I have now had a TS-212 QNAP NAS for many years and I am really (really!) happy with it: it works exceedingly well for what I originally bought it for (a networked backup drive, essentially) but it has also so many more facilities that I really have come to depend on it for a number of backup and storage tasks.

Also, credit to QNAP for continuing to release frequent firmware updates (particularly appreciated in the wake of security vulnerabilities) even though the model is now ancient by current technology standards: these guys really care about their users, and I’m already planning to buy another QNAP soon (the TS-251) for the necessary upgrade.

QNAP NAS have a very useful collection of “apps” that can be activated via their webserver: there is a Torrent client, a Media manager, even a Plex Media server (although, my TS-212 is too resource-constrained to really be able to run that) and other assorted media server and backup applications.

Obviously, “the Cloud” (aka, “someone else’s servers”) features prominently among the options to backup the files on the NAS, and in particular AWS Glacier is a very cheap and effective way of archiving your files, in case disaster strikes.

Note, it is important to understand that this is an “archiving” functionality (it will take in excess of several hours to get the files back) and one should rely on the RAID functionality to guard against drive failures – but, at any rate, this is cheap (it cost me less than a couple of bucks a month for around 300 GB of data) and secure.

Among many other solutions, QNAP offers the Hybrid Backup Sync app, which has been working just fine for me and offers many, many alternatives:

Unfortunately, from time to time, the app refuses to start from the web interface: one clicks on the icon, and nothing happens; what’s more frustrating, no error message is generated, so it’s anybody’s guess as to what went wrong.

However, as I mentioned, QNAP really cares about their customers and their support folks prove that: although prevented from providing detailed instructions (suing idiots have probably bitten them in the past) they have been able to provide enough hints so that I could, as it were, self-medicate my NAS.

The solution is pretty simple, if you know your way around ssh and the shell – here’s how to do it.

Say that your NAS IP address is 192.168.10.21 (in the network configuration, in the Control Panel, you can choose to have it assigned a static IP address, which is what I would recommend – otherwise, you will have to figure it out):

ssh admin@192.168.10.21

Ideally, you have it configured so that it uses your SSH key and not password login (which ought to be disabled); otherwise, just use the same password that you use when logging in to the Web UI.

Once there, fixing the issue is pretty straightforward (note: the actual name of the directory may be different, depending on your QNAP model, you may need to fish around for it under the /share directory):

[~]# cd /share/MD0_DATA/.qpkg/HybridBackup
[/share/MD0_DATA/.qpkg/HybridBackup]# ./backupstation.sh start

there will be a few messages; some will look like errors, but appear to be “safe to ignore:”

No handlers could be found for logger "cc"
...
/share/MD0_DATA/.qpkg/HybridBackup/cgi/externalID.cgi
shiftup
killall: qsync: no process killed
killall: qsyncd: no process killed
Shutting down rsync services: rsync.
Starting rsync services: rsync.

this may take a couple of minutes, and once finished, you should be able to start again the app from the Web UI.