NAS Real Time Notifications Win 7 vs XP

[RadicalDad]

I did my initial testing with SFFS using Win XP Pro. Using bidirectional Real Time Sync to a Synology NAS, I was pleased to find that changes on the NAS were noticed immediately by SFFS running on a Win XP PC. We have since upgraded to Win 7 Pro machines. Real Time Notifications from the NAS no longer work. What happened?

This isn't a huge problem. Changes on the NAS side are uncommon in our normal usage, and they are always picked up at the next PC boot, but we had come to rely on this, and it will become more important in the future. What is the difference between XP and 7 that this no longer works? Any way to restore this functionality?

[superflexible]

Apparently change notifications in Samba are not 100% Windows compatible, and some Windows versions don't tolerate it. For example, see

http://forum.synology.com/enu/viewtopic.php?f=111&t=27527

The newest NAS devices or firmwares might work better.

[RadicalDad]

The link was helpful, thanks. FYI, we've done some updates since this was first posted. Now we sometimes get RTS notifications from the NAS, sometimes not. This is true both over the local LAN and across a VPN (PC monitoring NAS folders in both cases.) Another oddity: when one profile catches that a change has occurred, the remaining profiles (monitoring different shares on the same NAS) also run at that time even though the other profiles had no changes to make. This info is FYI in case it suggests a programming improvement, but I'm not asking for anything directly on this issue (but do see below...)

An adequate solution for me would be to have both Monitoring/RTS and a Scheduled time once or twice a day running in the same profile. If RTS catches the change, great. If not, the scheduled profile will catch it for sure. The profile lets me set that up without complaining. I assume it is legal to do so.

Thanks.

[superflexible]

Hello,

can you try the new version 6 beta build 33? I fixed an incompatibility with some NAS devices.

[superflexible]

Version 5.54 is now also available with a compatibility fix.

[superflexible]

An adequate solution for me would be to have both Monitoring/RTS and a Scheduled time once or twice a day running in the same profile. If RTS catches the change, great. If not, the scheduled profile will catch it for sure. The profile lets me set that up without complaining. I assume it is legal to do so.

Yes, you can specify a regular Schedule in the same job that also runs as real-time. For example, every 8 hours.

To see why a profile was triggered, you need to check the log file.

Something else that might be interesting in the new version 6 is the new checkmark "Test and Keep Alive Real-Time Notifications After X Seconds Silence". You will find this on the Misc tab sheet of the Program Settings dialog.

This new feature will test if the notifications work by creating a small test file and immediately deleting it. If an event is triggered, fine. If not, it will re-subscribe to the notifications and test it again. If there is still no event, it will notify you of an error condition. It will do this by writing to the file "realtime status log.txt" in the log folder, displaying an error on the Scheduler tab sheet, as well as trying to send an email (if you have email notifications set up).

[RadicalDad]

The notification test in version 6 is appreciated, but for now it seems clear that notifications are not working. I can test that myself, which I just did using the newest 5.54 release. From what you have said, would I be correct in assuming that with regard to notifications, v5 is the same as v6 except that V6 has the test built in? Assuming that is the case, I'm going to hang with V5 for the time being. Very busy time of year for me, so don't want to be messing with this right now.

Also to be clear, in the latest V5.54 (just installed), notifications are not working. This is on a Win XP machine, backing up NAS to NAS, one on the local network, one remote via VPN. Speaking only of the local NAS, this used to work, though the test was on a different XP machine going from the machine's own hard disk to the NAS. Using RTS and a bi-directional sync, I would get nearly instant updates between the NAS and the machine's own hard drive no matter which side was changed, even if another network PC changed the NAS side.

This is all FYI. Considering my work load, I am currently content with a scheduled once a day sync. If notifications and RTS start working again, that would be gravy, but I don't have time to work on it now.



Thanks

[superflexible]

From what you have said, would I be correct in assuming that with regard to notifications, v5 is the same as v6 except that V6 has the test built in?

Yes.

NAS devices are just usually not Windows machines and therefore not totally compatible and will always have defects. Whenever possible, I recommend using a real Windows server with hard disks as network storage.