Saturday, January 23, 2016

Symbolic Link on QNAP (Linux)

The Qsync folder on a QNAP NAS is a hidden directory, so it's hard to add to things like Plex.

Luckily, the solution is a Linux one, rather than a QNAP one.

I like using Qsync because I hate sorting through hundreds of files to make sure things are backed up between two directories.  I'd much rather manage one directory than two.

Before you try anything on your NAS, understand that you are operating outside the safety of the QNAP interface.  You could really mess things up if you aren't careful.  Therefore no warranty is part of this whatsoever!  Proceed at your own risk!

A symbolic link is nice because it doesn't make a copy of your files, it just points to them.  You can put those pointers in a convenient place.

So... download Putty and SSH into your QNAP.

After you login with your QNAP's IP address, and your credentials, enter the following command to create a symbolic link between the admin's Qsync folder and a new symbolic folder called "movielink".  Of course you can name it anything you want.  This can also be done with other user's Qsync data, just change "admin" to whatever their username is.  Keep in mind that these folders are fully linked, read and write.  So only make sure you link with users that won't wipe out your data!

[~] # ln -s /share/homes/admin/.Qsync/ /share/homes/admin/movielink

Ta Da!  Now if you go to the Filestation you can see your new folder

If you make a bad link, or want to remove the one you created, enter this command:

[~] # rm /share/homes/admin/movielink

That's all there is to it.  Now my Plex server can access Qsynced content!