Prepare Synology for Media Components

We’ll need to do a little setup on Synology first in order to create the appropriate user account and directory structure.

Create the Media Components User Account

Get into the DSM on the NAS. Open Control Panel and select User

Create a new user that docker will run your media components as. Name and password don’t really matter, since we’ll never really use this user (but save them just in case). Select Disallow the user to change account password.

The user will automatically be part of the users group, click Next.

Leave the user with No access for now, click Next.

Do not set user quota. Click Next.

Deny the user access to all applications. Click the top Deny (select all) and click Next.

Do not set speed limits, click Next.

Hit Apply on the final page.

Create the Directories

I prefer a new shared folder to keep the video files separate.

Open File Station, click Create and select Create new Shared Folder.

Create a name for it and hit Next. Do not select Encrypt this shared folder and hit Next. Do not select anything on Configure advanced settings and hit Next. On Confirm settings, hit Apply.

Next create the directories. I personally use SSH to login to the NAS and create the directories on the command line, but you can use File Station if you feel more comfortable.

Create these directories (my shared folder is called video) as your normal user.

/volume1/video/completed
/volume1/video/completed/movies
/volume1/video/completed/shows
/volume1/video/sabnzbd
/volume1/video/sabnzbd/complete
/volume1/video/sabnzbd/incomplete
/volume1/video/transmission
/volume1/video/transmission/complete
/volume1/video/transmission/incomplete

/volume1/docker/jackett
/volume1/docker/transmission
/volume1/docker/sabnzbd
/volume1/docker/radarr
/volume1/docker/sonarr

Update Permissions

Now we’re going to make sure that the media-apps user (or whatever you named it) has access to all of these directories.

Open File Station on the DSM. Right click on your shared directory for you content (mine is video) and select Properties.

Click on the Permission tab and click the Create button.

From the Permission Editor, select your media-app user.

Give this user full access (Administration, Read and Write). They’ll need to be able to change permissions on some files that are downloaded. Hit Ok.

On the next screen choose Apply to this folder, sub-folders and files and hit OK.

I would say at this point make sure that the users group has Read and Write permissions on everything in video as well. If not, SABnzbd will have trouble using the directories it needs.

Go through the same process for the directories in docker (jackett, radarr, sabnzbd, sonarr, transmission). Except you do not need to give the user full access here. Read and Write should be sufficient. I’m not going to go through them all because its very tedious.

Get the PUID for the User

You will need to SSH here to get the PUID and PGID for the user we’re going to run the docker containers as.

Run this command

$ id media-app
uid=1036(media-app) gid=100(users) groups=100(users)

Write down this uid/gid combination somewhere. We’ll need it when we’re starting to run docker containers to tell the containers which user to run as.