John's Blog

That’s right, Seafile stopped working. Well, sort of.

In yesterday’s article on Seafile I said I was gonna improve security by adding a certificate (cert). That didn’t go well.

I burned a lot of hours trying and trying (and trying) to add a cert using the same process I use for my other four web sites. It’s a quick and easy process. But nooooo, I couldn’t add a cert to Seafile. I spent most of yesterday afternoon (excluding a short nap) trying to install it.

I finally gave up and used a different process, one quick try and it worked like a charm. Frustrating.

After adding the cert I logged into my Seafile cloud with my browser but instead of looking at my files I was greeted with what you see in the picture on the left. Frustrating.

I tested file sharing using the app on my workstation and phone and Seafile works great. So something changed inside Seafile that borked using a browser. Or so I thought. What happened was that something DIDN’T change inside Seafile.

I visited forum after forum. They were all unanimous. If Seafile breaks after adding a cert you have to manually edit a config file named settings.py. Since every solution I read was unanimous about the file name and what to change I decided to try it.

The problem is… and I swear I’m not making this up (you can search the web yourself if you want to)… not ONE suggestion in ANY forum says which settings.py to change.

I expected just one settings.py file, not seven-fricken-teen. That’s right. There’s seventeen files named settings.py sprinkled like oregano through Seafile on the server.

So I shall edit each file and then un-edit that file one by one. Of course I have to stop and start the Seafile service after I edit and un-edit a file. Good thing it’s wicked cold outside.

By the way, one person mentioned that they just stopped using their Seafile web site and just used the Seafile apps instead. I could do that but I’m not gonna. The question I’m asking myself is what I’m gonna do when I find out which file it is. Am I gonna take the time to create an account on a dozen or so forums and post a comment that describes which of the seventeen files worked for me? Or am I gonna do what everyone else before me did… fix it and move on. Stay tuned.