I want to backup some shared folders from my synology NAS to an external hard drive on my mac. Synology offers Hyper Backup using rsync for this kind of task. Since I can’t get a task setup in Hyper Backup without it complaining about different errors, I figured I would just start by nailing the plain rsync side and then worry about Hyper Backup.

So far, the sync is successful as long as my rsync module’s path points to a directory located on my main drive (i.e. /Users/bpjobin/directory). If I change it to one located in /Volumes, the sync won’t work and throw me a error.

rsync.conf (on my Mac)

pid file = /var/run/rsyncd.pid
lock file = /var/run/rsync.lock
log file = /var/log/rsync.log


[nas_backup_test]
  use chroot = false
  path = /Volumes/Untitled.                 <-- This does not work.
  #path = /Users/bpjobin/rsync_test         <-- This works.
  uid = root                                <-- Either root or bpjobin changes nothing.
  gid = wheel                               <-- Either wheel or staff changes nothing.
  list = yes
  read only = no
  write only = no
  secrets file = /etc/rsync/rsyncd.secrets
  auth users = bpjobin                      <-- User has root permissions.
  hosts allow = *

Command ran from NAS

rsync -avz files bpjobin@<ipaddress>::nas_backup_test

The error…

building file list ... done
files/
rsync: failed to set times on "files" (in nas_backup_test): Operation not permitted (1)
files/book_1.txt
files/book_2.txt
files/book_3.txt
rsync: mkstemp "files/.book_1.txt.fBoMAq" (in nas_backup_test) failed: Operation not permitted (1)
rsync: mkstemp "files/.book_2.txt.4igwAi" (in nas_backup_test) failed: Operation not permitted (1)
rsync: mkstemp "files/.book_3.txt.mU7q7t" (in nas_backup_test) failed: Operation not permitted (1)
rsync: failed to set times on "files" (in nas_backup_test): Operation not permitted (1)

sent 243 bytes  received 497 bytes  296.00 bytes/sec
total size is 0  speedup is 0.00
rsync error: some files/attrs were not transferred (see previous errors) (code 23) at main.c(1464) [sender=3.1.2]

Permissions on both directories

➜  ~ ls -la /Volumes/Untitled
total 0
drwxrwxrwx   5 bpjobin  staff  160  9 May 09:22 .
drwxr-xr-x  20 root     wheel  640  9 May 08:24 ..
drwxrwxrwx   4 bpjobin  staff  128  9 May 08:24 .Spotlight-V100
drwxrwxrwx   3 bpjobin  staff   96  9 May 08:24 .fseventsd
drwxr-xr-x   2 bpjobin  staff   64  9 May 09:22 files

➜  ~ ls -la /Users/bpjobin/rsync_test
total 0
drwxr-xr-x    3 bpjobin  staff          96  9 May 09:27 .
drwxr-xr-x@ 106 bpjobin  staff        3392  9 May 09:27 ..
drwx------    5 bpjobin  _lpoperator   160  9 May 09:21 files