Seafile Official Blog

We’re excited to announce the release of Drive client 0.6 version. In this version we added two long awaited improvements: file and folder sync status overlay icons; and sync error notifications. Some syncing bugs are also fixed to make this version more reliable.

You can see the overlay icons in Windows file explorer as in the screenshot below.

A file or folder can be in a few states:

• Cloud-only (with a “cloud” icon): files or folders not downloaded to local computer yet. Only file name, size and last modification date are available.
• Synced (white tick with green background): Files or folders are completely synced to local computer. You can access them when offline.
• Partially synced (green tick with white background): Only appears on folders. This means some files or folders inside the folder are downloaded.
• Syncing: files or folders are being uploaded or downloaded.

A problem in the previous versions of SeaDrive is that there is no way for the users to know whether there is an error in syncing. In this new version, errors are communicated to the users in a few ways:

• Whenever a sync or network error is detected, a disclaimer (“!”) will be displayed on the system tray icon.
• When the client detects the server is disconnected, a notification will be popped up.
• When the client encounters an error in syncing, a notification will be popped up. And you the users can see all sync errors by right clicking the system tray icon and choose “view file sync errors”.

We hope you like this new version. Feedbacks are welcomed!

The latest Seafile Pro Edition (6.0.6) adds real-time co-authoring to its integration with Microsoft Office Online Server and Collabora Online. This ability will greatly boost collaboration productivity for teams.

With real-time co-authoring, two or more users can edit a document at the same time and see each other’s changes while they’re typing. You can see the cursor location where someone is working and what they’re typing as they type, just as if they are working on your computer or device. You can hover over the cursor location and see who is making the changes.

Co-authoring  supports most modern document formats:.docx, .pptx, and .xlsx.

Integration of Collabora Online:

Co-authoring is only supported in Collabora Online 2.0. Here are some samples for co-authoring on different document types.

Docx file:

.ods:

.pptx:

Integration of Office Online:

Co-authoring is only supported in Office Online Server 2016.

Docx file:

.xlsx:

.pptx:

We’re glad to announce that Seafile Drive client for Windows is now ready for production use. Since the initial beta release in September, the Drive client has evolved rapidly. Thanks to the feedback from our community, many issues in the beta version have been fixed in the last two months. Now the Drive client is stable enough to be used by general users. You can download it from our website. User manual is available too.

The Drive client is a new way to map your Seafile storage as a virtual drive on your computer. You can access all your files in Seafile without syncing them. We believe it’s a more intuitive way to use cloud storage. For more information about the Drive client, you may read our previous post.

There are still a few milestones ahead for the future releases:

• File locking support
• File upload/download progress
• Encrypted library support
• Keep selected folders always in sync
• Auto update of the client

We’re also working on Linux and Mac version of the Drive client. They’ll be available soon.

After Seafile pro edition 6.0 runs smoothly for several weeks on our servers (seacloud.cc, demo.seafile.com), we are glad to announce that it is ready for production use!

Quite a few important new features are added in pro edition 6.0:

• A full screen adaptive Web UI
• Collabora Online (LibreOffice Online) integration
• Role based permission control
• Two-factor authentication
• Remote wipe

Full screen adaptive Web UI

If you have a wide screen, the new full screen can take the advantage to show more contents in a line. If you have a narrow screen, the new interface can also adapt to it.

The navigation label is also changed according to feedbacks from users:

• Mine -> My Libraries
• Shared -> Shared with me
• Organization -> Shared with all
• Groups -> Shared with groups
• Starred -> Favorites
• Devices -> Linked Devices

Collabora Online (LibreOffice Online) integration

Collabora Online is LibreOffice-based online office suite that supports all major document, spreadsheet and presentation file formats, created by Collabora. It is an open source Office 365 alternative and works on all major browsers including those on mobiles.

The Collabora Online integration is finally ready. Now you can edit Microsoft Office files and LibreOffice Office files online in Seafile. Here is a screenshot:

Role based permission control

With this feature, you can define roles and assign a role to a user. This make permission/feature control more flexible.

As an example, you can define a new role “employee” to have all the feature enabled:

   'employee': {
        'can_add_repo': True,
        'can_add_group': True,
        'can_view_org': True,
        'can_use_global_address_book': True,
        'can_generate_share_link': True,
        'can_generate_upload_link': True,
        'can_invite_guest': True,
        'can_connect_with_android_clients': True,
        'can_connect_with_ios_clients': True,
        'can_connect_with_desktop_clients': True,
    },

You can define a “guest” role as:

   'guest': {
        'can_add_repo': False,
        'can_add_group': False,
        'can_view_org': False,
        'can_use_global_address_book': False,
        'can_generate_share_link': False,
        'can_generate_upload_link': False,
        'can_invite_guest': False,
        'can_connect_with_android_clients': False,
        'can_connect_with_ios_clients': False,
        'can_connect_with_desktop_clients': False,
    },

So the guest can’t create his/her own libraries and groups. He/She can’t use desktop/mobile clients too.

Two-factor authentication

This is a quite common feature nowadays and it comes to Seafile now. Seafile supports Google Authentication and text message currently.

After the admin enables this feature globally, a user can turn it on via the settings page.

After setup, the next time when the user login via Web UI or desktop/mobile clients, a dialog will popup and ask for the authentication code:

More information can be found in Seafile manual.

Remote wipe

Enterprises usually have demanding requirements on data security. Losing a laptop computer, even though not an often case, is a threat to data security. With remote wipe, files synced to a computer can be wiped after it’s lost.

A user can unlink a device via the web interface. When unlink a desktop client, he/she will be asked an option to whether wipe the data on that desktop client. If the answer is yes, the data on that client will be deleted when the client connects the server. Desktop client version 6.0 is needed to use this feature.

For mobile clients, the data is wiped by default when the device is unlinked.

Other pro features improvements

Other features in pro edition are also improved:

• Improve zip downloading by adding zip progress
• [Anti-virus] Support parallel scan
• [Anti-virus] Add option to only scan a file with size less than xx MB
• [Anti-virus] Add option to specific which file types to scan
• [Anti-virus] Add scanning virus instantly when user upload files via upload link
• [online preivew] Add printing style for doc/pdf
• [online preivew] Warn user if online preview only show 50 pages for doc/pdf with more than 50 pages
• [fix] Fix search only work on the first page of search result pages

We’re proud to announce an exciting new way to access all your files in Seafile — the Drive client. The Drive client maps your storage space on Seafile server as a virtual drive on your computer. It allows you to access all your files in Seafile immediately, without syncing them. Conceptually, the Drive client extends your local disk space with the massive storage capacity on your Seafile server.

Since the beginning of Seafile project, file syncing has been one of  the most valuable features. However, there are still some limitation with the sync client:

• The users have to manually initiate syncing of libraries. Even though this allows the users to selectively sync what they’re interested in, it’s not the most intuitive way to use cloud storage. Many users are more used to “Windows share”. Accessing cloud storage in the same way as Windows network drive is most intuitive for many users.
• The amount of file you can sync is limited by the client computer’s disk capacity. If you have huge amount of files on your server (true for large organizations),  it’s not possible to access them all on your client computer.

How it works

After installation and setting up up your Seafile account, a virtual drive will appear in your Windows explorer (labeled as ‘S:’ and named ‘SeaDrive’). You can also choose a different drive letter. The Drive client then fetches the file list from Seafile server and cache them on your local disk. No file contents are downloaded so it would finish quickly. Then you can see all your libraries and files inside the ‘S:’ drive. You could open/edit any files. File contents will be downloaded on demand. That’s it!

But wait, does it just work like Windows share or WebDAV? No, the Drive client works differently.

• Supports offline mode. You can still access the folders and cached files even there is no network connections. Your changes will be uploaded to the server after network is accessible again.
• No network delay when you browse folders, as file list are loaded during initialization and synced periodically.
• No network delay when you move, delete or create new file or folders. Metadata changes are first written to local cache then synced with the server in the background.
• No network delay when you update files, even large files. Files are first written to local cache and uploaded to the server in the background.
• Reading files works like “streaming”. You read file contents as the contents are being downloaded from the server. This reduce the delay of opening files.

Windows share doesn’t have offline mode and doesn’t work well in WAN environment. Mapping WebDAV server as local drive is usually slow, because the OS sees it as local disk and sends many redundant requests to the server.

There could be many use cases for the Drive client:

• Replace Windows Share (SMB) or Samba with Seafile.
• Access files on workstations with small local disk.
• Writing large scientific data directly to Seafile server.
• Better enforcement of company data access regulations. Users access files from Seafile server exclusively. The locally cached files can be removed on logout. In the future we’ll implement encryption for the virtual drive. Companies don’t need to worry about data leak after computer lost.

Under the hood

The Drive client works like a sync client with a FUSE like virtual file system interface. The client still use the syncing protocol for upload/download files in the background. But it also implements some “smart” caching algorithm that fetches and caches local copy of files. Then it presents the files/folders to end users as a virtual file system.

On Windows, we use Dokany, an open source user-mode file system driver and library to implement virtual drive. On Mac and Linux, we’re going to use FUSE for the task.

Where can I get it?

The Drive client is currently in beta. You can download it from Seafile download page. Note that the Drive client requires Seafile server 6.0.

What’s next?

Currently there are sill some limitations on the beta version:

1. Mac and Linux clients are under development.
2. Encrypted libraries are not supported yet.
3. File locking is not supported.
4. Lack of an option to allow the user to keep some folders always synced to local disk.

We’re rapidly developing the Drive client, so you’ll see new version very soon. Below is our road map:

1.0

• Mac and Linux client
• File locking support
• Translations
• Polished UI

1.1

• Encrypted libraries

1.2

• Enable keeping a folder sync

Side Note: Compared to Dropbox’s “project Infinite”

While we were developing the Drive client, we saw the news that Dropbox is also going to release something similar, named project Infinite. But it raises many concerns because it will use its own “kernel extensions”, other than standard and open source mechanisms like FUSE. The concerns are about both privacy and security. A kernel extension will give Dropbox even deeper access to all information on your computer. Not using standard mechanisms also introduce potential security and stability concerns.

Unlike “project Infinite”, Seafile Drive client uses open source FUSE-like mechanism to implement virtual drive. And we believe that the Drive client will have even more use cases in private cloud environment, where the network is much faster than WAN.

Seafile server 6.0 is now out of beta and production ready! This latest version comes with many improvements, most notably a full screen web UI, Seafile Drive client support, file comments.

You can download it on our official download page.

Here is an overview of major new features in 6.0 version.

A modern full screen Web UI

This new design makes Seafile look more like a web app. Making use of technologies like backbone.js and Bootstrap, the UI is now more responsive and easier to use than ever.

The new UI is also adaptive to screen sizes. If you have a wide screen, the new UI can take the advantage to show more content in one line. If you have a small screen, the new UI can also adapt to it.

We also changed the navigation labels on the left panel to make their meanings clearer.

• Mine -> My Libraries
• Shared -> Shared with me
• Organization -> Shared with all
• Groups -> Shared with groups
• Starred -> Favorites
• Devices -> Linked Devices

Seafile Drive client support

6.0 server includes supports for the new Seafile Drive client, a new way to map Seafile storage as a virtual drive on your computer.

File comments

File comments is feature asked by many users. In some old versions of Seafile, there was a feature where you could comment on a file. But it was actually implemented by starting a group discussion with the file as attachment. When we redesigned the group feature in version 5.1, this “group discussion with a file” feature was removed. In this version, we add back and re-design the file comments feature from scratch. Now the comments are directly associated with the file.

You can comment on a file in the file’s preview page. All users shared with the library will receive a notification.

Improve folder download by adding zip progress

When you download a folder in the web UI, a zip file has to be created for download. For large folders, this operation can take long to finish. When the zip file is being created, the web UI stops responding. This confuses some users.

In version 6.0, the zip task will be performed in the background and the Web UI will show the progress. This greatly improves usability.

Other Changes

• [admin] Add group transfer function in admin panel
• Remove number of synced libraries in devices page for simplify the interface and concept
• Update help pages

We are proud to announce that Seafile 6.0 has been released. Version 6.0 introduces a full screen Web UI and several other improvements. The translations are not ready yet.

Because we have done a significant amount of code cleaning, some minor features may be broken though we have tested as much as we can.

You are welcome to test it and give us feedback.

You can download it from: https://bintray.com/artifact/download/seafile-org/seafile/seafile-server_6.0.0_x86-64.tar.gz

Here is an overview of changes in version 6.0:

Full screen Web UI

If you have a wide screen, the new full screen can take the advantage to show more content in a line. If you have a narrow screen, the new interface can also adapt to it.

Change of navigation labels

The navigation label is changed according to feedbacks from users:

• Mine -> My Libraries
• Shared -> Shared with me
• Organization -> Shared with all
• Groups -> Shared with groups
• Starred -> Favorites
• Devices -> Linked Devices

Improve zip downloading by adding zip progress

In the old version, a problem with the zip download is that when the zip takes a lot of time, the web UI does not respond. If the zip task takes a few minutes, the user does not know what is happening.

In version 6.0, the zip task will be performed in the background and the Web UI will show the progress. This greatly improves usability.

Add file comment

In the Seafile old version, there was a function where you could comment on a file. It was actually starting a group discussion with the file as attachment. When we redesigned the group feature in version 5.1, this “group discussion with a file” was removed. But there were some requests and use cases for file comment, so in this version, we added a real file comment feature back.

Other Changes

• [admin] Add group transfer function in admin panel
• Remove number of synced libraries in devices page for simplify the interface and concept
• Update help pages