If you own a Synology NAS device at home, you know its an incredible machine for the money. However, it likely has a small amount of RAM (mine has 256MB) and that poses a problem. I have found that if you are not using many of the programs (Disk Station, iTunes server, File Station, etc…), you can free up a great deal of RAM by disabling unused services. This gives precious RAM back to processes that can actually use it, and frees up CPU power.
The first step is to disable services you do not need. For me, this includes all the file indexing and thumbnail services, CUPS printing, USB hotplug, and a few other miscellaneous services. Ensure that SSH access is on (Control Panel – Terminal – Enable SSH Service) and login to the device via SSH. Then issue the following commands:
/usr/syno/etc/rc.d/S56synoindexd.sh stop /usr/syno/etc/rc.d/S88synomkflvd.sh stop /usr/syno/etc/rc.d/S77synomkthumbd.sh stop /usr/syno/etc/rc.d/S55cupsd.sh stop /usr/syno/etc/rc.d/S20pgsql.sh stop /usr/syno/etc/rc.d/S66fileindexd.sh stop /usr/syno/etc/rc.d/S03hotplugd.sh stop /usr/syno/etc/rc.d/S03inetd.sh stop /usr/syno/etc/rc.d/S98findhostd.sh stop
These commands will stop the services from running, but they will restart at the next reboot. To prevent this, simply change the executable status of each service’s start script to be un-executable. This will ensure that disabling these services survives the next reboot. Issue the following commands:
chmod -x /usr/syno/etc/rc.d/S66synoindexd.sh chmod -x /usr/syno/etc/rc.d/S88synomkflvd.sh chmod -x /usr/syno/etc/rc.d/S77synomkthumbd.sh chmod -x /usr/syno/etc/rc.d/S55cupsd.sh chmod -x /usr/syno/etc/rc.d/S20pgsql.sh chmod -x /usr/syno/etc/rc.d/S66fileindexd.sh chmod -x /usr/syno/etc/rc.d/S03hotplugd.sh chmod -x /usr/syno/etc/rc.d/S03inetd.sh chmod -x /usr/syno/etc/rc.d/S98findhostd.sh
Note that some of these services might be needed by services you want to run on your DiskStation. You may cherry-pick the services you wish to disable. I only use my DiskStation as a local backup target and have it push to Crashplan, so my requirements are very low. You can reenable a service by using the reverse “chmod +x” command and restarting it.
Next, open the /etc/sysctl.conf file, and add the following network-related settings:
kernel.panic=3 net.core.wmem_max=12582912 net.core.rmem_max=12582912 net.ipv4.tcp_rmem= 10240 87380 12582912 net.ipv4.tcp_wmem= 10240 87380 12582912 net.ipv4.tcp_window_scaling = 1 net.ipv4.tcp_timestamps = 1
This will provide a number of TCP tunings for the Gigabit ethernet card that the DiskStation uses. After making all of these changes, be certain to reboot the box to clear system RAM and caches. You should find that your DiskStation is now more responsive, and tasks should execute much faster.