Syncthing Setup on OMV with a SMB

[Syncthinguser1]

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Syncthing Setup Problems on OMV.odt (353.0 KB)

I’ve been trying to set up Syncthing with my OMV server for 3 days. My first goal is to set up a single file and folder to be uploaded from my smartphone to a SMB folder on the home server. Later on, I want to set up a folder structure for different types of media. But for now it is that simple.

I encounter two problems.

1. One is the error message “failed to scan” when I use the root user in the YAML file. Syncthing confirms successful sync (“100%” sycned) but when I check the respective folder it supposedly uploaded to, there is no file at all.

2. If I don’t set the PUID as root user (“0:0”), I additionally get another error that permissions are denied:

Failed to load/generate certificate (err=cert open /config/cert.pem): open /config/cert.pem: permission denied

Failed initial scan (error=“folder path missing” folder.label=upload folder.id=18cno-adu2s folder.type=sendreceive log.pkg=model)

syncthing

| 2025-12-31 02:28:27 WRN Error on folder (error=“folder path missing” folder.label=upload folder.id=18cno-adu2s folder.type=sendreceive log.pkg=model)

syncthing

| 2025-12-31 02:28:27 WRN Folder is in error state (folder=18cno-adu2s error=“folder path missing” log.pkg=model)

syncthing

| 2025-12-31 02:28:27 INF Loaded configuration (name=syncthing log.pkg=syncthi

Here is my home server folder structure. This path is set as a SMB:

here are my users:

This is the output of cat /etc/passwd

I used to have a docker_user user but I deleted it because I want to keep it simple and use SMBuser for all operations on the SMB share.

here is my YAML file, inside /appdata/syncthing:

I get the same errors if I put the yaml file in its parent directories. Syncthing reports failed to read error on this path “/srv/dev-disk-by-uuid-b87fc18e-50b7-4935-8289-6f1c8632be84” regardless of where the yaml file is located.

1000:1000 is the default values. My SMBuser has that value right now. I get permission denied error UNLESS I choose 0:0 as values here. If I set it to 0:0 the permission error is gone but the failed to scan error stays.

==============================================

Today I logged in as root, and encountered folder visibility issues: (WinSCP view)

/srv/

it shows as this in the terminal (I am using PuTTy from Win SCP)

A nd the lack of vision continues in the subfolders too:

Compare this view

to this

right now I couldn’t even navigate to /appdata/syncthing to start Syncthing via docker compose up

[gadget]

There are two issues:

• Permissions
• Pathnames

Neither of them are actually related to Syncthing, it’s purely an issue with configuring OpenMediaVault and the Docker container itself.

In your ODT file, your YAML file bind mounts the following storage volume…

/srv/dev-disk-by-uuid-b87fc18e-50b7-4935-8289-6f1c8632be84

… but in the later screenshots, you’re logged onto OMV as root and looking at the following subdirectory:

~/srv/dev-disk-by-uuid-b87fc18e-50b7-4935-8289-6f1c8632be84

The latter path above is equivalent to this:

/root/srv/dev-disk-by-uuid-b87fc18e-50b7-4935-8289-6f1c8632be84

/srv and ~/srv are two entirely different locations, so recheck your paths.

As for permissions, note that a UID/GID inside a container isn’t the same as a UID/GID outside a container. Or in other words, setting PUID=1000 and PGID=100 doesn’t mean Syncthing inside the container is the same as SMBuser in OMV.

In addition to earlier forum posts for tips on configuring Samba and Syncthing in a container (search for “TrueNAS” and/or “OpenMediaVault”):

• https://docs.docker.com/engine/security/userns-remap/