A while ago I wrote this post on how to use Grive. Grive is a cross platform/architecture client that allowed me to sync files with Google Drive. I really liked the setup, but now I wanted another cloud storage solution, where I could store the not-so-important files and not take up space on my google drive account.

Desired Cloud Storage Capabilities

I had a couple of criteria that the cloud storage solution had to support:

  1. I could manage the files with a cli (some people called this headless). Whether this was done with the API or something else, it didn’t really matter to me
  2. It could be used cross platform and architecture. So I wanted to be able to use it on a Mac, Windows, Linux, and Android. For Linux, I wanted to be able to use it on x86, powerpc, ARM or whatever architecture.

SkyDrive/OneDrive

I haven’t used skydrive before, so I wanted to give it a try. First, what is skydrive? from wikipedia:

SkyDrive (officially Microsoft SkyDrive, previously Windows Live SkyDrive and Windows Live Folders) is a file hosting service that allows users to upload and sync files to a cloud storage and then access them from a Web browser or their local device.

So it’s Microsoft’s version of a cloud storage solution. There is a pretty good comparison page from a Microsoft, comparing SkyDrive, iCloud, Google Drive, and DropBox. Here is quick snippet from the page:

SkyDrive Comparison Syncing Files with Various Cloud Storage Solutions

You can register for the free 7GB SkyDrive account here . After the registration is finished you can login and see your account:

skydrive logged in Syncing Files with Various Cloud Storage Solutions

There is a python client available for SkyDrive that uses the SkyDrive API. It’s called python-skydrive, here is a link to the client.

Python-Skydrive

To use the python-skypdrive (now called python-onedrive) client, you have to register the SkyDrive application with the “Live Connect Developer Center”. First visit the Dev Center, here. Login with the same credentials that you created when you registered for SkyDrive and you should be inside the Dev Center:

Live connect dev center Syncing Files with Various Cloud Storage Solutions

Click on “My Apps” and then click on “Create Application”:

Live dev center my apps Syncing Files with Various Cloud Storage Solutions

After clicking “Create Application” you can call it whatever you want. Then after clicking Next it will show your client ID and the client secret:

skydrive Api rgistered i Syncing Files with Various Cloud Storage Solutions

Make sure to set Mobile Client App to yes and then click Save. Add both the Client ID and Secret to your .lcrc file:

$ cat ~/.lcrc
client:
  id: 0000620A3E4A
  secret: gndrjIOLWYLkOPl0QhW

I was actually using my Mac, so I ended using Mac-Ports to do the install. First I checked which version of python I have installed:

kelatov@kmac:~$port list installed | grep python
python27                       @2.7.5          lang/python27
python27                       @2.7.5          lang/python27
python32                       @3.2.5          lang/python32
python_select                  @0.3            sysutils/python_select

The application supported python2.7, so let’s install pip for that:

kelatov@kmac:~$sudo port install py27-pip

Now using pip, let’s install the SkyDrive client:

kelatov@kmac:~$sudo pip-2.7 install 'python-skydrive[standalone]'
Downloading/unpacking python-skydrive[standalone]
  Downloading python-skydrive-13.08.2.tar.gz
  Running setup.py egg_info for package python-skydrive

  Installing extra requirements: 'standalone'
Downloading/unpacking requests (from python-skydrive[standalone])
  Downloading requests-2.0.0.tar.gz (362kB): 362kB downloaded
  Running setup.py egg_info for package requests

Installing collected packages: python-skydrive, requests
  Running setup.py install for python-skydrive

    Installing skydrive-cli script to /opt/local/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/bin
  Running setup.py install for requests

Successfully installed python-skydrive requests
Cleaning up...

It looks like I need python-yaml to do the authentication, so I installed that as well:

$ sudo port install py27-yaml

The skydrive-cli script was placed in a weird location:

kelatov@kmac:~$find /opt/local -name skydrive-cli /opt/local/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/bin/skydrive-cli

So I went ahead and added a symbolic link under /opt/local/bin:

kelatov@kmac:~$sudo ln -s /opt/local/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/bin/skydrive-cli /opt/local/bin/skydrive-cli

Now it’s time to authorize our client to be able to access SkyDrive. Here is the command for that:

kelatov@kmac:~$skydrive-cli auth
Visit the following URL in any web browser (firefox, chrome, safari, etc),
  authorize there, confirm access permissions, and paste URL of an empty page
  (starting with "https://login.live.com/oauth20_desktop.srf") you will get redirected to in the end.
Alternatively, use the returned (after redirects) URL with "/opt/local/bin/skydrive-cli auth <URL>" command.

URL to visit: https://login.live.com/oauth20_authorize.srf?scope=wl.skydrive+wl.skydrive_update+wl.offline_access&redirect_uri=https%3A%2F%2Flogin.live.com%2Foauth20_desktop.srf&response_type=code&client_id=790E

URL after last redirect: https://login.live.com/oauth20_desktop.srf?code=c0c
API authorization was completed successfully.

So first it provides you with a URL to visit and after you allow access, it will throw to a URL with a blank page. You can then copy that URL and paste it in to the command and it will be authorized. At this point you will be able to check the contents of your SkyDrive with the cli:

kelatov@kmac:~$skydrive-cli tree
SkyDrive:
  Documents:
  Pictures:
  Public:

After I started using the cli, I realized it was like an FTP client for SkyDrive. Here are the available actions:

Supported operations:
  {auth,quota,recent,info,info_set,link,ls,mkdir,get,put,cp,mv,rm,comments,comment_add,comment_delete,tree}
    auth                Perform user authentication.
    quota               Print quota information.
    recent              List recently changed objects.
    info                Display object metadata.
    info_set            Manipulate object metadata.
    link                Get a link to a file.
    ls                  List folder contents.
    mkdir               Create a folder.
    get                 Download file contents.
    put                 Upload a file.
    cp                  Copy file to a folder.
    mv                  Move file to a folder.
    rm                  Remove object (file or folder).
    comments            Show comments for a file, object or folder.
    comment_add         Add comment for a file, object or folder.
    comment_delete      Delete comment from a file, object or folder.
    tree                Show contents of skydrive (or folder) as a tree of
                        file/folder names. Note that this operation will have
                        to (separately) request a listing of every folder
                        under the specified one, so can be quite slow for
                        large number of these.

You can’t even put a directory into SkyDrive, so I would have to write another script to basically recursively put files from a directory. There was also no sync functionality, like with grive. I think the client is great and I am sure it will get better with future releases.

DropBox

At this point I wanted to try the most popular cloud storage solution out there: DropBox. I first installed it on my Mac. The install was pretty straight forward, just download it and launch it, at which point it will ask you to login to dropbox:

dropbox installer Syncing Files with Various Cloud Storage Solutions

After the install is done, you will see the dropbox status in your notification area:

dropbox notificateion Syncing Files with Various Cloud Storage Solutions

That was just for the Mac. I then read up on how to setup dropbox on a headless linux server:

All the installs provide an already compiled binary for either x86 or x86_64 architectures but nothing else. I then ran into a couple of CLIs for dropbox:

But they were just CLIs that depended on dropboxd to be already running (which was only provided for x86 and x86_64 architectures). There is a nautilus-plugin, which can be compiled (the source can be found here.

I finally ran into dropboxuploader.sh. Here are a couple of guides on using that:

The script was really good, but it also felt like an FTP client for DropBox. Here are the available actions:

upload [LOCAL_FILE/DIR] <REMOTE_FILE/DIR>
download [REMOTE_FILE/DIR] <LOCAL_FILE/DIR>
delete [REMOTE_FILE/DIR]
move [REMOTE_FILE/DIR] [REMOTE_FILE/DIR]
copy [REMOTE_FILE/DIR] [REMOTE_FILE/DIR]
mkdir [REMOTE_DIR]
list <REMOTE_DIR>
share [REMOTE_FILE]
info
unlink
-f [FILENAME] Load the configuration file from a specific file
-s Skip already existing files when download/upload. Default: Overwrite
-d Enable DEBUG mode
-q Quiet mode. Don't show progress meter or messages
-p Show cURL progress meter
-k Doesn't check for SSL certificates (insecure)

This script was better than the SkyDrive one (skydrive-cli), since it allowed for uploads of directories and it could skip existing files, but there was still no sync functionality (so if I had updated a text file, it wouldn’t upload it since it already existed).

Box

Everyone knows the popular alternative to DropBox is Box. The install on my Mac was similar to the DropBox install. You just launch the installer and it took care of the rest. The cool thing with Box is that you can access your files via WebDav. I ran into some pages that utilized WebDav with Box:

It had a pretty cool setup, but I later ran into:

The setup seems reasonable, so I gave it a try. Here is what I did to sync files with Box with WebDav on my Debian box. First let’s install davfs:

$ sudo apt-get install davfs2

In order for regular users to be able to mount davfs, they need to be part of the davfs2 group. Here is the command to add myself to that group:

$ sudo usermod -a -G davfs2 elatov

Then I installed some python prerequisites, so we can use the box-sync client:

$ sudo apt-get install python-pkg-resources

Now let’s install the box-sync client:

$ git clone git://github.com/noiselabs/box-linux-sync.git
$ sudo mv box-linux-sync /usr/local/.
$ sudo chown elatov:elatov /usr/local/box-linux-sync/
$ sudo ln -s /usr/local/box-linux-sync/bin/box-sync /usr/local/bin/box-sync

Now let’s check to make sure the client is ready for setup:

$box-sync check
Created configuration file '/home/elatov/.noiselabs/box/box-sync.cfg'
Created example configuration file '/home/elatov/.noiselabs/box/box-sync.cfg.sample'
* Checking davfs installation...
* Congratulations. Your Davfs install is OK ;)

That looks good, now let’s run the setup:

$ box-sync setup
* Setting up davfs...
* Created sync directory at '/home/elatov/Box'
*  Created a personal davfs2 directory at '/home/elatov/.davfs2'
*  Created a personal cache directory at '/home/elatov/.davfs2/cache'
* Created a new secrets file in '/home/elatov/.davfs2/secrets'
* Installed a new davfs config file in '/home/elatov/.davfs2/davfs2.conf'
* Credentials are missing from /home/elatov/.davfs2/secrets. Please add them:
  $ echo "https://www.box.com/dav MYEMAIL MYPASSWORD" >> /home/elatov/.davfs2/secrets

* Box mount point is missing. Please add this line to your /etc/fstab:
  $ sudo sh -c 'echo "https://www.box.com/dav /home/elatov/Box davfs rw,user,noauto 0 0" >> /etc/fstab'

* '/home/elatov/.davfs2/davfs2.conf' looks good ;)

Now let’s add the credentials to the ~/.davfs2/secrets file:

$ echo "https://www.box.com/dav MYEMAIL MYPASSWORD" >> ~/.davfs2/secrets

and also let’s add the mount point to our /etc/fstab file:

$ sudo sh -c 'echo "https://www.box.com/dav /home/elatov/.box davfs rw,users,noauto 0 0" >> /etc/fstab'

Note: I added the users parameter to the fstab entry, this will allow regular users to un-mount that volume as well.

Next I changed my default folder to be .box, this is done by editing the ~/.noiselabs/box/box-sync.cfg file and modifying the following line:

box_dir = .box

Now let’s create the mount point:

$ mkdir .box

and lastly allow regular users to use the davfs mount utility, this is done by running the following:

$ sudo chmod  u+s /usr/sbin/mount.davfs

Now to actually access our Box files via webdav:

$ box-sync start

To make sure it’s mounted, you can run the following:

$ /bin/df -h -t fuse
Filesystem               Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
https://www.box.com/dav   26G   13G   13G  50% /home/elatov/.box

Now you can use rsync, or even unison (described in the above guide) to keep your files synced up. To un-mount the volume just run the following:

$ box-sync stop

The setup was pretty good, but davfs was a little slow. Some times I would run ls on the volume and if the directory had over 10 files, it would take a while to display the files. I also didn’t like the idea of modifying my /etc/fstab to get this running. I was still stuck on the simplicity of the grive client for google drive.

Storage Made Easy (SME)

In my efforts to speed up Davfs with Box, I ran into Storage Made Easy (SME). From their FAQ, here is what they do:

What exactly does Storage Made Easy do? Storage Made Easy Provide a Cloud File Server that can be used by individuals or teams and that unifies information from different file stores and SaaS services to make them easier to access, search, and manage. Over 40 different file clouds and services are supported and unlike other vendors no files need to be moved, copied or replaced to provide this service.

So SME is basically a broker for all different cloud solutions and they just keep metadata of all the files and don’t actually store the data. They support a bunch of cloud solutions, from their cloud list, here is their supported list:

sme cloud list Syncing Files with Various Cloud Storage Solutions

You can see that SkyDrive, Dropbox, and Box are all supported and a lot of other ones are supported as well. Surprisingly the Ubuntu Client actually worked on my Chromebox (ARM Based). I downloaded the client from here. The install went okay, first install the deb package:

$ sudo dpkg -i storagemadeeasy_4.0.7.deb
Selecting previously unselected package storagemadeeasy.
(Reading database ... 167023 files and directories currently installed.)
Unpacking storagemadeeasy (from storagemadeeasy_4.0.7.deb) ...
dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of storagemadeeasy:
 storagemadeeasy depends on libqt4-core (>= 4.3); however:
  Package libqt4-core is not installed.
 storagemadeeasy depends on fuse-utils; however:
  Package fuse-utils is not installed.
 storagemadeeasy depends on libfuse-perl; however:
  Package libfuse-perl is not installed.
 storagemadeeasy depends on libfilesys-statvfs-perl; however:
  Package libfilesys-statvfs-perl is not installed.
 storagemadeeasy depends on liblchown-perl; however:
  Package liblchown-perl is not installed.
 storagemadeeasy depends on libfuse-dev; however:
  Package libfuse-dev is not installed.
 storagemadeeasy depends on libqt4-gui; however:
  Package libqt4-gui is not installed.

dpkg: error processing storagemadeeasy (--install):
 dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
Processing triggers for bamfdaemon ...
Rebuilding /usr/share/applications/bamf-2.index...
Processing triggers for desktop-file-utils ...
Processing triggers for gnome-menus ...
Errors were encountered while processing:
 storagemadeeasy

Then to install the missing dependencies, just run the following:

$ sudo apt-get install -f
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
Correcting dependencies... Done
The following extra packages will be installed:
  fuse-utils libfilesys-statvfs-perl libfuse-dev libfuse-perl liblchown-perl
  libqt4-core libqt4-gui libselinux1-dev libsepol1-dev
Suggested packages:
  libunix-mknod-perl
The following NEW packages will be installed:
  fuse-utils libfilesys-statvfs-perl libfuse-dev libfuse-perl liblchown-perl
  libqt4-core libqt4-gui libselinux1-dev libsepol1-dev
0 upgraded, 9 newly installed, 0 to remove and 2 not upgraded.
1 not fully installed or removed.
Need to get 0 B/496 kB of archives.
After this operation, 1,949 kB of additional disk space will be used.
Do you want to continue [Y/n]?

After it’s installed you can launch the GUI to configure the cloud providers. So from the terminal run:

$ smeexplorer

and it will ask you to authenticate:

sme explorer Syncing Files with Various Cloud Storage Solutions

After your are authenticated, you can add a storage provider. For example I added box.net:

sme add cloud provider Syncing Files with Various Cloud Storage Solutions

Then you can launch the sync center:

$ smesynccenter

You will have to authenticate again and you can define the sync schedule. For example I asked it to sync every 5 minutes:

sme sync center 5min Syncing Files with Various Cloud Storage Solutions

and then you can link a local folder to a remote folder from any of the providers that you have added. Here I am syncing my local pic folder to the Box.net provider:

link folder sme Syncing Files with Various Cloud Storage Solutions

You can also mount all the providers with the smeclient. Run it with the following command:

$ smeclient

and then choose a mount point and enter your credentials and it will mount it for you:

smeclient 1 Syncing Files with Various Cloud Storage Solutions

After it’s done you will see the mount point:

$df -h -t fuse
Filesystem      Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/fuse       4.0T     0  4.0T   0% /home/elatov/.sme

It was actually much faster than the DavFS mountpoint, but there was no CLI. From the FAQ:

How do I a headless command line mount of the Linux Drive? You should enter the following command into a bash startup script:

su -c "smemount /path/to/folder login:password" user

So the only thing you could do is mount like you did with davfs and box, but the SME Sync Center couldn’t be launched without Xorg running. I really liked the product (the idea is fantastic, if I ever want to tranfer between storage cloud solutions, I will definitely use this), but the lack of the CLI pushed me back.

UbuntuOne

At this point I thought if I could get something running on the ARM Chromebook (which was running Ubuntu), then I will just figure out the rest of the OSes later. So I decided to try out UbuntuOne, I have heard of this a while back, but I just never gave it a try. To set it up, first install the client:

$ sudo apt-get install ubuntuone-client

Then let’t change the default sync directory to be ~/.ubone instead of ~/Ubuntu One. This is done by editing the /etc/xdg/ubuntuone/syncdaemon.conf file and modifying the following line:

root_dir.default = ~/.ubone

Next we can launch the GUI to get authenticated:

$ ubuntuone-control-panel-qt

And you will see the following:

ubone setup Syncing Files with Various Cloud Storage Solutions

After that click on “Sign me in with my existing account” and it will ask you to authenticate:

ubon auth Syncing Files with Various Cloud Storage Solutions

After you are authenticated it will show you which folder it will sync with and the one we have set it perfect:

ub one sync Syncing Files with Various Cloud Storage Solutions

After you are done with the configuration, you should see the syncdaemon running:

$ps -ef | grep ubuntuone
elatov   22259     1  0 13:02 ?        00:00:02 /usr/bin/python /usr/lib/ubuntuone-client/ubuntuone-syncdaemon

And you can also check the status but using the CLI:

$u1sdtool -s
State: QUEUE_MANAGER
    connection: With User With Network
    description: processing the commands pool
    is_connected: True
    is_error: False
    is_online: True
    queues: IDLE

There are also instructions on how to get authenticated on a headless Linux server. The instructions are laid out here. You just have to use a python script to get authenticated. I ran into some forums on how to set it up for Debian, which were my two other machines (UbuntuOne had clients for MacOS and Windows as well):

The Fedora one seemed okay, just had to add a repository but the Debian setup seemed surprisingly complicated. As I started to configuration on Fedora, I ran into an issue where the NetworkManager had to be running (link). Some of these had static IPs and had no need to run that. Rather then installing NetworkingManager on all of my machines, I decided to move one. So far, I really liked UbuntuOne, if you are using Ubuntu Laptops, I would definitely recommend it, but if you are using another distribution, it might be a little difficult to setup.

Others and Seafile

At this point I just started doing some random research.

Syncany

The first one I ran into was Syncany, from their site:

Syncany is an open-source cloud storage and filesharing application. It allows users to backup and share certain folders of their workstations using any kind of storage, e.g. FTP, Amazon S3 or Google Storage.

While the basic idea is similar to Dropbox and JungleDisk, Syncany is open-source and additionally provides data encryption and more flexibility in terms of storage type and provider

The idea was similar to SME, but it was opensource. I couldn’t find any CLI, just GUI for this application. And it seemed that they are trying to integrate with SparkleShare:

7 Mar 2013: We’re still hanging in there. Even though the direction is now a different one. We’re first trying to integrate Syncany with SparkleShare as a backend. Check out a detailed status in my recent mailing list post.

SparkleShare

SparkleShare seemed pretty cool, from their site:

How does it work? SparkleShare creates a special folder on your computer. You can add remotely hosted folders (or “projects”) to this folder. These projects will be automatically kept in sync with both the host and all of your peers when someone adds, removes or edits a file.

It’s almost like a private dropbox setup. You run a server and then you connect clients to the server and every one synchronizes between each other. When I was reading about it, I thought of git right away (it seemed so similar), as I kept reading I saw the following:

SparkleShare uses the version control system Git under the hood, so setting up a host yourself is relatively easy. Using your own host gives you more privacy and control, as well as lots of cheap storage space and higher transfer speeds.

This seemed really cool, but I actually like having the idea of having the files online somewhere, just for back up reasons.

DVCS-Autosync

Another similar tool to SparleShare is DVCS-Autosync. From their site:

dvcs-autosync is a project to create an open source replacement for Dropbox/Wuala/Box.net/etc. based on distributed version control systems (DVCS). It offers nearly instantaneous mutual updates when a file is added or changed on one side but with the added benefit of (local, distributed) versioning and that it does not rely on a centralized service provider, but can be used with any DVCS hosting option including a completely separate server - your data remains your own.

It actually used XMMP for it’s communication and it could use other tools than git, more from their site:

Synchronization of directories is based on DVCS repositories. Git is used for main development and is being tested most thoroughly as the backend storage, but other DVCS such as Mercurial are also supported. dvcs-autosync is comparable to SparkleShare in terms of overall aim, but takes a more minimalistic approach. A single Python script monitors the configured directory for live changes, commits these changes to the DVCS (such as git) and synchronizes with other instances using XMPP messages.

So you would actually need an XMPP server to make it work (or use gtalk). The idea seems really cool as well but I wasn’t really looking for hosting my own private storage cloud solution

OwnCloud

This application could almost do anything. It runs on PHP and allows you to upload files to it and also connect to other storage cloud providers (like SME) and supports WebDAV. It’s basically your own private Box.net and then some. From their site:

ownCloud gives you universal access to your files through a web interface or WebDAV. It also provides a platform to easily view & sync your contacts, calendars and bookmarks across all your devices and enables basic editing right on the web. Installation has minimal server requirements, doesn’t need special permissions and is quick. ownCloud is extendable via a simple but powerful API for applications and plugins.

There are also client available for all the platforms and you can compile your own if you wanted to. If I really wanted to host my own dropbox-like service, I would definitely give this a try… maybe for another day.

SeaFile

At this point I ran into Seafile. What was cool about seafile is that you can setup your own storage cloud if you want, or you could use their storage cloud called SeaCloud. Here is information regarding seacloud, from their site:

SeaCloud is a place for managing your documents with team members. You can create public/private groups with file syncing, wiki, discussion and other functions. SeaCloud is hosted on Amazon Web Services.

Based on the open source file-syncing tool Seafile

And here is information regarding SeaFile, for their git page:

Dropbox is good for file syncing and sharing, but is not an ideal place for collaboration. So we build Seafile, a better place for managing documents together.

In Seafile, you can create groups with file syncing, wiki, discussion and tasks. It enables you to easily collaborate around documents within a team. In addition, it is open source. So you can build a private cloud freely for your organization.

More information:

Seafile is a full-fledged document collaboration platform. It has following features:

  1. Groups with file syncing, wiki, discussion and tasks.
  2. Managing files into libraries. Each library can be synced separately.
  3. Sync with existing folders.
  4. File revisions.
  5. Library encryption with a user chosen password.

This also works in a similar way to Git:

Seafile uses GIT’s version control model, but simplified for automatic synchronization, and doesn’t depend on GIT. Every library is like a GIT repository. It has its own unique history, which consists of a list of commits. A commit points to the root of a file system snapshot. The snapshot consists of directories and files. Files are further divided into blocks for more efficient network transfer and storage usage.

So if I wanted my own private storage cloud, I would definitely give this a try as well. Actually there were a couple of sites, that compared ownCloud, SparkelShare, and Seafile and they all liked Seafile:

Seafile Cli Install

So I decided to try out Seafile but not for it’s server capabilities but rather for the Linux Cli connecting to their seacloud. Here is what I did to install the seafile cli on my Debian box, most of the instructions are laid out here. First install the prerequisites:

$ sudo apt-get install libglib2.0-dev

Then grab the source and extract it:

$ wget http://seafile.googlecode.com/files/seafile-latest.tar.gz
$ tar xzf seafile-latest.tar.gz

Now let’s compile libsearpc (initially I tried with the -prefix option when running ./configure, but it gave me an error during the complie, that issue is currently getting looked at, here is the link for the bug report). By default the compile puts all the files under /usr/local and that was good enough for me. I could’ve probably changed the configure scripts around but I didn’t feel like messing with it. So first go inside the source code:

$ cd seafile-1.8.2/libsearpc

For some reason the linking of the libraries is messed up as well, so run the following to include libraries that will be under /usr/local/lib:

$ setenv CC "gcc -Wl,-rpath,/usr/local/lib"

Now for the configure:

./configure --enable-compile-demo=no

and now for the compile:

$ make

and finally for the install:

$ sudo make install

Here is what I ran to compile ccnet:

$ cd seafile-1.8.2/ccnet
$ sudo apt-get install uuid-dev libevent-dev libsqlite3-dev
$ ./configure --enable-compile-demo=no
$ make
$ sudo make install

And here is what I ran to install seafile:

$ cd seafile-1.8.2
$ ./configure --enable-client --disable-gui
$ make
$ sudo make install

Now here are the commands to initialize the client:

$ sudo apt-get install python-simplejson
$ mkdir .config/seafile
$ seaf-cli init -d .config/seafile/
done
Successly create configuration dir /home/elatov/.ccnet.
Writen seafile data directory /home/elatov/.config/seafile/seafile-data to /home/elatov/.ccnet/seafile.ini

Now start the daemon:

$seaf-cli start
starting ccnet daemon ...
Started: ccnet daemon ...
starting seafile daemon ...
Started: seafile daemon ...

Now login to your seacloud management console and click on your library and it will show your repo ID for your library:

seafile repo url Syncing Files with Various Cloud Storage Solutions

The string after repo if what you need. Now to synchronize with that library create a local directory and run the following to synchronize your local directory with the remote library:

$ mkdir .sea
$ seaf-cli sync -l 30070853-17fe-4fd5 -s https://seacloud.cc -d .sea -u mylogin@me.com

You will be able to check the status by running the following:

$ seaf-cli status
# Name  Status  Progress

# Name  Status
files       downloading

You can also check which library is synchronized with which local folder by running the following:

$ seaf-cli list
Name    ID      Path
files 30070853-17fe-4fd5 /home/elatov/.sea

That’s it, now I can just run seaf-cli start on start up and my files will always synchronized. There are also Mac OS, Android, and Windows clients (all have installers). The is also a Linux Applet available. To compile the seafile-applet, run the following during the configure:

$ ./configure --enable-client --disable-server

You can launch the applet, by running the following:

$ seafile-applet &

After executing that, it will check if the seafile-daemon is running. If it is, it’ll just attach it self to that. If the seafile-daemon is not running, then it will start it up and then attach it self to that. Here is seafile running in the notification area:

seafile applet Syncing Files with Various Cloud Storage Solutions

This definitely fit my needs and I was happy with the setup. Lastly you can check on the local seafile daemon, by visiting https://localhost:13420 to see the status:

seafile client browser Syncing Files with Various Cloud Storage Solutions