Synology and Mac - ways to connect and speeds

[pixelrogue]

Hello everyone.,., discovered an odd situation that might be basic to the experienced.

BACKGROUND
Replaced anApple Time Capsule as heart of the home network with a Linksys Velop WHW01; TC moved to an accessory on the network handling backups and remains managing majority of the Apple Home kit IOT.

STRANGE SITUATION
For a few hours DS220 was connecting as expected and responsive. Device Showed up on the left side, click the button Connect and after entering credentials, everything connected and snappy.

The following day, likely a reboot here and there, and now after selecting device from the left panel and successfully entering credentials one of two things happens…a) looping where I would be asked again for credentials (not related to typos or incorrect inputs) or b) most times the folders appear as blue folder icons and nothing behind them.

I can ‘Connect to Server’ using the IP and get to the directories that way…which is turning out to be painfully slow. What has happened where the side bar is not being itself?

 

[Robbie]

The sidebar requires the NAS to have previously been accessed, that it is believed to be live and that the NAS is broadcasting the _adisk._tcp. (Automatic Disk Discovery) flag and, in your case, the dk0=adVF=0x82,adVN=Time Machine Storage mDNS flags.

In Synology speak, these are achieved by ticking the SMB service plus these boxes:

 

[pixelrogue]

The sidebar requires the NAS to have previously been accessed, that it is believed to be live and that the NAS is broadcasting the _adisk._tcp. (Automatic Disk Discovery) flag and, in your case, the dk0=adVF=0x82,adVN=Time Machine Storage mDNS flags.

In Synology speak, these are achieved by ticking the SMB service plus these boxes:

View attachment 10269

Fantastic - jumped to the screen and turns out these have already been checked.

I rebooted all the hardware and the side bar is showing up as expected.

Delays, however, are back to really slow. Seems like fastest is 5 seconds (selecting a directory waiting for content to appear) to as long as 25seconds…. Havea stop watch going to minimize perception of time. Select an image for example and it took 48.33 seconds before the thumbnail and specs appeared.

Network stats look solid, strong signals…wonder why synology remains slow on a brand new network?

 

[SynoMan]

I can ‘Connect to Server’ using the IP and get to the directories that way…which is turning out to be painfully slow. What has happened where the side bar is not being itself?

Have you tried in Finder to Connect to Server with smb://yourservername?

 

[Robbie]

More info for you below and as a Mac user you will find the 'Discovery' app quite useful as Apple leans heavily on mDNS / Bonjour:

https://www.synoforum.com/threads/permanently-mounting-a-drive-on-macos.6888/post-33755

️

 

[pixelrogue]

Have you tried in Finder to Connect to Server with smb://yourservername?

Yes, this appears identical to the connect to server option.

 

[WST16]

I’ve been using Automounter for a very long time and I like it. Check it out.

 

[EAZ1964]

I find the title somewhat confusing.
During my life with Mac and Syno, I had my share of networking issues. Mostly depending (>90%) on the MacOs (or OsX) version. Only In some rare cases Syno seemed to blame.
I had issues in the early days with AFP (which I abandoned because of that) or SMB, and again when moving to M1. And in between with several OS updates. The issues were often solved one or two months later in the next update (Apple always denies the bugs are there, but still solves them). Issues happened in speed, search, connection, ...

So back to the title of the post, for me there has not been one "always working, no issues" way to connect or have speed. The best situation is depending on your platform.
It has gradually gotten better, but still on every update I have to check and sometimes adapt.

Still finder has only one tab to handle files and connecting to the Syno is not even close to the ease that windows brings (if it works at all) but still MacOs it is a fantastic platform that holds us near the frontline of tech and Apple easily changes our old habits.

 

[pixelrogue]

Nastaliq moment when looking at the app as I remember using convenience minting apps years past - didn’t think of it until your post.

There is a part B wish list and this app looks closest to a solution. The wrinkle is that the share is an encrypted folder on synology. Is there a way to script the tasks necessary to cross over to synology to provide credentials and auto mount on the Mac?

So far, if encrypted folder is unlocked it does appear to remain in the side bar. Some future reboot or something may change though for now it seems ok.

Pain when synology reboots. I am actually wanting a system where the synology folder locks itself on a schedule - the friction point atm being the pain to mount it…need to log into synology (pia when 2FA is on) …then navigate through screens to the directory go to a pull down to mount and enter credentials…once that is done it works smoothly until reboot. How can that be scripted?

——
While on this topic, want an easy way to do this remotely. Currently I would need to go into DS finder for ios app,…flip to desktop mode and then hunt out all the same steps.