setting up a new Synology NAS (“DiskStation”) to look and behave like an “old” one

When I set up my new DiskStation DS115j, it started with DSM5 from the beginning. My old DiskStations “obviously” came from DSM4 and got migrated to DSM5, and therefore they had different default settings.

Issue: It does not have the “Control Panel” icon on the desktop initially.
Category: DSM4-DSM5 migration issue.
Solution: Simply go to “Main Menu” (on the Desktop) and drag one of those icons to the Desktop.

Issue: You have SSH access enabled, but you still cannot login via ssh.
Category: “needs manual intervention”.
Solution: log in to the BusyBox command prompt as “root” (not as “admin”), although it’s the same account, and you are using the same password for “root”, then vi /etc/passwd, and change the respective user’s initital application, i.e. his/her shell to /bin/ash.

Issue: I can login via SSH, and the set-up looks identical to another DiskStation, but still I cannot login via publickey but only via password.
Category: …
Solution: none so far.

Issue: they created my home directory with umode 777, that way I couldn’t log in w/o password through SSH. It took me rather long to recognise that, although “ssh -v” gave the right hint:

debug1: Remote: Ignored authorized keys: bad ownership or modes for directory /volume1/homes/johayek