Using Seafile Drive Client on Linux¶

Use AppImage¶

Since 3.0.12 version, we only provide official packages in AppImage format. It can be run on most recent Linux distributions. You can find supported OS versions on https://cloud.seatable.io/dtable/external-links/a85d4221e41344c19566/?tid=YzYy&vid=pO5i

You can download SeaDrive-x86_64-x.y.z.AppImage (e.g. SeaDrive-x86_64-3.0.12.AppImage) from our official website and give it executable permissionn from the terminal.

chmod +x SeaDrive-x86_64-3.0.12.AppImage

You can also set executable permission for the AppImage file from the GUI. Right click on the AppImage file and choose the "Property" entry. From there you can set executable permission for the file. More details on: https://discourse.appimage.org/t/how-to-run-an-appimage/80

You can then double-click SeaDrive-x86_64-x.y.z.AppImage to run it, or run it directly from the terminal.

./SeaDrive-x86_64-3.0.12.AppImage

SeaDrive-x86_64-x.y.z.AppImage require FUSE version 2 to run. If your system does not have FUSE installed, please refer to https://github.com/AppImage/AppImageKit/wiki/FUSE to install it.

Desktop Integration¶

AppImages are standalone bundles, and do not need to be installed. However, some users may want their AppImages to be available like distribution provided applications. Please refer to https://docs.appimage.org/user-guide/run-appimages.html#ref-desktop-integration for desktop integration to display AppImage's application icons.

Auto Update¶

You can check and update the client using AppImageUpdate. After running AppImageUpdate, select your local SeaDrive-x86_64-x.y.z.AppImage for the update. AppImageUpdate can be downloaded here.

SSL CA Configuration¶

Since 3.0.13 version, you can specify the CA path using the environment variable SEAFILE_SSL_CA_PATH. When this environment variable is set, SeaDrive will prioritize reading the CA from the specified path. For example:

export SEAFILE_SSL_CA_PATH=/etc/ssl/certs/ca-certificates.crt
./SeaDrive-x86_64-3.0.13.AppImage

SeaDrive will try to find common paths for CA certificates on various distributions. If it doesn't work, you can set it by this environment variable.

Nautilus Extension¶

Since 3.0.15 version, if your desktop environment is GNOME and you are using Nautilus as your default file manager, you can install the Nautilus extension for SeaDrive to enable right-click menu options and root directory context menus.

Installation¶

You can download the Nautilus extension from here, and install it using the following commands:

mkdir ext
tar -zxvf seadrive_ext-0.0.1.tar.gz -C ext
cd ext
chmod +x install.sh
sudo ./install.sh
nautilus -q

After installation, you will then be able to access background context menus by right-clicking inside the ~/SeaDrive directory, and access SeaDrive extension by right-clicking on files and folders.

Installing with package managers (deprecated)¶

Installing on Debian/Ubuntu¶

To install the client, first add the signing key:

sudo wget https://linux-clients.seafile.com/seafile.asc -O /usr/share/keyrings/seafile-keyring.asc

If apt-get reports following error: "The following signatures couldn't be verified because the public key is not available", please update the key for seafile repository.

Then add the repo to your apt source list, using the line corresponding to your Debian/Ubuntu version :

For Debian 9 / Debian 10 / Debian 11 / Ubuntu 18.04 / Ubuntu 20.04 / Ubuntu 22.04 / Ubuntu 24.04

echo "deb [arch=amd64 signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/seafile-keyring.asc] https://linux-clients.seafile.com/seadrive-deb/$(lsb_release -cs)/ stable main" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/seadrive.list > /dev/null

Update your local apt cache :

sudo apt update

To install SeaDrive with GUI:

sudo apt-get install seadrive-gui

To install SeaDrive without GUI:

sudo apt-get install seadrive-daemon

Centos 7¶

Since 7.0.3 version, we provide official repo for CentOS or RHEL. Currently only CentOS/RHEL 7 is supported.

Add the repo (The same repo is used for seadrive.)

sudo cat > /etc/yum.repos.d/seadrive.repo <<EOF
[seadrive]
name=seadrive
baseurl=https://linux-clients.seafile.com/seadrive-rpm/centos7
gpgcheck=0
enabled=1
EOF

Install SeaDrive Client

sudo yum install -y epel-release
sudo yum install -y seadrive --enablerepo=cr

Fedora¶

Note: You can install directly from the official Fedora repository.

sudo dnf install -y seadrive-gui

Running SeaDrive with GUI¶

To use SeaDrive, just run SeaDrive-x86_64-x.y.z.AppImage from your desktop environment, or type SeaDrive-x86_64-x.y.z.AppImage in command line. After logging into your server, the virtual drive will be mounted in ~/SeaDrive.

Running SeaDrive without GUI¶

In some use cases, it is useful to run SeaDrive in a server environment.

Since 3.0.12 version, we provide the command-line client in AppImage format, which is used in the same way as seadrive daemon. After you download SeaDrive-cli-x86_64-x.y.z.AppImage (e.g. SeaDrive-cli-x86_64-3.0.12.AppImage) from our website, you can rename SeaDrive-cli-x86_64-x.y.z.AppImage to seadrive and then copy seadrive to the system path.

chmod +x SeaDrive-cli-x86_64-3.0.12.AppImage
mv SeaDrive-cli-x86_64-3.0.12.AppImage seadrive
sudo cp seadrive /usr/local/bin

First, you have to obtain an access token from your server.

curl -d "username=username@example.com" -d "password=123456" https://seafile.example.com/api2/auth-token/

Then you have to prepare a config file for SeaDrive. Let's assume that you save the config file as ~/seadrive.conf.

[account]
server = https://seafile.example.com
username = username@example.com
token = 3131a3a93156f80bc86aa9f12cf794e0364ed57b
is_pro = true

[general]
client_name = johns-ubuntu

[cache]
size_limit = 10GB
clean_cache_interval = 10

You can only specify one account in the config file. If you need to switch accounts, you'll have to stop SeaDrive, change config file and restart. Meaning of config options are as following:

token: The access token you obtained above.
is_pro: Set to true if your server is Pro edition.
client_name: This name will be displayed in the device information on the server.
size_limit: Size limit of local cache space.
clean_cache_interval: Interval of cache cleaning. The unit is minute.

Then you can start seadrive:

seadrive -c ~/seadrive.conf -f -d data-directory [-l logfile] virtual-drive-dir

Note that you must give -f option in the command line, to make sure seadrive runs in foregound, instead of forking as a daemon. By default, the data directory used by the SeaDrive GUI client will be ~/.seadrive/data. It's recommended to use this path for data directory to be consistent with the GUI client. The log file path is ~/.seadrive/logs/seadrive.log.

Sometimes you'll see the following error:

fuse: bad mount point `/home/user/SeaDrive': Transport endpoint is not connected

You can run fusermount -u /home/user/SeaDrive to fix the problem.