The call to the Synology Web API failed. Exiting program. Error code 105 (Insufficient user privilege)

[tfabris]

CrowCam youtube stream was down for a couple of days and this error message repeats in the log for every CrowCam run: The call to the Synology Web API failed. Exiting program

Digging deeper, I see that the error message from the API was this: {"error":{"code":105},"success":false}

Googling tells me that error 105 is "Insufficient user privilege" - yet I made no changes to the NAS or its users or any privileges. However, the Surveillance Station software indeed had been automatically updated immediately prior to this error message appearing. I see in the log:

Info  2024-04-23 22:29:59 Package [Surveillance Station] has been successfully updated.
Error 2024-04-23 22:30:07 CrowCam Controller - The call to the Synology Web API failed. Exiting program.

So this is definitely the result of a Surveillance Station update. Investigating.

[tfabris]

Root cause:

This was caused by some sort of permissions change in the Synology Surveillance Station API which was induced on approximately 2024-04-23. This appears to be a newly-introduced regression bug caused by Synology on that date. The user account that I was using to access the API originally had the privilege level of "All-Object Manager" in the Surveillance Station. Prior to 2024-04-23, this privilege level was sufficient to do the necessary tasks of starting and stopping the YouTube stream. Unfortunately, since this update, now the privilege level of "Administrator" is required to control the YouTube stream.

Note: The API user account doesn't need full Synology admin privileges, it does not need to be a Synology "administrator" account. It only needs admin permission inside the Surveillance Station. The Surveillance Station has its own additional level of user permissions granularity inside it. To access it, follow the steps below.

Workaround:

To work around this new bug, I had to change the permissions of my API user account in the Surveillance Station. Steps:

• Log into the full web UI of the management software for the Synology Surveillance Station at the address which looks like this: https://<NAS IP ADDRESS>:5001/webman/3rdparty/SurveillanceStation/
• Press the "Main Menu" icon (the four geometric symbols in the upper left corner, shaped like a diamond and three squares).
• Press "User".
• The user management screen will appear.
  • IMPORTANT: This must be the user management screen for the Surveillance Station, not the one for the main Synology DSM. Make sure you are in Surveillance Station.
• In the list of users, find the username of your API user (the user that is configured in your CrowCam "api-creds" file).
• Select that user.
• Edit the user, either by double-clicking on the user, or, pressing "EDIT" and "User Information".
• A dialog box with the user details will appear.
• Under "Privilege Profile:" it may say "All-Object Manager" or some other value, change it to "Administrator" and press "OK".
  • IMPORTANT: Do not edit the privilege itself! Change the user setting, not the privilege. For example, do not select "edit - privilege", do not select the "edit" button next to the privilege. Just change the dropdown in the user dialog box.

One other note: I also had tried changing the user to Administrator and then changing it back to All-Object Manager. (This kind of thing is sometimes needed when permissions get changed.) However this did not solve the problem. Only permanently changing the user to Administrator solved the problem.