Why do everyone claim that Nextcloud is better then seafile?

#23

It was configured with Nginx.

Honestly I prefer Seafile for the more robust sync and the ability to revert the libraries as a whole … but working in a corporate with 20,000 users the decision to install McAfee (or not) isn’t mine. I realise there’s a conflict between Seafile and McAfee on our particular systems - but it’s not really simple to say it’s one product or the other.

I wasn’t really left with much choice but to find an alternate solution. I just didn’t feel like I got that much help here, particularly with the comment I highlighted which I found quite rude and abrupt. Regardless of that I spent days of my time trying everything I could to work around the issue before throwing in the towel.

#24

CE or pro? Did you purchase any support?

#25

CE.

I didn’t expect someone to jump on my issue, but some politeness and community-minded suggestions would have helped.

#26

I’m taking seafile for a spin currently, and there’s one killer feature that owncloud/nextcloud have (my current system) that I cannot figure out in seafile.

I run my system through NAT for external connectivity. However, when I’m in the LAN, I can easily open the broswer, or configure LAN only clients, to use the internal address and have no difficulties.

From what I can tell, this setup is not possible. I have windows apps working just fine, but when I try to use the android app I get a download failed, because the file_server_root binds to only one specific address. A usable system for my needs requires that I be able to access internally, directly, through an IP address that is always going to be different than the dyndns domain/ip address.

Also, I have users that VPN into the lan, and that trips the same situation.

If I can work around this, I really like seafile as an OC/NC replacement. Unfortunately I’m gong to have to continue my search unless I can figure a way around this.

#27

You’ll need to set up split horizon DNS for that.

#28

arjones85, Thanks for the pointer. It looks like that solution could work.

I’ve got to admit I think it a bit ridiculous that we have to use DNS tricks in order to be able to access the full functionality of the seafile when the other alternatives I try this is a non-issue.

Granted the back-end is more complex, but I would figure if the server can listen to any IP address, that with a logged in user it could determine the referer’s access method and use that instead of the base webUI working but file downloads not.

#29

I am curious as to why the android client would not be working, as even if it’s getting your external IP from dyndns, the traffic should still work. It would just be leaving your router and turning right back around to grab the data from the external side. Slower then internal of course, but should still work.

You have followed the manual regarding nat setup, right? https://manual.seafile.com/deploy/deploy_seafile_behind_nat.html

#30

I may not have been very clear, my mistake. Basically it was user error in the seahub_settings.py file

I installed the current version and deployed it with the seafile install script from github: https://github.com/haiwen/seafile-server-installer

Which worked great until I tried to use the webUI/android app over wifi on the same subnet as the server.
Turns out the script sets the bound IP address by default to 127.0.1.1 (incorrect loopback).

This threw me for a loop until I went into the config files and changed the bound address to the correct IP/hostname.

Since the windows client worked prefectly I did not think to inspect the config files initially until after I finally noticed that the webUI was pointing to the incorrect loopback. Once I figured that out it works fine over the LAN/NAT

Basically it was user error on my part, but my issue would still remain in our production setup where I need it to listen on 2 seperate interfaces, out LAN/NAT interface, and a seperate private VPN endpoint on a subnet that is not serviced by DNS and I’m restricted from editing any hosts files, especially on mobile clients where I don’t have jailbroken/rooted users.

As a home solution I’m very much leaning to migrating away from my personal OC install once I verify that seafile works well in all my use cases.
Unfortunately it may not work well for me in our business setting.

Unless…
Can I run 2 concurrent instances of seafile, each bound to different ports?
If I can do that with just some duplicate configuration files, I might be able to provide a work around that will be acceptable to our users.
Currently I’m testing out syncrify, but so far I much prefer seafile to any other solution I’ve seen.

#31

You should always be running seafile behind an nginx or apache proxy, this is the supported method.

Configure nginx / apache to listen on what interfaces and ports you want it to listen to.

https://manual.seafile.com/deploy/deploy_with_nginx.html

Edit: I recognize now that you may still run into an issue with the SERVICE_URL and FILE_SERVER_ROOT having to be hardcoded to only one address. I am unsure how you can get around that if clients connected to your VPN endpoint will be unable to reach your external address. Only solution I can think of right now is fix your routing so that VPN clients can still reach the external address, or configure dns to hand out internal address on the internal network and external address on the external network for your seafile dns address, then nginx / apache to listen on all the interfaces it needs to listen on.

I do not believe seafile supports multiple server daemons accessing the sql database/data directory at the same time.

#32

I’ve currently got it deployed behind nginx, with nginx handling the https, etc.
The config script in the manual sets it all up by magic, and that works like a charm.

Unfortunate about not being able to support concurrent daemons.
However, I was granted permission to install in our production env for long term testing with the typical NAT configuration, and to test with all of our non mobile connections by editing the hosts file for use over our VPN.

If this tests sucessfully I think we’ll be migrating over to seafile completely…

I appreciate all the help, this looks to be a really fantastic product.

#33

I had ownCloud for a couple of months until I too lost some data, and then switched to SeaFile. Much easier both from a front end (to use) and back end (to maintain) perspective.

#34

I’m surprised that no one here mentioned de-duplication - that is main Seafile feature for me. Wild dedup I can have “unlimited versions” for my libraries.

If I change simple mp3 tag in Owncloud/Nextcloud - they will store new file version with full size and and wasting space. Seafile will only store changed data.

#35

But this only works within a library, not over the whole server or account. --> You can use ZFS/BTRFS as filesystem to achieve this. Not sure how good the outcome would be though.

#36

We have made some good experience with ZFS and compression enabled for example. This does save storage and provides better performance compared to without using it.

Maybe i can get some numbers later.

#37

Thanks for mentioning ZFS/BTRFS - but I still think that Duplicati dedup is more useful.
For ZFS you need 4-8-16GB ECC RAM - that is not plesant

I personally have Seafile in Debian Linux and storage is on NFS share on old Synology nas.
So I cant use ZFS/BTRFS
And low ram usage with seafile is another great thing, seafile community VM work with 700MB RAM. Seafile pro with 1,5GB

#38

You speak about a backup application. We speak about file systems. I don’t get the connection here?

#39

Sorry wrong word jumped in in my head. I mean Seafile dedup (but when I wrote it I thought about Duplicati)

#40

Seafiles core is syncing and storing files, which it does much better then Nextcloud. But when it comes to extensibility, interface etc. Nextcloud is better.

Some are saying that Seafile will lose focus on syncing when they introduce addons. I don’t see it liks this. This is simply a question of application design. Look at major browsers, they all support addons. Look at web projects like Wordpress, Magento, etc. yeah sure addons will introduce security risk, true, but whats more important, it will open Seafile for a world of programmers who are more than willing to extend the system and eventually provide their work to others. And the community will decide which extension is useful or not. That’s also touches the spirit of open source. It would drive Seafiles development as whole to a new level.

#41

Indeed Seafile is really good platform to store data but there is some other features need to be added in seafile. NextCloud having a feature to prevent uploading specific file then why it can’t be incorporate in seafile.
@daniel.pan Please consider this feature as it is much needed feature.

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#42

I would find this pretty useless. As a user you will always find a way around - rename the file, zip it or whatever. So purely “cosmetic” so that the admin can claim to have no videos or music file on the server without any idea if this is true or not.

Just my2c