Resolving strange FTP-related issues on your QNAP

Not being able to delete or rename a file on QNAP via FTP? First thing you have to check, is:

• who is the file owner (it should be your user name) and
• what is file group (it should be everyone).

On various occasions QNAP can set it to admin:administ, which is wrong, in this case.

The same problem will most likely appear, if you access your QNAP via FTP and try to rename or delete a file while using different credentials that were used when uploading that file. If another FTP user uploads a file then only that user can delete or rename or move that file.

If you wish to do this yourself, you have two options:

• use that other user’s credentials (if possible) or
• change owner and a group of that file to you.

The second solution is discussed in this article.

If you’re experiencing following symptoms:

1. You can list contents of directory, but any attempt to copy file, both ways, ends up with 502 Command not implemented or similar error.
2. You can copy file, but attempt to change file’s date and time endes up with 501 001.jpg: Operation not permitted or similar error.
3. Anything other, strange, FTP-transfer or file releated.

Then login to your QNAP via SSH, cd to problematic directory and type ls -ls. If at any position you see admin:administ (or another, not your user) this might be possible cause of the problems.

In this case, use:

• chown username:everyone filename for particular file,
• chown username:everyone * for all files in current directory,
• chown -R username:everyone * for all files in current directory and all its subdirectories (might be slow!).

This will “reset” selected files and folders to correct ownership and many of your FTP-related problems should be gone after that.