[JohnR]

Well.... after middling to bad experiences with home NAS units (WD and Maxtor), I have to say I'm fairly impressed with Synology. Not perfect, but good. My unit (DS411slim) is definitely on the low end horsepower-wise, but with a bit of patience, it's doing pretty much everything I've asked of it so far. I had originally intended only to put one or maybe two drives in it for serving music files, but I've bought three WD Red drives for it now and am gradually expanding its tasks on the home network.

The issue that I am having is to do with large dumps to the server using rsync. This could well be an Apple problem... after some time, rsync just halts. Then when I re-run the script, it fails, because the shared folder on the NAS has reappeared with a different name. oFor example, riginally I had /Volumes/iTunes, then /Volumes/iTunes-1, and now /Volumes/iTunes-2. I really have no idea why...

[sts9fan]

I have had a DS211 for a few years now.  It has worked great and moving up in disk size was so easy. 

[srb]

I've only seen a Synology shared folder name change when renamed through DSM Control Panel > Shared Folder or File Station.  Is the share actually renamed when viewing through Synology DSM (hard to believe) or just appearing that way in OSX Terminal?

Can rsync access the folder using a UNC path that doesn't require the drive to be mounted (/Volumes) such as

/SynologyServerName/iTunes  or even better  /SynologyIPAddress/iTunes  ?

Steve

[Bizarroterl]

I've used Synology, Qnap, Readynas, Freenas, and unraid.  All work, but I do prefer the Synologys.  I didn't like FreeNAS and would rate it last.

[skunark]

Well.... after middling to bad experiences with home NAS units (WD and Maxtor), I have to say I'm fairly impressed with Synology. Not perfect, but good. My unit (DS411slim) is definitely on the low end horsepower-wise, but with a bit of patience, it's doing pretty much everything I've asked of it so far. I had originally intended only to put one or maybe two drives in it for serving music files, but I've bought three WD Red drives for it now and am gradually expanding its tasks on the home network.

The issue that I am having is to do with large dumps to the server using rsync. This could well be an Apple problem... after some time, rsync just halts. Then when I re-run the script, it fails, because the shared folder on the NAS has reappeared with a different name. oFor example, riginally I had /Volumes/iTunes, then /Volumes/iTunes-1, and now /Volumes/iTunes-2. I really have no idea why...

This isn't really a synology issue, it's the method on how you are mounting the drive on your mac.   Assuming you are one with the terminal I can provide you with the instructions to automount on a mac later today.

I have the Synology DS713+ with mixed results.   it's on the noisy side because of the cheap metal enclosure, no hdd isolation, and small fans so it's been shunned to the guest bedroom.   I find several of the provided packages to be gimmicky and my original task for the DS713+ is no longer supported (iTunes server (not iTunes share)).  The git package is a total joke, you have to manually configure everything.  Avoid beta software with Synology, they don't address issues nor respond to the support questions with the beta (just google time machine server and synology).    It's been reliable as a time-machine server (full release) and an rsync target.  I've been using the VPN server and dyndns update features and that has also worked well.      Another disappointment are the options for offsite/cloud backup solutions, very limited and ones available are very expensive.

Ignoring my beta experience, noise and my original wish of using it as an itunes server, I should probably give the DS713+ a little more credit.   For my next NAS, I will be coming full circle and jump back to Linux... redhat linux -> lacie (2 months) -> fedora linux -> mac mini server (3 generations) -> Synology (today) -> arch linux (tomorrow)...   


Jim

[jpm]

Backup doesn't get much more affordable than Amazon S3, though Synology's native feature set is pretty limited.

I'm not personally familliar with the DS713+, but my current DS1812+ like my prior DS1510+ and DS409j are all close to silent. It's difficult to imagine how anything running in a PC chasis could be quieter or use less power without running SSD's and using passive cooling.

[skunark]

I also had a drobo for a while that was a little louder, but a Mac Pro with 4 fast HDDs is silent compared to the DS713+ with HDDs 'designed for NASes".   A mac mini with a litter of USB drives is silent compared to the DS713+.

Amazon S3 is very expensive to do a restore, from my calculations it's in the several hundreds plus range for a 1TB.   Most of the consumer level cloud backup solution is nothing more than the monthly $5 rate to download and they offer a reasonable method to overnight a USB HDD.

There is a third party package for crashplan, but Synology support will ask you to remove all third party packages if you file a ticket.

[skunark]

Automount for OSX

First some light reading:
$ man smbutil
$ man auto_master
$ man mount_smbfs
$ man automount

Check to see if the SMB server is available and list the public shares.
$ smbutil view smb://hostname.local
$ smbutil view smb://bryston-bdp-1.local

Edit ‘/etc/auto_master’ and add '/- auto_smb -nosuid’ after the line with auto_home.   
$ sudo emacs /etc/auto_master
Emacs is my editor of choice but perhaps 'nano' is a better fit for new users, i.e.
$ sudo nano /etc/auto_master
You need to do this through an account in the administrator group, the password prompted will by the user account password.   Feel free to 'man sudo' and 'man nano'

Edit a new file ‘/etc/auto_smb’ and add something like the following to it:
$ sudo nano /etc/auto_smb

Code: [Select]

# My SMB auto mounts
# Synology NAS
/mnt/NAS -fstype=smbfs,soft smb://username:password@SYNOLOGY.LOCAL/HOMES
# BDP-1
/mnt/MUSIC -fstype=smbfs,soft smb://bryston:bryston@BRYSTON-BDP-1.LOCAL/MUSIC0
#

Update automount and check the paths
$ sudo automount -vc
$ ls -laF /mnt/MUSIC
$ ls -laF /mnt/NAS
If you get some error message about locks, most likely your username/password has a typo in the /etc/auto_smb

Having your password in a plantext file is really not the best thing to do, so it's recommended to tighten permissions on the file.  If your computer is compromised, consider the password known.
$sudo chmod 600 /etc/auto_smb
$ls -laF /etc/auto_sm*
If you see a tmp file, i.e. 'auto_smb~', delete it with a 'sudo rm /etc/auto_smb~'

This isn't a perfect setup as the finder will show the both the server and a duplicated mount point that you just created, but for your rsync scripts, the mount point will exist.

Stay tuned for a better way to use rsync, so you don't have to have these mount points and your password in a text file...  I will post this tomorrow...


Jim

[JohnR]

Great! Thank you Jim, looks like that is working for me now. I had a permissions issue, which is my own fault for not following the actual instruction. Instead of

$ sudo automount -vc
$ ls -laF /mnt/MUSIC

I did:

$ sudo -s
$ automount -vc
$ ls -laF /mnt/MUSIC

This doesn't work, because the first user to ls the directory becomes the owner? With permissions 700. So once root owned it, regular old me couldn't access it. Took me a while to figure that out...

[sts9fan]

Does anyone know how to keep a drive mapped in W8.1?  Every time I reboot I need to remap to the Synology via the Synology manager. 

[srb]

Does anyone know how to keep a drive mapped in W8.1?  Every time I reboot I need to remap to the Synology via the Synology manager.

I map Synology shared folders to Windows 8.1 drive letters within Windows 8.1 (Computer > Computer tab > Map Network Drive).  I am logged in as an administrator when mapping and the mapped drives are persistent after reboot. 

Steve

[skunark]

Great! Thank you Jim, looks like that is working for me now. I had a permissions issue, which is my own fault for not following the actual instruction. Instead of

$ sudo automount -vc
$ ls -laF /mnt/MUSIC

I did:

$ sudo -s
$ automount -vc
$ ls -laF /mnt/MUSIC

This doesn't work, because the first user to ls the directory becomes the owner? With permissions 700. So once root owned it, regular old me couldn't access it. Took me a while to figure that out...

The automount -vc mostly refreshes the configuration for the daemon  (automountd), but yeah I think the first account that accesses the directory gets ownership.  I only have the one account, but if you need to adjust the permissions you can read the mount_smbfs and mount man page for possible options and adjust them in the auto_smb file. 

Both of my raspberry pi devices mount the MUSIC drive on the synology NAS as read-only and my fanless atom box that has become my 'flac' ripping station and mounts the NAS drive as RW so a cron job can rsync the files nightly to it.  I believe I have since switched rsync to use ssh instead of a directory path, which I will post that later tonight.  BTW, the options for mount_smbfs varies between various OSes and almost always the paid variety will have less.

Jim

[skunark]

John,

To avoid having your password as plain text in the auto_smb file you can just stick with rsync by setting up ssh. 

On your mac generate an SSH key pair (do give it a passphrase)
$ ssh-keygen -t rsa -C $(whoami)@$(hostname)-`date +%Y-%m-%d%n`

Copy the public key to the account directory on the NAS and append it to the authorized_keys file or just do this:
$ cat ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub | ssh username@nas.local "mkdir ~/.ssh; cat >> ~/.ssh/authorized_keys"
If you have Homebrew installed on your mac, you can install and use the ssh-copy-id command.  i.e. 'ssh-copy-id user@nas.local'

Test to make sure you can log on to your NAS without being prompted for a password
$ ssh username@nas.local

Read the rsync man pages, you might want to add the --delete switch to make sure the destination has an exact clone
$ rsync -avz - -e ssh /path/to/source/music username@nas.local:"/path/to/destination/music/"

You can set up a crontab if you want to automate the directory sync, keep in mind both computer and NAS need to be running for rsync to work.  Bring up the crontab editor and append the line to the file (and yes you have to use crontab -e to edit the file)
$ crontab -e

Code: [Select]

# Nightly backup of music
0 0 * * * /usr/bin/rsync -avz --delete -e ssh /path/to/source/music username@nas.local:"/path/to/destination/music/" --exclude=.DS_Store --exclude=.apdisk --exclude=._.DS_Store --log-file=/tmp/rsync_crontab.log
Display the content of the crontab file, should match what you pasted
$ crontab -l

You can check the /tmp/rsync_crontab.log file the next day.  FYI, files in the tmp directory are removed if you reboot.

Jim

[JohnR]

The automount -vc mostly refreshes the configuration for the daemon  (automountd), but yeah I think the first account that accesses the directory gets ownership.  I only have the one account, but if you need to adjust the permissions you can read the mount_smbfs and mount man page for possible options and adjust them in the auto_smb file. 

Looks like the "noowners" option might do it. I'll give that a try later. Although, actually, it's fine as is, it was just when initially trying it out I got stuck with that.

To avoid having your password as plain text in the auto_smb file you can just stick with rsync by setting up ssh. 

Thanks again for the details Jim. I was using rsync over ssh before but abandoned it because it's several times slower than using the filesystem mount. I assume it's the CPU in the Synology box that's the bottleneck as with two jobs running the CPU banged up to 99%. With a more powerful box it would be a better option.

The other issue with rsync over ssh was that special characters were handled differently (vs the file system method). So albums by Hespèrion XX, Andrés Segovia, etc etc would be recopied if I switched methods.

[skunark]

I've also have had fun with special characters with rsync and HFS vs FAT vs EXT3/4/BRTFS, but smb does help resolve that better than rsync via ssh.   U2, Keb' Mo', and about every song with an apostrophe in the name..    The apostrophe was an easy fix though once I realized that MusicBrainz Picard tagger swap the apostrophe for something else...

I only tend to notice the speed of rsync on the initial run, all the incremental runs are scripted and i'm typically asleep.  I'm sure the tradeoffs between ssh vs a local mount is CPU utilization on the destination vs network bandwidth.     

One rare issue with automount is occasionally it will get confused and the only resolution is to manually remount stale mount points or reboot. 


Glad the automount worked for you, it is a lot easier to script if the mount points are consistent

Jim

[JohnR]

The automount is working great!

On a different item, I was getting Time Machine failures. Scratched my head over that one, and finally realized that it happened after I "entered" Time Machine. With the "Time Machine Backup" drive already mounted, TM was trying to find it and... failing? Ejecting the TM drive and then running TM succeeds. This must be an Apple problem of some kind. Anyway, at least I know why now. I'll just check it one more time now...

Next up is to set up Windows backups. (Not my computers, my Win VM has all its data files in the host filesystem already.) I was going to use Crashplan to backup to the NAS and then selectively to the cloud, but CP won't allow you to backup to a NAS. Unless you actually install their software on the NAS, which means installing Java. I don't think my CPU has enough grunt for it (not to mention the hassle). That's nuts, it should just back up to a network share, why on earth not? Anyway, so much for CP then, the Synology Data Replicator utility looks like it works OK as a daily backup so I'll just use that.

[skunark]

The automount is working great!

On a different item, I was getting Time Machine failures. Scratched my head over that one, and finally realized that it happened after I "entered" Time Machine. With the "Time Machine Backup" drive already mounted, TM was trying to find it and... failing? Ejecting the TM drive and then running TM succeeds. This must be an Apple problem of some kind. Anyway, at least I know why now. I'll just check it one more time now...

Next up is to set up Windows backups. (Not my computers, my Win VM has all its data files in the host filesystem already.) I was going to use Crashplan to backup to the NAS and then selectively to the cloud, but CP won't allow you to backup to a NAS. Unless you actually install their software on the NAS, which means installing Java. I don't think my CPU has enough grunt for it (not to mention the hassle). That's nuts, it should just back up to a network share, why on earth not? Anyway, so much for CP then, the Synology Data Replicator utility looks like it works OK as a daily backup so I'll just use that.

I do get random time-machine backup failures with Synology, and the only fix is to reboot, so watch out for that.    In the past, I did notice with the mac mini server running as a time-machine server, that the backup mount was automatic and also hidden, so I never tried to mount it with the NAS.   It is interesting that it failed when you mounted it, though...

You might double check that the windows VM image is getting backed up.   Online backups do exclude them and it might be too large of a file for time-machine.  My virtualbox image of my website isn't backed up, by either time-machine or backblaze, but i'm actually okay with that.

Other than my work laptop running windows, i've been mostly windows free for 8 years at home.  I actually see that as a victory and really not sure why today, i guess my anti-microsoft days are fading...  Mac is also losing ground too, at the peak i had five macs in the house (3 of which dual booted to windows), and now i'm down to one macbook pro plus several IOS devices.  It's interesting how this is all changing.   I'm the only one that wants vinyl, CDs and actual lossless files, in a way i've failed as an audiophile, but at least good headphones are appreciated...   I assume part of our mission as audiophiles is to recruit new members

I'm pretty much anti-java, anti-flash and anti-internet explorer, and I thought crashplan was working on native clients but i've since assumed they've given up.   The anti-java in me   is the only reason why i've stayed with backblaze even when i found out they have no way to check if they have your files are actually backed up.      Why not use the windows backup feature to the network share and have crashplan installed on the windows machines as well?    I haven't compared the windows backup utility against what synology provides nor vs. time machine, but sure something is possible even if you use the microsoft sync utility.    I know a time-machine restore over a network is painful, so having an external USB drive with the time-machine data was a welcome feature when i had to restore.  With the NAS, I am expecting any restore to take a good day vs what i had with the luxury of plugging in the a USB drive; but this is a rare event, hopefully.     

Jim

[JohnR]

Hi Jim, I've set up my Windows (and OSX) VMs to use network shares from the host filesystem, so the user files are backed up by the host backups. The VMs themselves get backed up in entirety once a week to a hard drive. I suppose I'll change that to use the NAS.

The Windows machines aren't mine so minimal "interference" is necessary. I'll probably set up daily backups to the NAS and then use rotating offsite backups from that to a pair of hard drives. My upload bandwidth is very limited so it could only be used for a small subset of files. It was an interesting idea to use CP for both NAS backup and offsite backup but their limitations make it too hard.