Disclaimer: I’m new to Duplicati!
I would like to use my Synology NAS at home as a backup target for my Linux Notebook.
What is the recommended way to achieve this?
NB: The NAS is only reachable from home.
Thanks for any suggestions
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Hi @FreeMinded, welcome to the forum and thanks for using Duplicati!
The forum search tool returns more than 40 posts that mention Synology (Search results for 'Synology' - Duplicati) but this might be a good place to start:
And you might want to check this recent one out to hopefully avoid a potential future headache:
@JonMikelV, i don’t think he’s looking for an installation ON the NAS…
@FreeMinded - The “normal” way would be just to install the package for your linux-distro (found here Duplicati) and add a new job.
For the target you just choose either a (dedicated) directory on you synology that you’ve mounted on your laptop (choose local directory or drive) or via ssh (chosse via ssh).
If you chosse ssh don’t forget to enable it on DSM though 
Local drive or ssh is just up to your liking - in my opinion it makes no difference at home…
The “all backup jobs gone” mentioned above shouldn’t bother you, as this is only a thing if you install duplicati on the NAS (which you don’t, as i read your post).
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@cpo Thanks! Yes, I’m looking at a way to backup to the Synology NAS.
I will try the ssh or SFTP Option, as mounting shares is a bit of a pain if they are not always available.
@JonMikelV I had searched the forum before posting.
Sorry for the wrong advice @FreeMinded, it looks like @cpo has you covered with the right way to go.
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Thank you @cpo for you answer.
On Windows you can both map a remote NAS folder to a local drive letter, or access it directly (in my case, \SYNOLOGY-NAS\ entered as a normal directory path). From what I read around, I believe it uses Samba as protocol.
But I still don’t really understand the various “ups” or “downs” of SSH, Samba and others. The only up I found of mapping to a drive letter (or mounting as a folder in linux, the same) is that I can move the location of the files on the NAS without affecting Duplicati, but I’m not sure changing the target directory directly into Duplicati would be much harder.
It would be nice to write a static article on the “suggested” ways to backup to local and remote destinations, as Duplicati allows for great flexibility but that is not always easy to manage for the average user.
@JonMikelV no, definitely, installing it “on” the NAS is waaay out of my technological reach 
I do have two NASs that i backup to.
- One is in my local network. As a backup destination i just point Duplicati to a folder on the NAS “\DiskStation\backupfolder”. This gives you a bit of freedom to change something in your network (like IPs and stuff).I don’t think that the used protocol is of much influence “inhouse”.
- One is offsite - this is my theft, flood, earthquake, aliens worst case backup To access this NAS i use SSH as the destination type (just one user with strong password on the NAS).
I have been using it with SFTP / SSH with success. On Linux I prefere this way over using a share as it’s not as easy to automount shares as it is under windows.
I use WebDav protocol to back up to my Synology NAS… works great!