Get rid of .@__thumb folders from your QNAP [updated!]

adminQNAP5 Comments
3 min. reading

After installing 4.x.x firmware to your QNAP NAS, you will most likely notice that your multimedia folders has been bloated with .@__thumb folders, containing small images — thumbs of your video etc. This is another stupidity comming from QNAP. But, finally, there is a solution for that.

The problem…

Yes, it is an extreme stupidity, because scanning of media library has been turned on in QTS 4.x.x for every model of NAS, QNAP supports or ever supported. Every, including old, slow, overloaded grandfathers like mine TS-210. I.e. devices range, where virtually any background process can rise CPU consumption to 90-100% and actually kill your server.

To make things even worse, this is repeated (turned on by default) in every version of QTS, so you’ll have to repeat following steps after every firmware upgrade.

But, don’t worry, help is on the way… All right, let’s deal with the dragon.

… and the fix!

Initial steps:

  1. Turn of this nasty shit in: Control Panel > Applications > Multimedia Management > Media library.
  2. Switch Scan Settings to Manual and click Apply and/or click Deactivate Media Library.
  3. Scan your share area for any folders, that might already be created.

To do this, you need shell access to your NAS. Use PuTTy or anything you like and login as admin. Check, if you have findutils package installed, by executing following command:

/opt/bin/find

If not, install it using ipgk:

ipkg install findutils findutils-doc

Now, you can delete all of them in one pass, using following command:

/opt/bin/find / -name ".@__thumb" -exec rm -R {} \;

That’s all folks? No, one more thing…

Execution of above command may result in an enormous number of “No such file or directory” messages. In my case I could easily ignore them as each and every copy of .@__thumb folder was actually removed.

Keep in mind, that Media Library isn’t the only one responsible for creation of these nasty folders, because for example File Station also does create them. For me problem solved itself, because I don’t use File Station at all (way to slow, I prefere direct access via shell or Qfile). But, if you use it, you might need to repeat above steps once for a while.

You will also most likely have to repeat them after each QTS (firmware) upgrade.

More details here (thanks teracow!) or here or here.

5 comments on “Get rid of .@__thumb folders from your QNAP [updated!]”

  3. Dan Morgan
    Reply

    For people using snapshots on their QNAP NAS – To avoid incessant prompting about whether to “descend into “.@Thumb” folders located in the snapshots, which can’t be modified / deleted anyway, since snapshots are a read-only file system, substitute the above command with this:

    /opt/bin/find / -name ".@__thumb" -exec rm -R -f {} \;

    the additional -f option will stop the prompts.

    Dan / Gib.

  4. qnapuser
    Reply

    Control Panel, Network Access, Win/Mac/NFS, Advanced Options, then scroll down and uncheck the box Veto files and hit Apply. Now using Windows Explore if show hidden files is enabled you will now see the .@__thumb folders. When deleting the folder it will delete all the contents but may not remove the folder because of the folder’s Security permissions. You should be able to change the Security permissions if you need to get rid of the empty folder. Be sure to go back and checkmark the box Veto files.

    1. admin
      Reply

      This is highly dependent on which type of QNAP device and QTS software version you are using! On my very old TS-210, using 4.2.6 I don’t even have “Network Access” section in Control Panel (I do have “Network Services”) and when I go to “Win/Mac/NFS” and then to “Advanced Options” I see no trace of any Veto-related checkbox or sth. similar.

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