BeatificaBytes

Synology’s HyperBackup Explorer can only browse a local backup or a Synology C2 Storage. It means that, when using a third party S3, you would have to download your full backup locally to be able to retrieve just a few files… (Which cost 7$/TB with StorJ).

Indeed, the actual files (images, video, documents, …) can’t be browsed within a HyperBackup image with a simple S3 explorer (like the free “S3 Browser” or “CyberDuck”). You only find “bucket” parts…

Fortunately, with third party S3 like StorJ (pronounced “Storage”), you can mount the Bucket as a local Virtual Disk on your PC… And then use HyperBackup Explorer. This is great as you easily navigate also the timeline (version) of your files…

First, as I discovered on DrFrankenstrien’s Tech Stuff, here is how to create a StorJ S3 Bucket (you can start a StorJ account with 25GB free for 30 days):

As I am in the EU, I go to this SignUp page:

Confirm your subscription (Attention: the verification email arrived in Gmail’s Spam !!!)

Now select the “PERSONAL” account

Enter your “Name”, choose “Backup & Recovery” and click “Continue”

Click “Start Free Trial”

And finally “Activate Free Trial”

Ok, now that you have an account, you have to create a “Project” with a “Bucket” where you will upload “Objects” from your Synology:

In my case, a default “My Sotrj Project” has been created automatically. My first step was therefore to click on “Set a Passphrase”

I selected to type my own passphrase (it will be requested each time one connect into StorJ’s Dashboard)

Once the passphrase enters, the next step is to “Create a Bucket”, here named “demostorj4synology”, with the default retention settings applies during the upload (I will let Hyper Backup manager the versioning)

You are now nearly ready to upload Objects…

Now, you have to prepare an API Key and get a Secret Key, which will be used to configured the connection on your Synology

Type an “Name” for this access and select the access type “S3 Credential”. In my case I grant “Full Access” (I.e. HyperBackup will be able to Read/Write/List/Delete).

Once “Access” created, you will have to download or at least copy the “Access Key”, the “Secret Key” and the “Endpoint” in a secure place (not to be shared, obviously) !

Voilà, your are now ready to go to your Synology and configure Hyper Backup. First step: create a new “Backup” of “Folders and Packages”

You have to scroll down in the next screen to select “S3 Storage”

Now:

• Select “Custom Server URL” as “S3 Server”
• Copy the “endpoint” you got when creating an “Access Key” as Server address
• Select v4 as Signature Version
• Keep Request Style as is
• Enter your Access Key (Here is mine as I will delete it anyway after this demo)
• Enter your Secret Key
• If your Endpoint, Access Key and Secret Key are corrects, you should see your Bucket available as bucket name.

You can now select Folders to be included in your backup as well as Synology Packages (attention that some packages will also include all the files, such as the Web Station that includes the shared folder “web” – or Synology Drive Server that includes the shared folder “homes”)

Configure your Backup as you wish, regarding schedule and retention:

Now that the backup is running, it’s time to look how to mount that backup as a Virtual Disk on your PC, to be able to browse it with HyperBackup Explorer. A free solution exist but is not for beginners: rClone

There are a few user friendly tools available for those not confortable with command prompts and scripts… The cheapest is “Mountain Duck“. It’s the one I am using. Here is how to configure it. To make it easier, in the “Preferences”, you can enable the “Storj DCS” profile

So, now, add a connection

In, the popup windows:

• Select ‘Sotrj DCS’ (or ‘Amazon S3’ if you didn’t enable that profile) for the connection
• Enter a Label. Ex.: StorJ
• in Server, type the Endpoint of StorJ,if not yet displayed (would be the case is you select “Amazon S3” as profile)
• Enter your “Access Key” (uncheck the box Anonymous login)
• Enter your “Secret Key”
• Other parameters are just fine, but you can force the Driver Letter is you prefer…

Just in case you used the “Amazon S3” profile, the labels are different, but the config is the very same:

Now, you should see a Disk R: mounted on your PC, exposing the Bucket from your StorJ S3.

Install and run HyperBackup Explorer, then “Browse Local Backup”:

Pick the .bkpi file to open the backup image and navigate your files

Et voilà :

The container phpServerMonitor of scavin will do the trick (It’s possibly not the most up-to-date, but is works fine). You will only need a MySQL database hosted on your Synology.

phpServerMonitor looks like this:

First, install “MariaDB 10” (the default alternative to MySQL commonly used on Synology)

Then, open MariaDB10, enable a port (Ex: the default 3306) and apply this change

If it’s not yet done, install phpMyAdmin (not explained here)

Launch it with your administrator account (Select MariaDB10 as Server)

Create a DB named, for example, “servermon”:

On that new DB, add a new user account:

Type a user name, for example “servermon”, select a strong password (take note of it) and tick the option “Check all” Global privileges for the moment. Once phpServerMonitor installed and configured, you will only keep the “Data” access rights !

Launch the “Container Manager” on your Synology and in the Registry, search for scavin/phpservermonitor and download that image.

Once downloaded, configure and run it. The only config required is

• mapping a port (Ex.: 4080) of the Synology on container’s port 80 (443 won’t work) and
• removing the environment variable PHP_MD5 !!!

Now, navigate to http://<Your Synology Address>:<Port mapped> and click “Let’s GO”

Complete the required info in the configuration screen:

• the Application base url should be completed automatically with : http://Your Synology IP:<Port mapped>
• type the IP of your Synology as “database host” and the port enabled in MariaDB10 as “database port “
• introduce new the name of database created previously, as well as the name and the password of the user added onto that DB.

Click on “Save Configuration” and if “MariaDB” was accessible, you should see this:

Click once more on “Save Configuration” and here you are:

“Go to your Monitor” to add Servers and Services. More info in the official website of phpServerMonitor 😉

Haaa, don’t forget to remove “Structure” and “Administration” rights for the user “servermon” on the DB “servermon” and all access rights at global level (if any):

Et voilà.

The Speedtest Tracker of Henry Whitaker will do the trick. It’s based on Ookla’s Speedtest Cli from which it records recurrently the results.

It looks like this:

It’s quite easy to install and run into a container of DSM 7.x. First, install the “Container Manager”:

Then, register the image of henrywhitaker3/speedtest-tracker:

Next, create a new container with that image and enable auto-start (here, this container wont’ be exposed via the Web Station)

Finally, in the next tab:

• Map a port of your Synology (Ex.: 7080) onto the port 80 of the container (and/or possibly 443).
• Map a shared folder of your Synology (Ex.: /docker/Ookla) onto the folder /config of the container.

Scrolling down in that tab, add an environment variable “OOKLA_EULA_GDPR” with the value “true”.

If you don’t do it, the container will fail to run (it will stop automatically after one or two minutes) and you will find the following message in the Log of the container:

Once the configuration done, you can run the container. Wait for a few minutes before opening the Speedtest Tracker. Once the container up, you should see this in the Logs of the container:

You can now open the Speedtest Tracker (using http(s)://<your NAS IP>:<port configured>) and configure the scheduler to run a test on a regular basis. For that purpose, go to the “Settings” menu . Here under, the pattern ***** is used to run every minute(as per this site).

The default speedtest server in use does not support such a high pace.. It will soon stop and you will see these messages in the Logs:

The follow-up schedule can be use to run every 10 minutes: */10 * * * *

You can possibly look for other speedtest, using this URL : https://www.speedtest.net/api/js/servers?engine=js&https_functional=true&limit=100&search=YOURLOCATION

Use the ID of a server found via that URL in the Settings of the Speedtest Checker…

There are much more settings and other options to configure the container, but this minimal setup runs fine… And you will soon see if your internet connection is stable or not:

Et voilà.