I don’t know why Roon makes it so hard for anyone who is not a network engineer to add a network share but once again I find myself asking for help. I have a third Nucleus+ which has stopped working (hardware failure - total rubbish product - never buy if you have an option) and I have bought a NUC which took about 10m to install and cost a fraction of the Nucleus+ turds that I have previously bought. However, I am now once again trying to navigate the totally unintuitive network share add. I’ve tried the usual of adding a network share I get the totally useless message that there is an unexpected error: unexpected error. I don’t know which utter dweeb programmed that response but I hope he/she dies and is sent into limbo until they work they way out of that conundrum. Small recompense for the rubbish customer service…
Are you sure that ‘synology_rackstation’ is the share name. It feels more like a hostname.
You don’t need to specify a host name as well as an ip address.
On my synology I have one volume (imaginatively called Volume1) but I have multiple shared folders.
My synology server ip address 10.212.153.200 and its hostname is Gringots (I have a Harry Potter theme going on here with my hostnames - dating back to when my kids were young - so you can guess the significance). As a consequence, I could also use the hostnames instead of the ip address.
Thus, in Roon, I would specify the share as one of:
I suppose that synology_rackstaion is the name of your Synology NAS, not the name of a Share on your NAS?
e.g. On my Synology DS1517 NAS I have shares called Backup, Music, Data, …
If you want e.g. to add to Roon a network share called Music, you need to specify as follows:
smb://192.168.21.172/Music
If that doesn’t work, you can try as follows:
\192.168.21.172\Music
However, I don’t know what OS you are running on your NUC. Is it Rock?
You have to make sure that SMB service is active.
Unfortunately I cannot help with that.
(I am running a server on Audiolinux which offers a complete installation/configuration menu)
Thank you Wade & Dirk, it is nice the community is 48 hours quicker than Roon in responding to issues but it is exactly what I mean by being something that only a network engineer understands. I am now running a Rock as I am fed up with the third Nucleus that I have that has had a hardware failure.
What is the difference between a share name or a host name? I have tried IP addresses, backslashes, forward slashes etc and none of it seems to make any difference. If I knew what they all meant it might be easier but as I am just a paying customer of Roon, WTH should I need to know all of this to make a folder available?
The hostname is a name given to a Device - a computer or a NAS, or a streamer, or a Roon Server - to identify it on a network (so you don’t have to rely upon knowledge of its ip address).
A share name is a friendly name that you give to a network shared folder on a computer or NAS that you use to identify the shared folder.
A network device can have multiple shares so, for example, my NAS has a hostname ‘gringots’ but it has multiple shares: ‘Music’, ‘Video’, ‘Photographs’, ‘Backup’ etc.
Hostnames must be unique on your network (every device has a different hostname).
Share names must be unique on a device but different devices can offer shares with the same name. Thus, a network share is uniquely identified by the combination of hostname and sharename (or, if you prefer, ip address and sharename).
I am trying to add the Roon as a watched folder but so far, no luck…
In Roon, I have tried adding smb://RackStation._smb._tcp.local/Synology Rackstation (which I get from the Mac’s “Get Info” option but somehow this just gets the unhelpful response of an unknown error.
Hostnames are only allowed to use the characters ‘a’ to ‘z’, ‘A’ to ‘Z’, ‘0’ to ‘9’ and ‘-’. Underscore characters and spaces, and any other character not in the list above, nareot allowed.
Thus ‘Synology Rackstation’ does not look like a hostname. It might be a sharename - sharenames are allowed spaces and underscores. Or is it a ‘named’ network location shortcut that you have created on your Mac? I don’t know.
As rule, however, spaces in sharenames are a bad idea.
If ‘Synology Rackstation’ is the sharename, then you might be able to use “smb://192.168.21.172/Synology rackstation” - try with and without including the quotes.
Note: This sharename is different from the ‘Synology_rackstation’ that you have been using in the examples you showed above.
Thank you Wade for your patience. For a service that is supposed to be so plug&play, there is a reason why Roon has not conquered the world. I have tried all of these and am once again met with the “unexpected error” message. When is an error ever expected?
I said 'If ‘Synology Rackstation’ is the sharename - so no I didn’t mean “smb://192.168.21.172/Roon”.
I don’t know exacly what that Mac screen shot was showing. It looked like ‘Synology Rackstation’ was either a sharename or a Mac named network location. It cannot legitimately be a hostname.
I see that you are using a Mac. Are you running Sequoia on it? I think Apple have changed security settings in it. Hope that someone who is familiar with Macs can explain further…
Forget the NAS, plug in a external Hardrive formatted exFAT with the music pre-loaded. Done. Roon has always stated that the library is best local to the server. Adding music stored on a network location is just adding another point of failure to the chain, which should be kept as small as possible.
Thanks Dan - I have a local SSD in the NUC but I also want to keep a NAS a backup source. So whilst the NUC is working with the SSD, I am being driven mad by the inability to add the NAS as I have done to the previous three doorstops (sorry - Nucleus+) that I have.
So let’s forget about the Mac Finder screenshot which is definitely confusing me, and concentrate on what the Synology wants you to fill in on the Roon Network Share page.
Have you tried \\192.168.21.172\Roon as the network share address?
