Metadata server

Metadata server aims to provide metadata management for your libraries, so as to better understand the relevant information of your libraries.

Deployment

Prerequisites

The startup of Metadata server requires using Redis as the cache server (it should be the default cache server in Seafile 13.0). So you must deploy Redis for Seafile, then modify seafile.conf, seahub_settings.py and seafevents.conf to enable it before deploying metadata server.

Warning

Please make sure your Seafile service has been deployed before deploying Metadata server. This is because Metadata server needs to read Seafile's configuration file seafile.conf. If you deploy Metadata server before or at the same time with Seafile, it may not be able to detect seafile.conf and fail to start.

Download docker-compose file

Please download the file by following command:

Deploy in the same machine with SeafileStandalone

Note

You have to download this file to the directory same as seafile-server.yml

wget https://manual.seafile.com/13.0/repo/docker/md-server.yml

Note

For standalone deployment (usually used in cluster deployment), the metadata server only supports Seafile using the storage backend such as S3.

wget https://manual.seafile.com/13.0/repo/docker/metadata-server/md-server.yml
wget -O .env https://manual.seafile.com/13.0/repo/docker/metadata-server/env

Modify .env

Metadata server read all configurations from environtment and does not need a dedicated configuration file, and you don't need to add additional variables to your .env (except for standalone deployment) to get the metadata server started, because it will read the exact same configuration as the Seafile server (including JWT_PRIVATE_KEY ) and keep the repository metadata locally (default /opt/seafile-data/seafile/md-data). But you still need to modify the COMPOSE_FILE list in .env, and add md-server.yml to enable the metadata server:

COMPOSE_FILE='...,md-server.yml'

To facilitate your deployment, we still provide two different configuration solutions for your reference:

Example .env for Seafile data is stored locally

In this case you don't need to add any additional configuration to your .env. You can also specify image version, maximum local cache size, etc.

MD_IMAGE=seafileltd/seafile-md-server:latest
MD_MAX_CACHE_SIZE=1GB

Example .env for Seafile data is stored in the storage backend (e.g., S3)

First you need to create a bucket for metadata on your S3 storage backend provider. Then add or modify the following information to .env:

MD_IMAGE=seafileltd/seafile-md-server:latest
MD_STORAGE_TYPE=s3
S3_MD_BUCKET=...
S3_KEY_ID=<your-key-id>
S3_SECRET_KEY=<your-secret-key>
S3_USE_V4_SIGNATURE=true
S3_PATH_STYLE_REQUEST=false
S3_AWS_REGION=us-east-1
S3_HOST=
S3_USE_HTTPS=true
S3_SSE_C_KEY=

Data for Seafile server should be accessible for Metadata server

In order to correctly obtain metadata information, you must ensure that the data of your Seafile server can be correctly accessed. In the case of deploying Metadata server and Seafile server together, Metadata server will be able to automatically obtain the configuration information of Seafile server, so you don't need to worry about this. But if your Metadata server is deployed in Standalone (usually in a cluster environment), then you need to ensure that the description of the Seafile server storage part in the .env deployed by Metadata server needs to be consistent with the .env deployed by Seafile server (e.g., SEAF_SERVER_STORAGE_TYPE), and can access the configuration file information of Seafile server (e.g., seafile.conf) to ensure that Metadata server can correctly obtain data from Seafile server.

List of environment variables for Metadata server

The following table is all the related environment variables with Metadata server:

Variables	Description	Required
JWT_PRIVATE_KEY	The JWT key used to connect with Seafile server	Required
MD_MAX_CACHE_SIZE	The maximum cache size.	Optional, default 1GB
REDIS_HOST	Your Redis service host.	Optional, default redis
REDIS_PORT	Your Redis service port.	Optional, default 6379
REDIS_PASSWORD	Your Redis access password.	Optional
MD_STORAGE_TYPE	Where the metadata storage in. Available options are disk (local storage) and s3	disk
S3_MD_BUCKET	Your S3 bucket name for the bucket storing metadata	Required when using S3 (MD_STORAGE_TYPE=s3)

In addition, there are some environment variables related to S3 authorization, please refer to the part with S3_ prefix in this table (the buckets name for Seafile are also needed).

Metadata server supports Redis only

To enable metadata feature, you have to use Redis for cache, as the CACHE_PROVIDER must be set to redis in your .env

Modify seahub_settings.py

To enable metadata server in Seafile, please add the following field in your seahub_settings.py:

Deploy in the same machine with SeafileStandalone

ENABLE_METADATA_MANAGEMENT = True
METADATA_SERVER_SECRET_KEY = '<your JWT key>'
METADATA_SERVER_URL = 'http://seafile-md-server:8084'

ENABLE_METADATA_MANAGEMENT = True
METADATA_SERVER_SECRET_KEY = '<your JWT key>'
METADATA_SERVER_URL = 'http://<your metadata-server host>:8084'

Start service

You can use following command to start metadata server (and the Seafile service also have to restart):

docker compose down
docker compose up -d

Verify Metadata server and enable it in the Seafile

1. Check container log for seafile-md-server, you can see the following message if it runs fine:

   $docker logs -f seafile-md-server
   
   [md-server] [2025-03-27 02:30:55] [INFO] Created data links
   [md-server] [2025-03-27 02:30:55] [INFO] Database initialization completed
   [md-server] [2025-03-27 02:30:55] [INFO] Starting Metadata server
   

   2. Check the seafevents.log and seahub.log, as you can see the following information in seafevents.log and no error log is reported in seahub.log:

   [2025-02-23 06:08:05] [INFO] seafevents.repo_metadata.index_worker:134 refresh_lock refresh_thread Starting refresh locks
   [2025-02-23 06:08:05] [INFO] seafevents.repo_metadata.slow_task_handler:61 worker_handler slow_task_handler_thread_0 starting update metadata work
   [2025-02-23 06:08:05] [INFO] seafevents.repo_metadata.slow_task_handler:61 worker_handler slow_task_handler_thread_1 starting update metadata work
   [2025-02-23 06:08:05] [INFO] seafevents.repo_metadata.slow_task_handler:61 worker_handler slow_task_handler_thread_2 starting update metadata work
   

2. Switch Enable extended properties in button Settings

   

3. Finally, you can see the metadata of your library in views tab

   

Directory structure

When you deploy Seafile server and Metadata server to the same machine, Metadata server will use the same persistence directory (e.g. /opt/seafile-data) as Seafile server. Metadata server will use the following directories or files:

• /opt/seafile-data/seafile/md-data: Metadata server data and cache
• /opt/seafile-data/seafile/logs/seaf-md-server: The logs directory of Metadata server, consist of a running log and an access log.