Accessing SyncThing folders on QNAP

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Apologies in advance if I’m missing something obvious here - I’m completely new to SyncThing and have had a hard time figuring it out!

I’m trying to sync between a Raspberry Pi 4 running Ubuntu Mate (20.10) and a QNAP HS-251+ (Firmware v. 4.3.4). SyncThing installed well on both devices and they are connected. Despite the warning on the QNAP installation not to run SyncThing with admin privileges, as others have noted here, there is no choice: only the admin can install apps. And when I try to add a folder on the QNAP side, I’m offered an unalterable path that involves a hidden folder. I went ahead from the RPi side and added a folder there, which did then sync with the QNAP - both devices tell me the folders are up to date. But I don’t understand how to access the folder that’s been created on the QNAP side. It doesn’t show in the File Station. I suspect the problem lies in the underlying file structure on the QNAP which is used by SyncThing (eg /share/CACHEDEV1_DATA/.qpkg/SyncThing/etc) and the user-friendly overlay shown in the File Station (eg Public, Multimedia etc). How do they relate? How do I get to see the folders and files on the QNAP? Or … is there a way to configure SyncThing on the QNAP to make it’s default in the Public folder, or a user-added folder that’s accessible in the same way as the folders on the PI are? Someone please help!

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I don’t use it on any of my NAS devices but this post suggests you can share QNAP shares:

I get the feeling you will not be able to access the hidden folder from outside of Syncthing. It will be a sandbox only ST is meant to play in.

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Thanks for pitching in, kluppy. I read that post - read everything I could find on QNAP! I would love to know how that poster managed to “configure Syncthing to store into a shared folder, which I created before” because I can’t see a way to do it. If I could do that, I could maybe deal with the file permissions - I think there was some guidance on that in reply to that post.

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I use SyncThing on my QNAP and I can also access the synced folders on my QNAP as shared folder. There are at least two ways to do that, I think. I created a regular shared folder “Sync” on my QNAP. When I create a synced folder in SyncThing, I give it a custom location, that is a sub-folder of this Sync-folder. The second option, that should also work is, that you create a shared folder on your QNAP that points to a custom location and let it point to the folder under SyncThing.

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First of all, how did you install Syncthing? Is there an APP for this in the package center? Or is it a manual installation via console?

For Synology’s there is a SPK to install as an APP. This also sets up a user and a user group. The user group will use for the permission settings. In Synology DSM, these are assigned the permissions of the shared folders that are to be used. Basically you want that too, that’s how I understand it.

As follows, a little more in the documentation that shows this well

https://docs.kastelo.net/synology/

In your QNAP you have also user and a user groups you can use in a similar way.

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There is an app in the QNAP Club App Store. (You first need to add this to the AppCenter with the URL https://qnapclub.eu/en/repo.xml) But you could also download it from QNAP Club and install it manually, I suppose. Not via console, but via the AppCenter app on the QNAP Web-App. QNAP always executes installed apps with the admin user. Unfortunately you can’t change that. At least that’s what I found out. This means, that all files, that SyncThing creates, belong to the admin user. You can view them with other users, but you can’t modify them directly.

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Thanks for the help and suggestions. I think I’m making progress. I hadn’t realised that by adding /share/Public etc to the default syncthing path when adding a folder to sync on the QNAP it will sync to an accessible folder. I’m not too bothered about not being able to modify the files on the QNAP as I’m just using it as a “half-way house” between a Raspberry Pi and Dropbox (there being no Dropbox client for the Pi Arm architecture). If the Pi syncs its Dropbox folder to the QNAP, then there are other QNAP apps that will sync that folder to Dropbox. That’s the plan, anyway!

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Should work. That’s about what I do. I sync my PCs via SyncThing with a folder on the QNAP and then also sync this QNAP folder to a cloud storage for backup (using HBS 3).

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How exactly did you set up your folder on the QNAP that your PCs sync to? I thought I had it sussed, but have ended up with all the files still hidden: adding /share/Public/Backup to the file path didn’t direct the sync to that folder already visible, but simply created a new folder that’s hidden from view and put all the files there. (If that makes sense!) I’m now wondering if it would work the other way round: copy the files into an existing QNAP folder (ie /share/Public/Backup) then sync that to the Pi, where i have complete control over the folder path to sync to. Is that perhaps how you did it?

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I don’t remember exactly, but here is what I think I did. :wink: I created a new shared folder on the QNAP called “Sync”. The storage location for that folder is: /share/CACHEDEV1_DATA/Sync. Then I added a folder in Syncthing, where I specified a custom location as: /share/CACHEDEV1_DATA/Sync/User-Data And that’s it. When I now access the Shared folder “Sync” by whatever means (SMB, WebDav), I also see the sub-folder “User-Data” with all it’s content.

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Brilliant - thanks! I’ll try that.

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It’s worked at last. I still couldn’t find a way to create an accessible folder on the QNAP to accept the incoming files from the Pi, so had to do it the other way round: putting the files into the folder I’d created on the QNAP, then adding that as a folder in SyncThing to share with the RPi and accepting it on the RPi, where I could then stipulate the path to the folder to sync with. Very roundabout - ie copy all Dropbox files from RPi to QNAP, rename Dropbox folder on RPi to Old_Dropbox, then get SyncThing to copy them back to a new Dropbox folder on the RPi! I’m sure there must be a better way, but at least it’s now working. Thanks for the help.

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