[SOLVED] Mint 19.1 does not see Synology NAS. How to map it?

[victor_mmc]

Hope someone can point me to the right key strokes.
New to Linux, but computer savvy (not so much with networks though).

Anyway, loaded Mint 19.1 onto a ThinkPad which also has Windows XP on it. It is wired to a Netgear router to which the Synology 212j NAS is also connected. Synology is running DSM 4.2 software. Few other windows 7 PCs are plugged into the same router. I've created two shared folders on NAS and I mapped them as drives in Windows - all machines see them and access them as regular disks, including XP running on the same laptop Mint is installed on, so I know physical connection work. But freshly installed 32 bit Mint does not see NAS as a drive the way all PCs do.

Now, if I run web browser in Mint, I can log into the Synology NAS and see my drives and all the files - this is no different than in browsers on any Windows PCs. But it is not listed under "Network" in Mint - it just shows Windows Network icon and the name of this laptop icon. No NAS drive. I know I have to set up NFS rules in NAS to make it visible, I believe I did, but no luck so far. All I want is to see drives (shares?) in Mint just like I see them mapped in Windows to be able to save files downloaded from internet to NAS so I can later wok with them offline with other machines in Windows.

Tried to "mount" NAS but get nowhere. IT should not be THAT complicated. What am I missing? Please ask me what do you need to know in order to guide me.
Thanks in advance,
Victor

[AndyMH]

viewtopic.php?f=90&t=287697

[victor_mmc]

Hi AndyMH,

The answer in the thread you posted the link of starts like this: "I've been able to access my shared folder in the file manager on Linux Mint 19...."

This is not the case with me, I cannot access anything on NAS - I can't even see NAS at all. It is not "mapped" (mounted?) within Mint. Synology tutorials how this is done don't help - aside they they describe slighntly different NAS software, I seem to configure everything as they suggest, but they know only Synology side of things, not Mint Cinnamon side.

How does one mount an external drive (NAS) in Mint?

Thanks a lot!

[AndyMH]

You haven't said which DE you are running, my main T430 runs cinnamon, but have booted up an old T60 running 19.0 mate:

• If you have enabled NFS on the synology, you should see it on the network - click on it and enter name, pwd and workgroup if changed from the default. You should now be able to see your files on the NAS. Having said that, I gave up on NFS, tried and failed to get it to mount via my fstab.

Screenshot at 2019-02-12 09-42-44.png

• 'Out of the box' mint does not install samba. Install samba and follow the instructions in the link I posted to add the synology to your fstab.

Code: Select all

andy@T60:~$ samba

Command 'samba' not found, but can be installed with:

sudo apt install samba

andy@T60:~$ 

[altair4]

AndyMH is our resident Synology expert ( among other things ) but I would just like to point out one thing in his last post.

It shows an icon under network labeled DiskStation ( File Sharing ). This is a multicast DNS registration being made by the NAS. According to the Synology demo (https://demo.synology.com/en-us ) it is activated when you select Enable Bonjour service discovery on the NAS.

From the Linux client it should find it automatically - as in out of the box. When you click on DiskStation ( File Sharing ) it will render to something like diskstation.local .The only thing you need on Mint is to have avahi running:

Code: Select all

sudo service avahi-daemon status

[AndyMH]

AndyMH is our resident Synology expert

Praise indeed! In all things networking I defer to you, you've helped me out more than once in the past

[victor_mmc]

Hi AndyMH,

There is nothing to click on - under "Network" there are only two icons: "T43-HI-RES" (which is the name of this T43 machine) and another "Windows Network" (which it doesn't know what to do with, doubleclicking on it opens empty window. I think this is installation of the Windows XP residing on a different partition of the same hard disk). The distro is Mint release 19.1 codename tessa.

Yes, Samba is already installed. I was not sure, so I issues the command as you cited and it told me - already there.

So if I would see "Disk (File sharing)" icon as it shown in your reply, I'd be happy, but it's not there, that's the issue. NFC in NAS is enabled (and I hope configured properly). What exactly did you do after installing Mint for the first time to get this icon visible? I have feeling something is not set right on the NAS side, but I can't tell. I do see NAS and can browse files only from within Firefox browser, so all I know for sure is that physical link is OK.

Thanks!

Victor

[AndyMH]

You should be able to see it with NFS, but as I've not had much luck with it, have you enabled smb on the NAS?

And under the advanced settings have you got min = SMB1 and max = SMB3?

DiskStation - Synology DiskStation - Chromium_016.jpg

With smb enabled you should be able to 'see' your NAS in your file manager (nemo if running cinnamon) using the address smb://diskstation.local/ or replace diskstation local with the IP address e.g. smb://192.168.0.5/? It will prompt for username, workgroup and password.

Windows shares on diskstation.local_014.jpg

altair4 said that you can find diskstation.local instead of the IP address by enabling bonjour, you can find this in the advanced tab in file services:

DiskStation - Synology DiskStation - Chromium_015.jpg

[victor_mmc]

Thanks, I think this is where my issue is. BUT:
I don't have "File Services" tab or icon on my Synology screen. It runs DSM v4.2 and does not look like the one you provided.
Attached is what it looks like. I did search for "Samba" and the closest it could come up with was "SMB" (which I guess is not the same thing).
Digging deeper - appears like v 4.2 just does not have "file services" to set up, but I can't believe Linus users were not able to map NAS running v4.2 at all - it is old, but not THAT old.

Now then scary question - how do I update Synology software (if I have to, and if my HW supports it of course). I'd like to avoid doing this though.

Any other advice?

Thanks!

[altair4]

[1] Does the "Mac File Service" tab reference "Bonjour" or is it all about afp?

[2] Right now I'm trying to figure out why in your screenshot it shows: WINS Server: 68.87.69.146. THat's an address on the internet not on your local lan. Why would a WINS server point to a outside host I wonder.

[3] My suggestion is to use an ip address to access the NAS.

[4] If you want to go old school:

** Edit /etc/samba/smb.conf
** Right under the workgroup = WORKGROUP line and add this one:
client max protocol = NT1
** Save the file then reboot your Mint machine.

See if Mint can discover your machine now.

[AndyMH]

I'm running DSM 6.2 and it prompts me for updates. No idea how you would update. There is a synology forum, I've looked at a few times but don't think I've joined.

You have SMB 2 enabled, I have a suspicion that might be the problem given mine is set for anything between SMB1 and SMB3, no idea what flavour of SMB mint 19 is using, hopefully altair4 can chip in. I've reached the end of my synology/samba knowledge (which was limited to begin with). All I can suggest is that you uncheck "enable SMB 2" and see what happens - can you then enter smb://DiskStation.local or smb://ipaddress in your file manager and see it (are you running cinnamon, mate or xfce?).

Although I never managed to get NFS to work properly (could not find an entry in fstab that would work), what have you got there? For me all I have is NFS enabled and (under an advanced button) "apply default UNIX permissions". In shared folders I've got NFS permissions set to read/write.

[victor_mmc]

Hi altair4, thanks for trying to help. Here are the answers to your questions I can give.

[1] Does the "Mac File Service" tab reference "Bonjour" or is it all about afp?

Attaches is Mac File Service tab. This service is not selected since I don't have Mac computers. Is this naive thought? If a Mac File Service is required in order for Linux box to access external NAS, this is not obvious by any means, but I can try to enable it and see if that makes any difference. Can you explain why should I try this?

[2] Right now I'm trying to figure out why in your screenshot it shows: WINS Server: 68.87.69.146. THat's an address on the internet not on your local lan. Why would a WINS server point to a outside host I wonder.

I have no idea. How is it usually done for home networks? I never touched these settings, must have been done automatically and since everything works fine (except this Linux issue), I never had need to explore/change this. But I can.

[3] My suggestion is to use an ip address to access the NAS.

You mean access from Linux? As I understand it, in order for this to work this NAS ip has to be static in order to pre-configure it "forever", but all the devices except modem which is (HDSP server and has static ip 192.168.0.1) are dynamically assigned (leased?) ip's and that includes this NAS. So how can I configure in .smb.conf if tomorrow this ip is going to be different?

[4] If you want to go old school:

any school is OK as long as I can make this work...

** Edit /etc/samba/smb.conf
** Right under the workgroup = WORKGROUP line and add this one:
client max protocol = NT1
** Save the file then reboot your Mint machine.

I typed as you cited above everything between and . It won't let me save (overwrite) file because I'm not the owner of it. Root has read only privileges and I can't change them to read/write unless become "owner". I can become root, but not the owner of this file. Sorry, I'm new to this, how is this done?

See if Mint can discover your machine now.

But where in your advice do I try to access NAS by its ip?

[victor_mmc]

Sorry forgot to attache captures.

You can see that this external 68.87.69.146 ip appears in NAT table of the modem, it is called by 192.168.0.6 which is ip of this NAS.
If WINS server is suppose to be within local LAN range of ip's, I'll change it, but I have no idea what to. Attached is the capture in windows the only place referring to WINS, and i don't see any settings there, so 68.87.69.146 comes from NAS as you saw. What should I change it to?

Thanks!

[victor_mmc]

I believe I resolved it.

As soon as I enable "Mac File Service" in NAS' control panel and network restarts, NAS just appears in "Network" Nemo window in Mint. Un-ticking Mac file service in NAS makes it disappear from Network window. Not even re-boors required, NAS icon just magically appears and disappears.

I frankly find this totally idiotic and confusing for newbies - why one has to enable Mac file services if no Macs are on the network ?? Think about it. IT should have been called "Linux file services"...

Evidently Linux network protocol relies (uses) something of Mac's networking. Can someone please point me to any info stating that Linux network connectivity is disabled unless Mac service is enabled?

Thanks a lot,

Victor

[AndyMH]

why one has to enable Mac file services

Because we are a minority and macs use smb (I think). Glad you got it fixed. Go back to your original post and edit (the button with the pencil) and add [solved] into the title line. Hard work given that the OS the synology runs is based on linux. And another snippet of information to add to my knowledge - next time someone posts with a synology problem, my first question will be 'what version of DSM are you running'.

[altair4]

I frankly find this totally idiotic and confusing for newbies - why one has to enable Mac file services if no Macs are on the network ?? Think about it. IT should have been called "Linux file services"...

Evidently Linux network protocol relies (uses) something of Mac's networking. Can someone please point me to any info stating that Linux network connectivity is disabled unless Mac service is enabled?

Um ... actually I can't argue with you that it is idiotic but I think I can explain why.

All communication between machines is done by ip address not by name. In order to discover and connect to another machine by name some mechanism must be created to resolve that name to an ip address.

Windows used to have ( and Linux still has ) something called NetBIOS. It's convoluted, unreliable, and difficult to troubleshoot when something goes wrong. Microsoft deprecated it 20 years ago but it lives on in older Windows machines, Linux, and some network devices.

About 17 years ago or so Apple created a mechanism called Bonjour. It's an implementation of multicast DNS that replaces NetBIOS for all of its machines. It's dependable, predictable, fast, and pretty much just works.

In Linux Bonjour is called Avahi and was created a few years after Bonjour. It does the same thing Bonjour does. It's installed by default on all(?) Linux desktop machines these days. Your Mint machine is using Avahi to discover the NAS that has registered itself to the network using Bonjour. So making something visible to Macs made it visible to Linux.

Fun Fact: The most impressive thing about Synology is that it also implements something called WS-Discovery which is what replaced NetBIOS on Windows 8/10. I'm not an expert of the different NASs out there but to my knowledge Synology is the only NAS that does this.

[victor_mmc]

Thanks Altair4,

/Rant on

This naming is definitely an oversight of Synology:

SMB is needed in order for Macs computers to work and for Linux computers to work. Nnt sure who borrowed from whom, different question.

So Synology chose to call the check box enabling SMB "Mac file service", not "Linux file service" or just "SMB" as if this is used exclusively by macs.
Had it been labeled "SMB" or at least "Mac/Linux", I'd definitely ticked it and will be on my way in no time. By to me as probably to any newbie "Mac" has nothing to do with Linux, so logically *everything* (in Synology SW) that says just "Mac" and nothing else (not Mac/Linux for instance), can be left disabled.

Simply put, "Mac" means *only* Mac. "Mac AND Linux" cannot be called just "Mac", strictly speaking this is wrong (misleading). Sinology just assumed something totally not obvious.

/Rant off

[karenfisher]

Thanks for analyzing this thoroughly.