WARNING: This how-to is brief and technical. If you are unfamiliar with the terms SSH, VI/VIM, and CLI then this tutorial may be difficult for you.
I have always hated that Synology does not have better logging for their backup jobs. Errors include “the backup failed.” Thanks, logs!
It turns out that Synology has these logs, but they are not accessible from the control panel. The logs are in the /var/log/messages file on the server.
- On your NAS -> Control Panel -> Terminal -> Turn on SSH.
- SSH into the NAS using your SSH client of choice. Login with username: root and password of your standard admin password. If you login as “admin” you will not have edit rights.
- Type ‘cd /var/log’ to get to the logs folder
- Type ‘vi messages’ to open the main log file. You can type ‘ls’ or ‘dir’ to see the other log files within the folder. DIR will show you the last edit timestamps, to know what logs are relevant.
If you don’t know how to use vi (aka vim) search for a how-to using your favorite search engine.