When running Paperless-NGX on a Synology NAS, stability and everyday usability depend not only on the container itself, but above all on how storage is integrated.
In this article, I describe how we integrated Paperless-NGX cleanly using NFS shares, why this decision makes technical sense and how it led to a deliberately reduced but practical Drive integration.<\/p>\n\n
Synology provides very convenient standard file access through SMB, particularly in combination with Synology Drive. For conventional file storage or shared working directories, this is generally more than sufficient.<\/p>\n\n
When Docker, Paperless-NGX and Synology Drive are combined, however, SMB quickly reaches architectural limits. The decisive issue is less Paperless itself than the role of Synology Drive as an additional actor in the filesystem.<\/p>\n\n
This setup consists of three clearly separated layers:<\/p>\n\n
For this interaction to remain stable, the filesystem needs to:<\/p>\n\n
SMB introduces several difficulties in this architecture:<\/p>\n\n
Especially for the consume folder, which is monitored continuously, this can result in documents being processed late or not at all.<\/p>\n\n
NFS fits much more cleanly into this architecture:<\/p>\n\n
Synology Drive can still be used \u2013 but selectively and in a controlled manner, for example only for the Scan_Inbox.<\/p>\n\n
Using NFS here is not an end in itself, but a deliberate architectural decision in order to:<\/p>\n\n
The container remains stateless, the data resides on the host, and Synology Drive is used where it makes functional sense \u2013 rather than indiscriminately everywhere.<\/p>\n\n
The storage structure was deliberately divided into three logically separate areas:<\/p>\n\n
This separation simplifies not only configuration, but also maintenance, troubleshooting and future extensions.<\/p>\n\n
The two shared folders \u201cPaperless Inbox\u201d<\/strong> and \u201cPaperless Archive\u201d<\/strong> should already have been created through the DSM interface. The following SSH configuration only adds the required subfolders.<\/p>\n This creates a clear logical separation:<\/p>\n\n New documents arrive in the Paperless Inbox, while archived and exported documents are organised clearly in the Paperless Archive. This makes later maintenance, permission management and backups much easier to understand \u2013 particularly on a Synology running multiple services for multiple users.<\/p>\n\t\t\n\t\tsudo -i\n<\/span><\/span>\n<\/span><\/span>INBOX=\"\/volume1\/Paperless Inbox\"<\/span>\n<\/span><\/span>ABLAGE=\"\/volume1\/Paperless Ablage\"<\/span>\n<\/span><\/span>\n<\/span><\/span>mkdir -p \\\n<\/span><\/span> \"$INBOX<\/span>\/Scan_Inbox\"<\/span> \\\n<\/span><\/span> \"$ABLAGE<\/span>\/Archiv\"<\/span> \\\n<\/span><\/span> \"$ABLAGE<\/span>\/Export\"<\/span>\n<\/span><\/span><\/code><\/span>Code language:<\/span> Bash<\/span> (<\/span>bash<\/span>)<\/span><\/small><\/pre>\n