Dear Keerti,
Yes, I have already opened such a case at WD Technical Support, at Support | Western Digital, since April 26, and it has generated quite a bit of response from their expert technicians, but I get the impression that no one there knows how to use it, as there has been no thorough investigation carried out to test the software to see if the importation and application of the administrator-created user list text file [and, similarly, of the administrator-created group list text file] to manage the users, shares, and their access is working correctly. It is as if nobody in WD Support knows how to use this function, a function and feature which should be considered a pretty convenient feature, as it provides instant settings change to the permissions. I venture to say that the Synology NAS OS doesn’t have this useful feature, but the MyCloud does have. This capability that MyCloud has, and Synology doesn’t have, is that with a text file that the administrator composes with seven parameters per user, the administrator is able to manage the permissions that can be given to the users as to whether any share is accessible to the user, and whether a share is accessible as a read-write folder, or as a read-only share, or, a folder blocked from view, that is, as a denied-access folder. Now of course, all of these settings can be done manually, one user at a time, but for a typical ten user network, there may be a need for 30 shares, so one would have to go through 30 shares per user to set them properly. So, wouldn’t it be nice if I, as an administrator, could do it all with a file containing a line for each user, with the user’s name, password, groups, read-write folders, read-only shares, denied access folders, and guota (storage space alotted to user)? Well, the MyCloud OS has that in the process of, first, composing a text file [I think of that file as a permissions configuration file], and, second, uploading and applying such a file to the users and shares, at the Users Page in the Dashboard. And the results could be verified in the Users page and in the Shares page at the dashboard, by going through each user and each share, one at a time.
At the place where the administrator uploads the text file that does all the magic, an example file can be downloaded, and that explains what order and how to separate the parameters. Here follows that example file:
#Input a user’s information in the following order and separate them by TAB, and the group and share must be created and existed.
#user_name password join_to_groups shared_name(rw) shared_name(ro) shared_name(deny) user_quota
#username pw g1:g2 share1:share2 share3:share4 share5:share6 0:0:0:0
#user quota settings: user quota not set or 0, quota = 0; user quota <= group quota, quota = user quota; user quota > group quota, quota = group quota
The only problem is that the only line that sort of is the closest to an example is the line: #username pw g1:g2 share1:share2 share3:share4 share5:share6 0:0:0:0
And yet, this line won’t work until you remove the #, perhaps the # was what used to work, until they made some change in the MyCloud OS when going from version 3 to version 5. But then they never made any update to the documentation. And also a true example would require a password of 8 characters or more, so the example given won’t work, as pw is only 2 characters. Also, the last parameter for quota setting, I have tried many possible and reasonable values, but the only value that worked for me to get 20 Gigabytes set for a user was to use a value of 20000:0:0 instead of what is given in the documentation as 0:0:0:0 for unlimited storage, but I don’t want that, so it would seem reasonable that 0:20:0:0 assuming that the place where I have the 20 is to set gigabytes.
The documentation, in my view is simply incorrect and caused me much waste of time, as it is, because what I have found to work is that the parameters must be separated by tab character, while the documentation says something else, that the parameters be separated by /. And you can check for yourself at My Cloud OS 5 Online User Manual (wdc.com)
Not only that, but the quota parameter won’t work as given in that help page. It says that to set quota to use 0:0:0:0 for unlimited, that may work, but what if I want 20 GBytes? Then, you would think 0:20:0:0 where the first position is for Terabytes, and the next position would be for Gigabytes, then megabytes, and finally kilobytes. But what worked for me was 20000:0:0 and that gives me 20 Gigabytes. So I should complain to WD Support until they update the help documentation page.
So what I am trying to state here is that I am very familiar with this feature, but I haven’t gotten it to work, and I get the impression that there is a bug in the system. I am assuming that there is a bug, because from what I gather from all my trials and errors in trying to get this to work, is that there may be a bug. I have told WD Support to investigate and test to see if there is a bug. It would seem like WD Support, given my reporting of a bug, would elevate and escalate this to a level where they would call on their best software engineers, perhaps even the engineer that was responsible for the feature to work on it and fix it. If it’s not a bug, then there may be something in my text file that would cause it to not work correctly.
One thing that I haven’t tried is to compose a complementary import group list file and import it and apply it at the Group tab page. Such a file is supposed to make it easier to manage shares by placing users in groups. And then all users in a group would get certain permissions all at once.
Thank you Keerti. Yes I have reached out to WD Support. I reach out here to see if any other users are having this experience. Or to see if anybody here is confident in using these import files.
Injoy your day,
Jairo Jamyang Pawo Moreno
Orlando Florida.