You are reading the documentation of FileRun 2026.4.0, which is not released yet. It is subject to change, so do not use it for planning. Go to the documentation of FileRun 2026.3.0

Administering shared drives🔗

This page is for the administrators. It describes the Shared drives section of the control panel, the permissions that let administrators and users create drives, and the maintenance of the drives. For the main ideas, see Shared drives.

Who can administer shared drives🔗

These accounts can administer shared drives:

• the superuser
• every independent administrator. No permission is needed.
• a regular administrator who has the permission User can manage shared drives.

The superuser gives the permission to a regular administrator in the user form, in the Admin tab, under Admin permissions. The same permission is in the role form. Only the superuser can set it.

What each of them can do:

• The superuser can manage every drive. Only the superuser can set the path of the folder of a drive, and the folder in which the new drives are created.
• Another administrator can manage two kinds of drives:
  • the drives for which that administrator is the admin
  • the drives that have no admin

The Shared drives section is hidden from the other administrators.

The admin of a drive🔗

Each drive can have one admin. The admin is an administrator who can manage shared drives. By default, the administrator who creates a drive in the control panel becomes its admin.

The admin of a drive is not a member of the drive. The admin manages the drive and its members in the control panel, but does not see its files in the file manager. To work with the files, the admin must be a member. Without a membership, the file manager shows "The shared drive was not found!", also to the superuser.

The superuser can add any account as a member, the admin included. An independent administrator cannot add itself. A regular administrator can add itself only when its own account is in a group that it manages, or when it manages all the groups.

The folder of the shared drives🔗

The superuser sets this folder under Files → Settings → General, in the Shared drives section, in the field Folder of the shared drives. The field is empty after the installation and after the update.

• FileRun creates the folder of each new drive inside this folder. The folder of a drive is named with a number, not with the name of the drive.
• FileRun creates this folder, and the missing folders above it, when it creates the first drive.
• A change of this setting applies only to the new drives. The existing drives keep their folders.
• While this field is empty, only the superuser can create a drive, by typing its Path. The users cannot create drives from the file manager.

Warning

Choose a folder that is outside every home folder. FileRun does not check this. When the folder of a drive is inside the home folder of a user, that user sees the files of the drive as the user's own files. A move or a deletion that the user makes there can end the memberships of the drive.

The list of the shared drives🔗

The drives are in the control panel, under Files → Shared drives. The list has these columns:

• Name
• Description
• Admin: empty for a drive that has no admin
• Members: the number of members. A group counts as one member.
• Space quota: empty for a drive that has no quota
• Enabled
• Created

The search box finds a text in the name or in the description of a drive.

The superuser sees every drive. Another administrator sees the drives for which that administrator is the admin, and the drives that have no admin.

Adding a shared drive🔗

Click Add new. The tab Add shared drive opens. The form has three sections.

General:

Permissions:

The effects of these permissions are described in Working in a shared drive.

Storage:

Click Add shared drive. To add the members, open the new drive with a double-click.

The path of a drive🔗

The superuser can type the full path of the folder of a drive.

• The folder can exist already. Its content then becomes the content of the drive.
• A missing folder is created, together with the missing folders above it.
• FileRun refuses an empty path, a path that starts with a dot, a relative path, the installation folder and the root of the filesystem.
• FileRun does not refuse a folder inside a home folder, a folder that holds a home folder, a folder inside another drive, or the folder of another drive. Avoid these cases. See Special cases and limits.

Editing a shared drive🔗

Double-click a drive in the list. The tab Edit shared drive %1 opens, with two tabs: Settings and Members.

The Settings tab has the same fields as the form that adds a drive. The Storage section also shows Space used, which counts the files of the drive and its trash.

Changing the admin🔗

Click the button of the Admin field, and choose an administrator. The list holds the superuser, the independent administrators, and the regular administrators who have the permission to manage shared drives. An independent administrator sees only its own account in this list.

• After you give a drive to another admin, you can no longer manage it, unless you are the superuser.
• You cannot take the admin away from a drive. You can only choose another admin.

Changing the path🔗

Only the superuser sees the Path field. Its warning says "Changing the path removes every member and every share of the drive.".

• FileRun does not move the files. The old folder stays on the disk, and the drive shows the content of the new folder.
• Every membership is removed, and every share made from the drive.
• The web links, the folder notification rules and the stars of the members in the drive are removed.
• A guest that has nothing else shared with it is deleted.

Managing the members🔗

The Members tab of a drive lists its members, with the columns Name, Role, Added and Added by. Its buttons are Add members, Invite a guest, Change role and Remove.

• Add members: choose the role first. Then choose the users and the groups. They all get that role.
• Invite a guest: type the e-mail address of a person who has no account. FileRun creates a guest account, and sends an invitation with a link to the drive. This button is shown only when Enable guest user accounts and Enable the invitation of new guest users are on, under Users → Settings → Guest access.
• Change role: choose the new role of the selected member.
• Remove: removes the selected member, after a confirmation. The web links, the folder notification rules and the stars that the member's users had in the drive are deleted. A guest that has nothing else shared with it is deleted.

The roles are described in Working in a shared drive. The admin of a drive can change and remove every member, the Managers included.

Who you can add:

• The superuser can add every user and every group.
• A regular administrator can add the groups that the administrator manages, and the users of these groups. A regular administrator who manages all the groups can add every user and every group.
• An independent administrator can add the users and the groups that the independent administrator created.

For a regular administrator, the chooser lists every user, also the users that the administrator is not allowed to add. FileRun refuses these users. For an independent administrator, the chooser lists only the accounts and the groups that it created, and its own account.

Note

The Members tab sends no e-mail to the users who are not guests. Such a user finds the drive under Shared drives, and gets the entry "New shared drive available" in its activity log. A Manager who adds members in the file manager can send an e-mail with Notify people.

When the setting Automatic share e-mail notifications is on, every new member is subscribed to the folder notifications of the drive, for New files and New comments and tags. The setting is under E-mail → Settings → Notifications.

Letting users create shared drives🔗

The permission User can create shared drives is in the Share tab of the user form and of the role form. A user who has it creates drives in the file manager, from Shared drives.

• An account that has a storage quota cannot have this permission. While Space quota is set in the Home folder tab, the checkbox is disabled.
• A guest can never have this permission.
• The superuser always has it.
• The creation needs the Folder of the shared drives setting.

A drive created in the file manager has no admin and no quota. Its creator is its first member, with the role Manager. See Managing a shared drive.

Drives without an admin🔗

A drive has no admin in these cases:

• A user created it in the file manager. This includes the superuser.
• Its admin was deleted.
• Its admin can no longer manage shared drives. For example, the permission User can manage shared drives. was removed, the account is no longer an administrator, or its role changed.

The deactivation of the admin's account does not change the admin.

Every administrator who can manage shared drives sees the drives without an admin, with an empty Admin column, and can manage them. To take a drive, open it and choose yourself in the Admin field. A drive without an admin has these limits:

• Its quota warnings go to nobody.
• When no member has the role Manager, only the administrators can manage its members.

Disabling a drive🔗

Clear the Enabled checkbox of a drive, and save. While a drive is disabled:

• The members do not see it in the file manager, nor over WebDAV. Its address shows "The shared drive is currently disabled!".
• The shares made from the drive stop working. Their receivers see "The user account sharing this item is currently unavailable!".
• The web links to the drive stop working. Their visitors see "This share is no longer accessible!".
• Nothing is deleted. Everything works again when the drive is enabled.
• The members are not told.

Drives whose folder is missing🔗

The daily cron job disables every drive whose folder is not found on the disk. This can happen when a storage is not mounted, for example. The members keep their memberships, and the shares stay.

• The activity log gets the entry "Shared drive changed", under the System account, with the reason "The folder of the shared drive was not found on the disk".
• Nobody receives an e-mail about it.
• The command php cli.php 'Drive/!cli/sharing_cleanup' runs the same check by hand.

When the folder is back, the admin enables the drive again. The drive cannot be enabled while its folder is still missing. The superuser can also give the drive a new path, but a new path removes the members and the shares.

Deleting a shared drive🔗

Select one or more drives in the list, and click Delete. The window Delete shared drives? has the checkbox Permanently delete the folders of the drives., which is unchecked by default.

The superuser and the admin of a drive can delete it. A Manager of the drive cannot.

• Without the checkbox, the folder of the drive stays on the disk, with its files. Nobody can reach it from FileRun any more.
• With the checkbox, the folder is deleted. FileRun refuses this when another drive or a user has its folder at the same path, or inside the folder of the drive.

In both cases:

• The trash of the drive is emptied for good.
• Every membership is removed, and every share made from the drive.
• The web links, the folder notification rules and the stars of the members and of the receivers in the drive are removed.
• A guest that has nothing else shared with it is deleted.
• The members are not told.

The activity log gets the entry "Shared drive deleted".

The space quota🔗

• The quota of a drive counts the files in its folder and the items in its trash.
• What the members upload counts against the quota of the drive, not against their own quotas.
• You can set a quota that is lower than the space used. Nothing is deleted, and the new uploads are refused.
• The drives are not listed on the Storage usage page of the control panel.

The quota warnings🔗

The quota warnings of the drives come from the script cron/space_quota_notifications.php, which also warns the users. Schedule this script to receive them.

• The warning level is the setting Users quota warning level, under Users → Storage usage → Settings. It applies to the drives too. The default is 90%.
• The warning goes to the admin of the drive. A drive without an admin warns nobody. The Managers are not warned.
• The admin needs an e-mail address. The option Notifications of the admin's account must also be on. In the account settings, this option is Send me e-mail notifications.
• The warning is sent at most once a week.

The activity log and the notification rules🔗

The actions on the drives are logged under the account that acted. Each user that a new membership reaches also gets the entry "New shared drive available". The list of these actions is in Activity log actions.

The actions on the files of a drive are logged under the member who acted, as in a home folder.

You can make a notification rule on these actions, under E-mail → Notification rules. A drive can be chosen, by its name, in the user list of the rules and of the activity log search.

Maintenance commands🔗

The command line tools treat the drives in this way:

• cron/empty_trash.php empties the trash of the drives too, when it runs for all the accounts. With --days, it removes only the items older than that number of days. The command cannot empty the trash of a single drive.
• cron/reindex_files.php indexes the files of the drives too, when it runs for all the accounts.
• cron/make_thumbs.php creates the thumbnails of the drives too. Use --path to process one drive.
• cron/delete_old_files.php never deletes files in the drives.

After the update to FileRun 2026.4.0🔗

The update creates no drive, and leaves the Folder of the shared drives empty. After the update:

• Only the superuser can create drives, by typing a path, until the folder of the shared drives is set.
• The independent administrators can manage shared drives.
• No regular administrator has the permission User can manage shared drives.
• No user other than the superuser can create drives from the file manager.

See Getting started for the first steps.

The API🔗

The drives and their members can also be managed through the API. See API: Managing shared drives.