Tag Archives: synology

Synology DSM 4.0 beta is here – breaks IPKG

Posted by on January 17, 2012 1 comment
Synology DSM 4.0 beta

Synology has really outdone themselves with DSM 4.0:

Synology DSM 4.0 beta

Although this is the first beta, it introduces a number of improvements with the most noticeable a completely revamped user interface which includes widgets and vast UI improvements over the desktop-style dashboard in DSM 3.0:

Synology DSM 4.0 beta desktop

The system information is now displayed in a side-widget and several widgets (such as the Package Manager) have received a complete rework and now include features south as Synology Cloud Services for seamless syncing between devices (no support for OS X yet) and Antivirus Essential which runs antivirus scans on your Synology NAS.

My installation and customizations (such as Squid Proxy server) initially did not work, since this beta resets IPKG Optware. The fix is relatively simple and works after a reboot:

1) edit /etc/rc.local and add the bold line:
#!/bin/sh
mount -o bind /volume1/@optware /opt
# Optware setup
[ -x /etc/rc.optware ] && /etc/rc.optware start
exit 0

2) edit /root/.profile and adjust the bolded path:
PATH=/opt/bin:/opt/sbin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/usr/syno/sbin:…..

Reboot your Synology and IPKG and other services residing in /opt should now work again.



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Running Transmission on Synology DS1010+

Posted by on January 16, 2011 7 comments

Synology’s Disk Station Manager (DSM) comes pre-packaged with it’s own download manager, but I have never been a fan of it, and have already heavily customized it but was still not quite happy with it. Over the last 12 months I modified my installation so that I can subscribe to RSS feeds and then automatically download feeds into the download manager for purchased content.

This guide assumes that you have good knowledge of Linux and have already installed IPKG onto your NAS. I will not go into all the package dependencies, but have included as an attachment my current IPKG installation list which should give you a good indication of what is required. This guide should work with any Synology product, provided that you have bootstrapped IPKG.

Once you are done with the installation you will have a Transmission installation which will provide you with:

  • Automatic downloads of torrents via RSS subscription
  • Automatic update of IP filters through blocklists
  • Notification via email if a download has been started / completed
  • Integrated short-cut via DSM

You will have to install the following pre-requisite packages: ipkg install grep libxslt sed bash (please let me know if there are others I might have missed)

Let’s start – we begin with the Transmission installation as it is fairly quick:

  • I keep all my scripts/configs in either /opt/ or a separate directory in /volume1/Extensions/scripts
  • Install Transmission via ipkg install transmission. If your IPKG has multiple versions, use the one with the embedded web-UI, as this will save you lots of work in setting up/configuring an HTTP server.
  • Create a directory /opt/etc/transmission. This is the place where I store all the configs, scripts and blocklists. I wanted to avoid to have the configs in /root, as an upgrade will typically remove root and trash all your settings
  • Now start the transmission-daemon via transmission-daemon -f. This will create the default settings in a hidden directory (use ls -la) in root. Move the contents of the directory into /opt/etc/transmission so that /opt/etc/transmission has your settings.json and a number of other directories in it.
  • Kill the current transmission-daemon via killall transmission-daemon.
  • Before you extract the transmission-etc.zip into the /opt/etc/transmission directory open /opt/etc/transmission/settings.json and copy the content of rpc-password as the settings.json will be overwritten in the next step
  • Adjust the settings.json: You will need to adjust the download-dir, incomplete-dir, rpc-password (copy from previous step), rpc-whitelist (adjust to your own IP-range
  • Open /opt/etc/transmission/transmission-end.sh and adjust your EMAIL and what you want to display in the email sent to you when the download finishes. This script will be called by Transmission once a torrent completes. The script will then stop and remove the torrent as well as send you an email.
  • For the previous step I suggest that you use nail. Install it via ipkg install nail and then adjust /opt/etc/nail.rc according to these instructions.
  • Now create a symbolic link so that Transmission will automatically start upon boot: ln -s /opt/etc/transmission/S90transmission.sh /opt/etc/init.d/
  • Ensure that you open the TCP/UDP port 51413 on your firewall for Transmission to properly work.
  • You can now start Transmission via /opt/etc/init.d/S90transmission.sh start. You can tail the log-file /opt/etc/transmission/transmission.log for any errors.
  • Let’s fetch the latest blocklist (we will add this to the cronjob later on) via /opt/etc/transmission/update-blocklist.sh. This will download the block-list file and Transmission will parse this into a blocklist.bin file in the /opt/etc/transmission/blocklists directory
  • To check that the Transmission UI is running, open the following URL on the NAS: http://YOURNASIP:9091
  • Add the following line to your crontab via (ensure that all spaces are tabs, as Synology is quite picky: 30 23 * * * root sh /opt/etc/transmission/update-blocklist.sh

As the next step we will create a short-cut in DSM for Transmission:

  • Open the file /opt/etc/transmission/shortcut/application.cfg. Adjust your IP-address
  • Create a symbolic link so that DSM will pick up the shortcut: ln -s /opt/etc/transmission/shortcut/ /usr/syno/synoman/webman/3rdparty/transmission
  • When you log into DSM you should now see a Transmission-icon in the quick-launch container. If you click on it, it should display the Transmission web-UI within DSM
  • You can then just drag this icon onto your DSM desktop to create a short-cut

Finally we will get the automatic RSS downloads going. The RSS-catch script is universal and will also work with the Synology Download manager:

  • The content of the rss-feed.zip needs to be placed in one directory. In my case I have them under /volume1/Extensions/scripts.
  • The bp.conf contains a list of RSS-URLs. In the example provided I have an URL to Karmorra.
  • There are two scripts: (1) synocatch.shell which will download the latest torrents via RSS and (2) syno_torrent_load.shell which will add the torrents for download to Transmission
  • I based my scripts on this contribution but had to adjust it to have absolute paths and various other changes to make it work properly on my installation
  • You will need to install xsltproc, bash and probably other dependencies. I am unsure what else is required, but if you find other pre-requisites, please let me know and I will update this guide with it.
  • The synocatch.shell will require adjustments in the beginning of the script (i.e. torrentdir and CONFG) and within the script references to /volume1/Extensions/scripts/rss_catcher
  • The syno_torrent_load.shell is responsible for parsing the downloaded torrents and adding them to Transmission.
  • Adjust the variables in the beginning of the script as necessary. At the bottom of the script adjust your email address to receive notifications.
  • If for whatever reason you want to use the Synology Download Manager replace the uncommented line (if /opt/bin/downloadstation) – this will require the downloadstation script which is referenced in this thread.
  • As a last step you will need to add two crontab entries to fetch the latest RSS every hour (I spaced them five minutes apart which should be sufficient (remember that spaces need to be tabs and also adjust the script location if yours differs:

    05 * * * * root /opt/bin/bash /volume1/Extensions/scripts/rss_catch/synocatch.shell >>/var/log/synocatch.log 2>&1 10 * * * * root /opt/bin/bash /volume1/Extensions/scripts/rss_catch/syno_torrent_load.shell >>/var/log/synocatch.log 2>&1

     

  • Update 2011-01-23: Transmission includes the option -c WATCHDIR with this you don’t need to have the syno_torrent_load.shell and you will only need to adjust the S90transmission.sh script. I still use the load-script as it emails me when new torrents are loaded.

With the above in place I have a perfectly automated Transmission solution in place. I have also included the IPKG list for any possible dependencies I might have missed.

I did notice an improvement of download rate with Transmission installed (I started using Transmission from Thursday):

Update 2011-01-22: I changed the S90transmission.sh to have the log-file write to /var/log instead of /opt/etc/transmission. (This change is not included in the downloads below)

ipkg-list-installed.txt rss-feed.zip transmission-etc.zip

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DDR2 RAM expansion for Synology DS1010+

Posted by on February 13, 2010 3 comments

The Synology comes factory default with 1GB RAM and has a spare 200-pin slot available for expansion. There has been sofar no confirmation what DIMMs work, but I can assure you that if you purchase a 2GB 200-pin 800Mhz DDR2 laptop DIMM it will work.

I bought a relatively cheap Kingston 2GB PC2-6400 CL5 200-pin 800Mhz DDR2 DIMM (KVR800D2S5/2G). I am pretty certain that any other DDR2 DIMM @ 800Mhz will work although you should make sure that it is CL5 and 5-5-5.

Proof:
MuffinStation> cat /proc/meminfo
MemTotal: 3106348 kB
MemFree: 2938772 kB
Buffers: 5320 kB
Cached: 78676 kB
…

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Synology – automatic indexing via synoindex

Posted by on February 13, 2010 28 comments

To my knowledge, no DiskStation model currently exists where the kernel supports inotify. This represents a huge problem for people who have custom scripts to add multimedia to your DiskStations. While the DiskStations media indexer supports automatic indexing of files being added via SMB, AFP or FTP, it is not aware if you move or copy files via SSH/Telnet on the DiskStation directly.

I have therefore written the Synology Media Indexer which is a simple perl-script which scans your video directory and adds new video-files to the indexer. The indexing is lighting fast as only new files get added (compared to the full reindex of all media if you use the “Reindex”-function in the admin interface).

The script will scan the video directory for modified files over the last two days and will then query the synoindex-service if the file was already indexed. If the file does not exist in the index database, the script will manually add it for immediate indexing.

I have included my most common media types in the script, but if I missed something, you are welcome to extend the script (and let me know what types I have missed). The script itself is easy to read, and I suggest you go through the code as there might be minor tweaks you want to make.

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The baby has arrived

Posted by on February 9, 2010 2 comments

It does not pay to be impatient. The longest 5 days in a while – fresh off the factory and just arrived from Taiwan:

This is probably the first DS1010+ in the country. Noise-levels are acceptable and unlike other people complained are not as loud as I thought it would be. In fact the noise is comparable with the DS107+ I am running (slightly louder due to the number of hard-drives I would say).

Setup was painless, the unit weighs in (empty) at about 5kg and has a footprint of an A4-piece of paper. Two gigabit ports, 4xUSB, 1xeSata and 5 drive bays. The drive brackets can be used to mount 2.5″ and 3.5″ SATA drives. I populated 4 x 1.5TB Seagate SATA drives and will build a Raid-5 array (gives about 4.2 TB of storage).

I installed the latest beta (DSM 2.3-1118) and the unit is lightning fast – kudos to the 1.6Ghz processor and 1GB onboard RAM (expandable to 3GB). Cant wait to see the read/write performance on the unit, which is about 120MB/sec.

Also a big thanks to Dennis @ Synology for organising the shipping for me. Importing it was a breeze (paid R 900,00 import duties). I still feel that the local distributors (you know who you are) are ripping of customers – I was quoted almost R 16,000.00 for the predecessor of the DS1010, which goes overseas for about USD 1,000.00.

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Popcorn Hour C-200

Posted by on October 11, 2009 2 comments

The Popcorn Hour C-200 is the most powerful and versatile Networked Media Tank yet and has moved in with us to replace the PS3′s duty of streaming media.

The C-200 sports a 667MHz CPU, 512MB RAM (a further 256MB NAND flash), Blu-ray capability, Gigabit Ethernet, HDMI 1.3 connection (and several other outputs), 5x USB 2.0 ports (2 front, 2 back and 1 internal), 2x SATA (one occupied by HDD tray), 3.5″ HDD tray, Internal mounting for 2.5″ HDD, mini PCI connection for WLAN module.

It is called a “Networked Media Tank” for a reason, as it supports any media format and is the perfect movie library. The PS3 did a very good job with media, but only supports a select number of media formats.

Installation of the C-200 was simple. I only got a 250GB 2.5″ internal hard-drive, as my media library sits on 2TB NAS storage and I mount the libraries via SMB over Gigabit. The library management is so much better than on the PS3:

Various indexing mechanism exist and your library can be skinned to your liking and will display all your media (it will fetch movie information from IMDB) in a nice graphical fashion:

Be wary: The C-200 is one of those “bleeding edge” devices. The hardware is top-notch and probably can only compete with high-end media-servers, but the firmware is still in beta/experimental stage. I have experienced rare hang-situations and the UI is still sluggish, but with the upcoming production firmware, those issues will be resolved.

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Synology: Easy Time Machine integration

Posted by on July 26, 2009 6 comments

The recent release of Synology’s 2.2 beta firmware includes Time Machine support. For all Synology users, my tutorial OS X: Time Machine backup has now really become a piece of cake:

  1. Create a shared folder called “TimeMachine”
  2. Create a user called “TimeMachine” and assign a quota (typically twice as much as your Mac’s HDD
  3. Go to Diskstations Filesharing settings and select the “TimeMachine” shared folder in the drop-down:
  4. Click “OK” and then mount the volume on the Mac and you are done

Remember when you had to create sparsebundles? This is not required anymore, the Time Machine will automatically create this for you. I have archived off my old backup and started a fresh one and sofar testing looks good.

Tip: I have compared the speed when mounting the backup volume via smb:// (Samba) and afp:// (Apple File protocol). While smb runs at about 6-8MB/sec, AFP can push it to 11-12MB/sec (via a wireless link).

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Synology releases firmware supporting DNLA

Posted by on July 19, 2009 1 comment

Although still in beta, the new firmware sounds promising. I installed the beta-firmware yesterday and have not noticed anything not working. Surprisingly network transfer is faster (I attribute this to a new version of Samba).

The new Media Server supports many more video formats (ISO, MKV, M4V, MOV etc) and Apple users will be excited about the out-of-the box Time Machine support.

A full list of the new features after the break. Continue reading “Synology releases firmware supporting DNLA” »

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DSL switching – improve your gaming

Posted by on March 14, 2009 1 comment

Network response and ping-time are the most important factors when it comes to gaming. In South Africa (and perhaps other countries) the so called “unshaped ADSL access” is extremely expensive (twice as much as normal, shaped access).

Axxess DSL has now introduced the 6-2-6 unshaped ADSL access which provides on a prepaid basis unshaped ADSL access on weekdays between 18:00 and 06:00 and full unshaped access over weekends.

Is unshaped access really worth it? Hell Yes! Pinging Google on Telkom Internet takes about 300-320ms. Doing the same on unshaped (only tested on Axxess) it is about 200ms, and 100ms makes a huge difference in gaming.

I haven now signed up for an Axxess prepaid account which gives me the luxury of traffic rolling over if I happen not to use it. The first irritation was to switch back and forth between accounts, as the Axxess 6-2-6 access does not give you any Internet access outside the above mentioned times.

My rudimentary Perl-scripting-knowledge (it can’t get anymore dangerous) came to the rescue and I have written the below script, which (once included as a crontab) will do the following:
- Allows the configuration of “shaped” and “unshaped” access times
- This can be configured per day
- The script will check the day of week and whether it should switch to “shaped” or “unshaped” access
- The script fully automates the reconfiguration of the Netgear DG834 (others with telnet access will also work) and the reconnection.

Requirements:
- A PC or NAS (such as my beautiful Synology DS107+)
- A DSL modem which allows Telnet-access (if you use the DG834xx, then get the DGTeam firmware to enable this and more)
- A shaped and unshaped account
- The script linked below (you need to make the necessary adjustments within the script)

History:
2009-03-14: Release 1.00 of script
2009-03-15: Release 1.01 – minor adjustments and bug-fix (Sunday was interpreted wrongly)
2009-03-16: Release 1.02 – minor bug, switch statement for shaped did not work


Download the DSL switch script
Note: I provide the script for free and if you screw up your DSL modem (which requires quite some ingenuity on your part), don’t come crying to me. Also if you find that I could have done things better please let me know (I am aware that my time-period checking in the script is horrendous, but since it only took 30 minutes to write, I forgive myself)

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Updated Timemachine guidelines

Posted by on February 11, 2009 1 comment

If you are one of the many users who have followed my guidelines “OS X: Time Machine backup to Synology DS107+“, I strongly urge you to revisit the article.

A number of users reported some issues which require your attention:

  • If your backups are larger than 250 gigabytes, there are issues with regards to the size and the number of bands being used in the sparsebundles. To fix this, you can either convert your current sparsebundle or start a new one. You are not affected if your sparsebundles are smaller.
  • Some people reported issues with mounting the images over AFP. I could verify this as well and found that mounting the images via SMB was more reliable. I am uncertain if this is related to OS X 10.5.6 or the firmware on the DiskStation.

Continue reading “Updated Timemachine guidelines” »

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