Instructions to get Crashplan going from scratch. :-)

[RussellinSacto]

Hey everyone,

 

I spent some time working on this - so hopefully it helps others.  I borrowed hints from all over the forums and combined them here.

 

These instructions are for users already running a version of Unraid compatible with 5.0 rc 12a.  If your version isn’t compatible, you should upgrade to that version and make sure everything is working properly before following these steps.

 

On your Windows computer:

[*]Make a backup of all the files and folders on your Flash drive.

[*]Delete everything on your Flash drive.

[*]Download the latest version of Unraid (currently unRAID Server 5.0-rc12a AiO.zip from http://lime-technology.com/download/ )

[*]Unzip the contents of the Unraid zip file to your flash drive.

[*]Browse to your flash drive and run the make_bootable.bat file by double clicking it (some versions of Windows may require you to right click and “run as Administrator”).

[*]Within the “config” folder on your flash drive, create a folder called “plugins”.

[*]Download the CrashPlan plugin from here: https://dl.dropbox.com/u/52884397/Crashplan.plg  (you may have to right click and choose “save as file”)

[*]Download the CrashplanGUI plugin from here: https://dl.dropbox.com/u/52884397/Crashplan_gui.plg (again, you might have to right click and choose “save as file”)

[*]Download the OpenSSH plugin from here: https://github.com/overbyrn/ssh/raw/master/openssh_overbyrn.plg (ditto)

[*]Put all three of the Plugins in your flash drive’s config/plugins folder that you created in Step 6.

[*]In Step 1 you made a backup of all your files – browse that backup and select everything inside the config folder EXCEPT the plugins folder (if you have one) and the go file.  Copy everything but the go file and plugins folder to the config folder on your flash drive.  Go ahead and OVERWRITE any of these files that may exist.

[*]Now browse inside your flash drive’s config/plugins folder and open the Crashplan.plg file with notepad or another text editor.  Search for “3.4.1” (without the quotes) and replace it with the current version of Crashplan available on their website for Linux.  Currently this is 3.5.3.  Replace each occurance of 3.4.1 with 3.5.3

[*]Save your changes to the Crashplan.plg file.

[*]Safely remove your flash drive from your Windows computer – put it in your Unraid machine and boot from it (may require fixing your BIOS settings to boot off it – in my case there’s two places to set the drive order and bootable devices).

 

On your Unraid box using either a Putty connection or directly attached keyboard, login and then perform these steps:

 

[*]Install the OpenSSH plugin by using this command: 

installplg /boot/config/plugins/openssh_overbyrn.plg

[*]Install the Crashplan plugin by using this command:

installplg /boot/config/plugins/Crashplan.plg

(Case Sensitive!)  And this plugin may take a while to load – took my system about five minutes.

[*]Install the CrashplanGUI plugin by using this command:

installplg /boot/config/plugins/Crashplan_gui.plg

(Case Sensitive!)

 

Back on your Windows machine, it’s time to configure a few things:

 

[*]Open your browser and connect to your Unraid box (typically http://tower/ ) if you didn’t rename it.

[*]On the Settings tab, choose OpenSSH and then set “Enable SSH Service” to “Yes” then click Apply and then Done.

[*]On the Settings tab, choose Crashplan and adjust the “Install Directory”.  If you don’t have a cache drive, I’d set it to “/mnt/disk1/.crashplan” (without the quotes – note the dot in front of the word crashplan – I think this makes the folder hidden).  If you do have a cache drive, the suggested path should probably be /mnt/cache/.crashplan  Set the dropdown to “Yes” and then click “Apply”.  Note that this will take a while as Crashplan goes to get the Java that it requires.  If you have a screen connected to your Unraid you’ll be able to see this – otherwise just be patient.  For my system this took a little over five minutes!  (You can probably get a chunk of the next section of steps done while you wait!)  (By the way, if you are using the console, it finishes with a line that says “49581 blocks” (not sure if you might have a different number).  Press enter and you’ll be back to the normal Unraid prompt if you need it.)

 

Finally, on your Windows machine you’ll need to setup a few things to get it to connect to your headless Unraid so you can see what CrashPlan is up to.

 

[*]Download the CrashPlan for Windows software from their website and install it.

[*]Once it installs, go ahead and exit their software (it will probably be running, so exit it).

[*]Within the C:\Program Files\CrashPlan\conf folder (or equivalent – you might just have to search for “conf”) you’ll find a file called “ui.properties”  Open this file and locate the line that says “Service Port = 4243” and change it from 4243 to 4200.  (Do not have a # symbol in front of the service port number – if there is one, delete it.)  Save the file and exit.

[*]Open Putty (if you don’t have it you can download it from http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/download.html

[*]Enter your tower name for the Host Name and select SSH.

[*]On the left side, expand the SSH --> Tunnels --> Set 4200 as the Source Port, set localhost:4243 as the destination and then click “Add”.

[*]Reselect the “Session” at the top of the list on the left.

[*]Enter “Tower-Crashplan” in the “Saved Sessions” box (or whatever the name of your Tower is) and click Save to save these settings (you’ll probably want to reuse them).

[*]Double click on this new session (“Tower-Crashplan” or whatever you named yours)

[*]You’ll probably get some kind of WARNING – POTENTIAL SECURITY BREACH! box…  Just click Yes.  (It shouldn’t come up in the future.)

[*]Go ahead and login (generally with “root” and your password).

[*]Finally, launch CrashPlan!

[*]You should now be able to login to your account, set the files you want to backup, etc.

 

A couple of “Post Scripts” that may apply to some people:

• If you’re intending to run Crashplan on both your Windows machine and your Unraid machine I think you’ll have to continually open the ui.properties file described in Step 3 in the section just above) and you’ll need to reset it to Port 4200 when you want to change the Crashplan settings on your Unraid machine and set it to 74243 when you want to change the settings on your Windows machine.
  
• If you have to do this after having already sent files to Crashplan, you may want to “Adopt” your previous computer so that your backup remains intact.  Luckily, this is quite simple and Crashplan has instructions on their website at: http://www.crashplan.com/enterprise/support/doku.php/tutorials/adopting_a_computer  (Their online help people have been great help to me too - it turns out you can get your previous "GUID" from their website by looking at your computers - copy it to your clipboard.  Then within Crashplan, double click on the house in the upper right corner and type "GUID " and then your GUID from their website and your adoption will start).
  

 

I’m quite the Linux noob, so hopefully this helps out some other people.  More advanced users, I hope, can answer your questions if you get stuck.

 

Best wishes,

 

Russell

[trurl]

If you boot with the plugins already in /boot/config/plugins then they will automatically be installed so no need for the installplg steps.

[Reginald]

Great post! You might want to think about using the Wiki that way anyone could help keep the document updated.

 

Just something I caught, you say the version is ec21a, unless you can time travel we are still on rc12a. 

[garycase]

+1 on adding this to the Wiki

 

[RussellinSacto]

Thanks Trurl, I'd heard that rumor. 

 

Thanks for the tip Reginald, I went back in time and corrected the error. 

 

Excited that this might help some people.  No idea how to wiki it.  Hopefully someone can handle that for me.  :-)

 

Russell

[wildchild22]

These are additional instuctions that I used and may help.

 

http://thegearsphere.com/post/36449786819/install-crashplan-on-unraid

[RussellinSacto]

Often I just hate this crap.  I don't know if it's unraid or Crashplan...

 

Despite the lengthy instructions I put together from various sources and posted here...  My own CrashPlan configuration refuses to stay working.

 

I have no idea how to troubleshoot it - I can connect, for a few seconds, via the interface on my Windows machine - then it disconnects.

 

Message box says "CrashPlan has been disconnected from the backup engine" - and sometimes I get nothing at all... the GUI just closes.

 

It appears that the connection to the cloud is still working, I hope.

 

Can anyone help?  Are there any logs that would be helpful?

 

Thanks,

 

Russell

[fcol]

Where are your Crashplan backup files stored (this is different from the Crashplan installation files)?  Did you set a specific location or leave it as default?  I think if you leave as default then it could put the backup files on your unRAID flash drive or into RAM (and then crash).  I suppose checking your flash drive free space (or RAM usage) is a quick way to check this. 

 

[RussellinSacto]

Hi Fcol,

 

Thanks for helping.  My flash has 60MB used, I think it's a 2GB stick.  I don't remember choosing this - so I suspect the plugin chose for me?

 

Any other ideas?

 

Thanks,

 

Russell

[fcol]

The backup location is configured using the Windows (or Mac) client.  From the Crashplan client, go to Settings > General, then click Configure next to Inbound backup from other computers.  At the bottom of the dialog box, change your "Default backup archive location".  I have a user share called "Backup and clones" so I selected the path as "mnt/user/Backup and clones".  When I browse that folder, I have hundreds of GB in Crashplan files.  I backup two computers to that unRAID box and also have different files backing up to Crashplan Central from the unRAID box.  It's been running fine for me during the 8 months since I installed (I had to restart unRAID once after Crashplan self-updated a few weeks ago). 

 

Sorry - I'm not sure what else to tell you.  If you didn't set a location, then maybe the backup files are going into RAM.  I have no idea how to check whether files were going to RAM and then dumping after a crash. 

 

Can see the actual backup files somewhere?  I have a folder called CrashPlan wither nested folders such as [computername] / [string of digits] / [files named cpbp, cpfmf, etc & folders named cpbf000000000XXXX...]

 

 

[RussellinSacto]

Hi Fcol,

 

My current setup is only backing up to the cloud - and nothing is backing up to this Unraid via Crashplan - so I don't think it's my backup location that could be wrong - but I set "Inbound backup from other computers" to Disabled (unchecked the enabled) just to be sure.

 

It still exits and doesn't seem to be running anymore.  To see the Windows' GUI I have to go to the CrashPlan plugin (not the GUI version) and even though it says "Yes" enabled, I click "Apply" to fire it up again (since it apparently died)...  then I can connect to it within the next 30 seconds or so from Windows.

 

Searching for solutions, I tried to open the .identity file found on \\tower\disk1\.crashplan\identity and I get "Access Denied" from Windows.

 

I opened my \\tower\disk1\.crashplan\cp_bin\Service.Log.0 and found this kinda interesting: [05.20.13 18:27:31.782 INFO    main                com.code42.utils.SystemProperties      ] == MEMORY ; maxMemory=494.90MB, totalMemory=19.40MB, freeMemory=12.10MB, usedMemory=7.20MB

 

I think there's 2GB of memory in there.

 

Starting from scratch again....  Damn this is frustrating.

 

Russell

 

 

 

 

 

 

[RussellinSacto]

Back up and running again...  I was lucky enough to wander across this post:

 

http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=26527.msg232637#msg232637

 

I had 815GB backed up to CrashPlan - some thought 2TB was some kind of memory trigger, but it occurred to me much sooner.  (A lot of my data is HUGE files - Photoshop files (PSB) in the 2-12 GB range are quite common - some much larger).

 

I happen to have two Unraid boxes, one with 2GB of RAM, the other with 4GB - I switched the RAM, adjusted the file as suggested (hopefully someone can say how to do it easily for noobs - I had to edit it in Midnight Commander since from Windows (\\tower\disk1\.crashplan\cp_bin\bin\run.conf) I didn't have permission to save changes to the file.

 

Anyway, I think I'm back up and going...  and I don't know if it's gonna last - but the Windows GUI is showing a pretty consistent 135Mbps going up!

 

Amazing.

 

Thanks everyone on the forums - everyone is always so helpful.

 

Russell

[RussellinSacto]

It did eventually drop back down to about 2.5Mbps (so I think the false reading was in data checking or something) - but it's been running for a good 6-8 hours now!  :-)

 

Thanks again,

 

Russell

[boof]

It did eventually drop back down to about 2.5Mbps (so I think the false reading was in data checking or something) - but it's been running for a good 6-8 hours now!  :-)

 

Thanks again,

 

Russell

 

The fast spike will be it running over files already backed up / backing up data it can dedupe. Crashplan reports the throughput as pertains to the rate it's chewing through data on your disk - not the data it's spitting onto the network.

 

So it's an accurate reading - it just means it was able to process some of your backup data (for whatever reason) at 135Mbps.

 

Crashplan is also a huge memory hog (java!) which is one if it's biggest downsides. I hope they address it in the future but it seems unlikely.

[RussellinSacto]

What's the most RAM that UnRaid/Java/Crashplan can utilize?

 

I seem to recall 4GB was all that would ever be accessible - even if I put more in the machine.

 

Is that right?

 

Thanks,

 

Russell