Like I said this is a NAS, so I have limited access to the root, but I do have access to privileges for /var/services/web/ and the serendipity user has full access to this dir.

This looks like two errors that may be related.

on the .htaccess I really don't understand this one, I have created this as an empty file and given the serendipity user full access to this file, but it still fails.

If I create the file from the text on the screen I get a page not found from the ...