I recently purchased the Synology DiskStation DS211j. It’s quite a steal: for £150, you get an awesome NAS device (bring your own HDD) with an ungodly number of extra features that you wouldn’t find in any other consumer NAS. The web interface is also very well designed, built using Ext JS 3 - a refreshing departure from the typically archaic web interfaces found on consumer network hardware.
One of its most useful features is the so-called Download Station. This allows you to upload torrents, NZBs and HTTP links to the NAS and it does the rest; downloads are completed automatically in the background. It is lacking in a few areas, however, and is superseded by dedicated software such as Transmission and SABnzbd. The good news is that both of these applications (and many others) can also be installed onto any compatible Synology NAS via ‘Synology package files’ (SPKs).
Zebulon’s SPK Repository
Zebulon maintains an SPK repository with a selection of third-party applications; one just needs to add that repository to the Package Center to start installing applications from it.
After logging in to DSM, open up the Package Center application and click Settings. Then select Package Sources and click Add. Enter the following details:
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Once you’ve added the repository, select the Other Sources tab in Package Center. You’ll now see a list of the application packages maintained by Zebulon. From here, installing Transmission or SABnzbd is simply a matter of clicking Install. Once an application is installed, visit the Installed tab to activate it.
A word of warning: it’s important that you create a new, separate shared folder for each application to store its downloaded content. Otherwise, you’ll run into permission errors.
So now life is good: your Synology NAS can perform download tasks all by itself. But what if you wanted to connect through an encrypted VPN service for additional privacy? Or perhaps you’re forced to because your ISP throttles BitTorrent and Usenet traffic. Fortunately, there is a solution.
Installing the OpenVPN client
Under the Available tab in Package Center, there is a list of official Synology packages. One of these is VPN Server, which is described as offering ‘an easy VPN solution that turns your DiskStation into a VPN server’. With a bit of configuration tweaking, however, it’s possible to turn this into a VPN client instead. Install the package, but don’t activate it yet.
Your VPN provider should have provided sets of OpenVPN config files. If you use Viscosity on a Mac, these can be found in ~/Library/Application Support/Viscosity/OpenVPN. You’ll need two .crt files and a .key file, plus the .conf configuration file. SFTP into the DiskStation and drop these files into /usr/syno/etc/synovpn/openvpn, renaming the .conf file to openvpn.conf.user.
Now activate VPN Server in Package Center. These configuration changes effectively transform the VPN ‘server’ into a client; now, while this package is active, an OpenVPN daemon will be kept alive in the background and all outgoing connections from the NAS will be routed through the VPN. Now, any Transmission and SABnzbd traffic coming from your NAS is SSL encrypted and protected against traffic shaping.