Synology Cloud Station and the pesky TailCharacterConflict error

At my (previous) company we’re using Synology Cloud Station with 20 users and lots of files. One user was complaining that the folder names were renamed with this nice addition:

Company Name B.V._PC_Name_UserName_Jan-27-145750-2015_TailCharacterConflict

Everything I tried didn’t help: renaming the folder, deleting it from the server, resyncing, everything. Google wasn’t a big help either. The folder kept being renamed with this very irritating TailCharacterConflict.

Until I saw the pattern.

You CAN’T let you folder name end with a trailing PERIOD. In this case, the folder name was Company Name B.V.

Changing the folder name to Company Name BV (with the periods) solved the problem. Insane, but true!

8 thoughts on “Synology Cloud Station and the pesky TailCharacterConflict error

  1. You are the man! Thank you for sharing sir Martijn. The TailCharacterConflict had me stumped. I just setup this Synology and beginning to figure things out. I may have to tap the expert (you) on the shoulder if something else crops up. 😉
    I do notice the Synology having a tough time showing up in the Shared devices in the Finder, so I often have to connect to the IP address directly.

    • Thank you for your kind words! Took me a long time before I found the solution for that one…

      On my Mac I only connect to the Synology using the IP address; much quicker. Even the SMB protocol is quicker than AFP (I use AFP only for TimeMachine). Too bad Apple removed (an easy way to connect to) NFS from the recent OSX versions; that was soo much better.

  2. Thanks a bunch for sharing this! Saved me an unknown amount of time because I found your solution quickly. “TailCharacterConflict” doesn’t really tell you anything …

  3. I got the TailCharacterConflict and removal of a blank space at the end of my folder names after I uploading my entire photo collection with CloudSync to my online backup solution. Very frustrating as I put it to just upload everything and do not change anything local as it should be a one way backup and no sync. Now I have to reorganise my entire Lightroom collection as all the renamed folders are “missing”. Wish there was a warning or notice in before. :-/

    • I also got caught out by this one, and have to do a bunch of re-organization. It’s the kind of thing that you’d think Synology could put a note on, or flag an error as you’re setting it up…

      So: with respect to quick fix, did you simply delete the trailing period, and wait for it to re-sync?

      • Exactly, that fixed it for me. Mind you that maybe, with the new Drive app, this problem has been solved. Fingers crossed!

  4. Has anyone found an easy way to fix the damage? I now have around 100 folders with the suffix TailCharacterConflict – and each one seems to have a different combination of the files and folders that were in the original one!

    • Well, I guess you can use a renaming program like FileBot or grep / sed on Linux to take care of it. I was lucky enough to only to have dealt a small amount of files and folders.

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