Today I made a stupid change to the network settings on my Synology NAS, and it resulted in the IP being inaccessible, and therefore the management interfaces (http/ssl) too. At first there was a short panic that I would have to reset something to get access, which really feels like using a hammer to crack a nut as the old saying goes. Then I thought of a simple back up route that got me in, so I thought I’d note it down to help someone else (or myself next time I do this).
(Side note: I do believe there is a type of reset you can do that just resets the network settings, but I’ve not tried it).
The resolution is quite simple really. Like many of the Synology NAS’s, my DS220+ has TWO ethernet connections on the back. I’m not using one of them so it was set to default configuration. All I had to do was connect that second interface to a network with a DHCP server and then find out what IP it had been issued.
Once I had the IP for interface 2 I could get to the management interface that way and undo my stupid mistake.
If you are running the NAS on a home router and only have a single router connection then unplug the network cable at the back of the NAS and plug it into the other one port. Despite it being the same NAS the two ethernet interfaces will have different MAC addresses, which identify the network adapter. So your home router will actually see this as a new device on the network and give it a different address to normal. So you can still get in this way.
Thanks, another useful route back into a Synology unit 🙂
There is another route into Synology NAS units, should it be a misconfigured IP address/subnet.
The Synology NAS utility does a MAC address scan of the local network (as far as I can work out) and allows you to connect effectively at layer 2 rather than Layer 3.
Which is handy if your NAS has the wrong IP or given itself a self assigned address without your knowledge.
Of course if you’ve setup VLAN tagging, then that may not work so well…