Synology Cloud Station

If you have a Synology (DSM 6 or newer) then this is a one click install.

It does pretty much everything Owncloud did for me, but with some advantages.

Primarily you can access the files directly on the server; if you share out a folder, and you drop a file into the folder on the server (use cp command for example) Cloud Station will handle it.

With ownCloud, the file store on the server acts as a sealed container; the files are in there, but you shouldn't touch them. This means essentially you are reduced to either only accessing them via WebDAV (slow) or you have to keep a duplicate copy on the server (running ownCloud client) requiring twice the disk space.

Clients

• Mac client - check
• Windows client - check
• Linux client for deskstop - check
• Linux client at command line - MISSING

The client really wants to be associated with a person, I tried setting up a client on my server but gave up on that.

Where is that server folder?

I created a folder "/home/bwilson/CloudStation", unlinked it, then tried to relink. On the retry it selected "/home/bwilson/CloudStation/Drive" and I did not notice that. It totally screwed with my head as it created a subfolder and repopulated with a second copy of my files.

LESSON: Make double extra certain that you don't accept all defaults unless they MAKE SENSE.

Permissions

If you create folders in a shell session or from sftp (filezilla) they will have normal UNIX settings, but you want to be able to share with Windows and Mac.

So try to create top-level folders from FileStation "Create New Shared Folder" and then you can mount the folders are shares in the Mac Finder or Windows Explorer. Synology has to create the hidden folders it uses for storing attributes and doing it with mkdir at command line bypasses this.

Synology implements their own layer of file attributes, you can get a hint of that with "cat /etc/fstab" and note the mount option "synoacl". Use 'synoacltool" to examine and modify options. See http://www.synology-wiki.de/index.php/Synology_Toolset

I find the option most useful is "copy", as in "synoacltool -copy ThisFileWorks ThisOneDoesnt" which will copy the attributes from ThisFileWorks to ThisOneDoesnt.

Attributes

They use attribute bits but don't give me lsattr or chattr, grr.

Cloud Sync

This is related... really it's a client for WebDAV services that you can run on the Synology. You can sync a folder with a cloud services, for example, Dropbox or Google Drive or Onedrive, so that you keep a copy of your files on the Synology.

You could share a Dropbox by syncing it to the Synology and then publishing it as a file share.

You could have the spaces overlap, I have not tried this, so for example you could keep your Dropbox folder inside your CloudStation folder and whenever a Dropbox file changes it would change on your CloudStation clients.

Todo

Backups

What's the best way to back up the file store? Synology has many options.

A good way to read the brief descriptions quickly is their download site, for example https://www.synology.com/en-us/support/download/DS416

How best to use one way sync?

I think this would be good for copying photos from my phone to my server.

It would be good for delivering files to a customer when you don't want them modified.

Starting and stopping

If you need to stop Cloud Station Server then you do that from the Package Center. Strange but true.

You'd need to stop it if you really truly want to wipe out a CloudStation folder in someone's home directory. When you restart it, Cloud Station Server will create a new fresh clean empty folder there.

Do "sudo rm -rf CloudStation" to wipe it out completely. Do it in the user's home not the admin folder!