Setup With Amazon S3

Note: Since Seafile Server 5.0.0, all config files are moved to the central conf folder. Read More.

Prepare

To setup Seafile Professional Server with Amazon S3:

  • Setup the basic Seafile Professional Server following the guide on Download and setup Seafile Professional Server
  • Install the python boto library. It’s needed to access S3 service.
    1. sudo easy_install boto
  • Install and configure memcached. For best performance, Seafile requires install memcached and enable memcache for objects. We recommend to allocate 128MB memory for memcached. Edit /etc/memcached.conf
  1. # Start with a cap of 64 megs of memory. It's reasonable, and the daemon default
  2. # Note that the daemon will grow to this size, but does not start out holding this much
  3. # memory
  4. # -m 64
  5. -m 128

Modify Seafile.conf

Edit seafile.conf, add the following lines:

  1. [commit_object_backend]
  2. name = s3
  3. # bucket name can only use lowercase characters, numbers, periods and dashes. Period cannot be used in Frankfurt region.
  4. bucket = my-commit-objects
  5. key_id = your-key-id
  6. key = your-secret-key
  7. memcached_options = --SERVER=localhost --POOL-MIN=10 --POOL-MAX=100
  9. [fs_object_backend]
  10. name = s3
  11. # bucket name can only use lowercase characters, numbers, periods and dashes. Period cannot be used in Frankfurt region.
  12. bucket = my-fs-objects
  13. key_id = your-key-id
  14. key = your-secret-key
  15. memcached_options = --SERVER=localhost --POOL-MIN=10 --POOL-MAX=100
  17. [block_backend]
  18. name = s3
  19. # bucket name can only use lowercase characters, numbers, periods and dashes. Period cannot be used in Frankfurt region.
  20. bucket = my-block-objects
  21. key_id = your-key-id
  22. key = your-secret-key
  23. memcached_options = --SERVER=localhost --POOL-MIN=10 --POOL-MAX=100

It’s recommended to create separate buckets for commit, fs, and block objects.
The key_id and key are required to authenticate you to S3. You can find the key_id and key in the “security credentials” section on your AWS account page.

When creating your buckets on S3, please first read S3 bucket naming rules. Note especially not to use UPPERCASE letters in bucket names (don’t use camel style names, such as MyCommitOjbects).

Use S3 in newer regions

After Januaray 2014, new regions of AWS will only support authentication signature version 4 for S3. At this time, new region includes Frankfurt and China.

To use S3 backend in these regions, add following options to commit_object_backend, fs_object_backend and block_backend section in seafile.conf

  1. use_v4_signature = true
  2. # eu-central-1 for Frankfurt region
  3. aws_region = eu-central-1

For file search and webdav to work with the v4 signature mechanism, you need to add following lines to ~/.boto

  1. [s3]
  2. use-sigv4 = True

Using memcached cluster

In a cluster environment, you may want to use a memcached cluster. In the above configuration, you have to specify all the memcached server node addresses in seafile.conf

  1. memcached_options = --SERVER=192.168.1.134 --SERVER=192.168.1.135 --SERVER=192.168.1.136 --POOL-MIN=10 --POOL-MAX=100 --RETRY-TIMEOUT=3600

Notice that there is a --RETRY-TIMEOUT=3600 option in the above config. This option is important for dealing with memcached server failures. After a memcached server in the cluster fails, Seafile server will stop trying to use it for “RETRY-TIMEOUT” (in seconds). You should set this timeout to relatively long time, to prevent Seafile from retrying the failed server frequently, which may lead to frequent request errors for the clients.

Use HTTPS connections to S3

Since Pro 5.0.4, you can use HTTPS connections to S3. Add the following options to seafile.conf:

  1. [commit_object_backend]
  2. name = s3
  3. ......
  4. use_https = true
  6. [fs_object_backend]
  7. name = s3
  8. ......
  9. use_https = true
  11. [block_backend]
  12. name = s3
  13. ......
  14. use_https = true

Because the server package is built on CentOS 6, if you’re using Debian/Ubuntu, you have to copy the system CA bundle to CentOS’s CA bundle path. Otherwise Seafile can’t find the CA bundle so that the SSL connection will fail.

  1. sudo mkdir -p /etc/pki/tls/certs
  2. sudo cp /etc/ssl/certs/ca-certificates.crt /etc/pki/tls/certs/ca-bundle.crt
  3. sudo ln -s /etc/pki/tls/certs/ca-bundle.crt /etc/pki/tls/cert.pem

Another important note is that you must not use ‘.’ in your bucket names. Otherwise the wildcard certificate for AWS S3 cannot be resolved. This is a limitation on AWS.

Use S3-compatible Object Storage

Many object storage systems are now compatible with the S3 API, such as OpenStack Swift and Ceph’s RADOS Gateway. You can use these S3-compatible storage systems as backend for Seafile. Here is an example config:

  1. [commit_object_backend]
  2. name = s3
  3. bucket = my-commit-objects
  4. key_id = your-key-id
  5. key = your-secret-key
  6. host = 192.168.1.123:8080
  7. path_style_request = true
  8. memcached_options = --SERVER=localhost --POOL-MIN=10 --POOL-MAX=100
  10. [fs_object_backend]
  11. name = s3
  12. bucket = my-fs-objects
  13. key_id = your-key-id
  14. key = your-secret-key
  15. host = 192.168.1.123:8080
  16. path_style_request = true
  17. memcached_options = --SERVER=localhost --POOL-MIN=10 --POOL-MAX=100
  19. [block_backend]
  20. name = s3
  21. bucket = my-block-objects
  22. key_id = your-key-id
  23. key = your-secret-key
  24. host = 192.168.1.123:8080
  25. path_style_request = true
  26. memcached_options = --SERVER=localhost --POOL-MIN=10 --POOL-MAX=100

host is the address and port of the S3-compatible service. You cannot prepend “http” or “https” to the host option. By default it’ll use http connections. If you want to use https connection, please set use_https = true option.

path_style_request asks Seafile to use URLs like https://192.168.1.123:8080/bucketname/object to access objects. In Amazon S3, the default URL format is in virtual host style, such as https://bucketname.s3.amazonaws.com/object. But this style relies on advanced DNS server setup. So most S3-compatible storage systems only implement the path style format.

Run and Test

Now you can start Seafile by ./seafile.sh start and ./seahub.sh start and visit the website.