts to update the database tables to be compatible with the newest version. (Or you can run the SQL statements manually, the files are under seafile-server-latest/upgrade/sql)

5. Restart the new Seafile instance, and check the logs to see if there are any database related errors. If so, fix them manually.

3

Hello

Until seafile 12 you can continue to use debian. Docker provide an another way and is some case is not adapted. In my case I user LXC and I can’t deploy docker in production.

My suggestion is :

  • to update your server to bookworm
  • update python ecosystem and follow seafile documentation to add missing library
  • rule seafile update process step by step as explained with seafile documentation
  • test and add missing python library

Maybe I’ve some note about packages installed, I can search it.

About 13 version as only docker is supported. You will reflect about continue or not with seafile solution. As any plan/documentation is proposed to permit a standalone deployment ,could be complicate.

4

thanks @DunFusheng I think I will go with the backup & restore option. so I will backup a seafile 7.1.5 installation and try to restore it on a new system (with debian trixie). do you have a suggestion, to which seafile version on the new system I should try to restore? I could upgrade to seafile 10, and when the system is running upgrade to 11 (since the UID changes seem a critical step to). and then upgrade further. or would you suggest to upgrade directly to a higher version?

we will also upgrade to seafile enterprise. would you still advise to switch to a docker-based installation?

many thanks for your support!

Hp

5

Upgrade to Seafile 10 seems to be a good middle step.

Yes, a docker-based installation is a recommended one.