Safari will not allow login to QNAP NAS

I'm afraid the certificate is a complete red herring. I am accessing the server via a valid IP address. All other computers, accounts and browsers can access the server on my local network with exactly the same address HTTPS://192.168.1.130/. I am not trying to access the NAS over the Internet. Time Machine is successfully backing up to the NAS, Finder can see all the folders and file.

The only thing that cannot/will not access the NAS is Safari on my account on my Mac Mini Studio.

Apple Support failed to solve the problem after 1.5 hours on the telephone. They were muttering that I would have to delete my account or rebuild the whole machine. So far no-one on here has come up with a solution that addresses the problem.

So today I decided to bite the bullet, grasp the nettle, face the music etc, etc. I made sure I had everything backed up to local disks and iCloud and then completely deleted my account on the Mac Mini Studio. I created a new account with the same user name and re-imported everything.

Guess what? I can now use Safari to access the QNAP NAS. QNAP QFinder can also launch the NAS Home page. The "This Connection is not Private" loop round problem has completely gone away.

This proves that the root cause of the problem was something to do with Safari on my account on my Mac Mini Studio. It was nothing to do with certificates, firmware levels or the day of the week. Now I type https://192.168.1.130/ into Safari's search bar and it all works. Even typing the basic IP address of 192.168.130 works.

So the problem was just that Safari configuration or history was screwed up somehow.

My NAS is a QNAP TS-451D2 running QTS 5.2.2.2958. SWABNAS.myqnapcloud.com is the externally facing way to access the server from the internet. I’ve paid for a Certificate for that.

I can also successfully log in using Safari on my iPad.

I’ve just checked again and there is a new firmware just come out. So I’ll install that and try again. That will probably take quite some time to install so as its now 01:50 here, I will post results after getting some sleep!

Thanks for the response. We know that the QNAP Certificate presented by the NAS is Invalid . This situation has existed for several years now. There is an article on the QNAP site explaining it all, https://www.qnap.com/en/how-to/faq/article/why-does-my-nas-warn-me-that-my-connection-is-not-private.

But the invalid certificate does not explain why;

• I can log in with Safari on another account on the same mac
• I can log in with an alternate browser from my account

The problem is only occurring when I’m using Safari logged into my account on my Mac Mini Studio.

The certificate presented by the NAS looks like this

Ok, to clarify;

1) I am not adding www. to the IP address, Safari does that all by itself. I only included that to show I have tried all possible ways of entering the address.

2) The new NAS firmware has not changed the problem

3) The problem is Safari in my personal account on my Mac Mini Studio is behaving differently to;

• Safari in a different account on the Mac Mini Studio
• A different browser in the same account on the Mac Mini Studio
• Safari in my account on several different machines

Whilst the Certificate issue is why all the browsers throw up a security concern, it is not why Safari on my account on the Mac Mini Studio is behaving differently to all other browsers and accounts. There is clearly something messed up with Safari on my Mac Mini Studio account. The question is, What?

"That cert is still invalid"

To be pedantic, it is perfectly valid for accessing the NAS over the Internet. And it works fine as I can access my photos from the pub.

It is only being flagged as "Invalid" when trying to access the NAS over a local network using the IP address of the NAS. This is expected behaviour and was not the reason I could not access my NAS over my local network. :-)