Synology Mail Server Fix “Enable User Name Service” Mirrored Content

If you’ve ever installed Synology Mail Server, you might have had the “Enable User Home Server” error pop-up. Even after enabling this setting and restarting, the error still comes up.

I’m mirroring this page just incase https://community.synology.com/enu/forum/1/post/144970

How to fix “Enable User Home Service” or “The operation failed” if you try to disable User Home Service. Applies to Moments and other packages that rely on User Home Service

Ppbarney @pbarneyJul 08, 20210 Replies 298 Views 1 Likes Toggle Dropdown

Apparently, when you enable the user home service on the Synology NAS, it incorrectly places the homes directory in /var/services/homes even though it’s supposed to be in /volume1/homes (with a symlink to it in /var/services/homes).

This creates a number of problems, including potential loss of user data on upgrades, but it also causes many other packages that depend on the user home service to fail.

The solution to this apparently very common problem can be found on Gabriel Viso Carrera’s web page at https://gvisoc.com/tech/linux/2021/02/06/Fixing-User-Homes-Error-Synology-NAS.html

The fix on that page solved the problem completely.

Here is the basic fix:

  1. SSH into your NAS (you can set up SSH at Control Panel → Terminal & SNMP → Terminal tab → Enable SSH service)
  2. go to the services folder: cd /var/services
  3. create an archive of existing user files (if necessary): tar cfz /volume1/homes/homes-backup.tgz homes
  4. remove the homes folder: sudo rm -rf homes
  5. Create a symbolic link to /volume1/homes: sudo ln -s /volume1/homes homes

At this point, you can untar your user files archive if necessary into /volume1/homes.

After this, Moments will work. This also applies to other packages that rely on the User Home Service.

Note: his page with the solution is also added to the Internet Archive at https://web.archive.org/web/20210206053959/https://gvisoc.com/tech/linux/2021/02/06/Fixing-User-Homes-Error-Synology-NAS.html in case his website ever disappears.


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