There is another thread on this software but this one is for requesting its addition to unRAID. I have tried most backup solutions out there and until 2 weeks ago had a dedicated rsync server and Linux and windows rsync client.

 

However I installed the free Crashplan client and it immediately out performed my rsync backup that I have spend months refining. Crashplan is commercial software but I believe it would compliment unRAID since it has client for almost every OS, is trivial to install on a machine and really does just work as set and forget.

 

It will not do bare meta install or the clever WHS trick where OS files are referenced and not backed up multiple times but apart from that it ticks every box I can think of.

 

Rarely do I find a bit of software I am truly impressed with but Crashplan is one of them and unRAID would benefit for being a backup store of this kind.

I'm going against the grain here a little.

My recommendation would be for Limetech to put the effort into addons hooks and plugins.

 

I.E. A dedicated webserver (lighthttpd) & php.

Hooks for external run level services,  Startup / shutdown.

 

With these, the community can add the external add on modules and have the install automated.

 

However, one point to bring up.

If these tools require kernel modifications, then they should be brought to limetech.

For example, Apache requires Interprocess communication facilities which is not available in the stock kernel.

I do think that the over have of IPCS is small and should be part of the standard kernel so addon packages can be easily installed.

 

I also like the user addons and dont as a rule ask for things to be added. But a backup client is SUCH an inherently good companion to a NAS coupled with it needing to be stable and tested I think it makes sense for it to be core.

 

If unRAID had CrashPlan a windows user could have a backup running on their home dir in minutes with virtually no skill.

 

What a user would do is install the client on their PC. Open it up and add the code word for the unraid client and press OK. From then on their homedir would be backed up every 24 hours. It really is that simple. If they took unRAID to their mates house it would still probably work without any changes. Pretty awesome really.

Since it is commercial I do not think it should be core. (unless the two companies agree to work together with it)

 

What's needed is graceful startup/shutdown of any third party addons (like this).

If the architecture were developed with a clear protocol for handling addons, tools like this can be added quickly and easily.

 

We have unMENU which can download and install packages.

What we need is a graceful way to start them and shut them down.

 

I'm sure there are a number of us who could create a slackware install package and an unmenu conf file to do the install.

 

Consider where you want limetech's time to be spent.

On something a community contributor can do, or on something that none of us can do without access to core code.

 

I'm not against the idea here, However I am considering the time involved in development vs what we need to help ourselves.

 

You make a good case thats for sure. I am certain I can make this work myself (although i don't really need to as I have two machines dedicated to backups offsite"....  and as a community its guaranteed we could (already have?) made it work.

 

But from a commercial POV unRAID vs. say WHS ... WHS wins in respect to backup.

 

Imagine though if unRAID could say "Trivial to use backup server for you and your friends. No server config required for initial use. Free clients available for Windows, Linux, OSX and Solaris. Totally secure and encrypted. No firewall changes require being made. No charges for amount of backed up data. Data only stays on a server you own". Surely thats a great selling point.

 

I REALLY am THAT impressed by CrashPlan. I am an instant fanboy just because I have spent so much time over the years trying to get to a CrashPlan like solution and not getting anywhere near close"

 

Licensing is an issue for Tom. I suspect Crashplan would jump at the idea as it only compliments their business but who knows. Hopefully Tom will read this and at least ponder it.

 

 

 

Just as a intersting fyi... i brought one of my backup servers here from the NOC to chageout some disks and fans. I plugged it in and booted and by the time i had time to get to the other PC it had been detected and a new backup run. i.e. from public IP to private IP it just automagically worked with zero config changes. anyways i rant

 

 

Both sides of this question have been presented very well here.  If both Tom and the CrashPlan people find this interesting though, this really could be a valuable addition to unRAID.  From the comments NAS has made, it sounds like it may be very easy for Tom to bundle this into the unRAID distribution.  What may take more effort is the contract or licensing process, including the very important question of how support is handled.  I can see this of mutual benefit to both parties though, especially if CrashPlan decides we have a very helpful community here that can handle much of the first line of support through the forum and wiki.

 

This would be a first for unRAID, but it has often been done in the industry.  Think of all the 'crapware' that comes with most store or online purchased PC's.  The free version would be included/bundled, and those who wanted more of the CrashPlan services would go to them directly for an upgrade at a hopefully discounted cost.  As NAS has well said, it really adds value to unRAID, and it also looks good for CrashPlan, adds a market and boosts their reputation and name recognition.  And if it is successful for the CrashPlan company, then that results in free marketing and reputation for unRAID.

Oh please oh please oh please oh please oh please

 

I am currently using CrashPlan on ALL of my computers, plus I've convinced (read: forced) my parents and sister to use CrashPlan to backup to my desktop as well.  The only hole in my backup network is unRAID.  I would love to be able to tell my friends and family that they can backup to my parity protected server.  Of course then I would have to explain what parity is....but you get the picture.

Oh please oh please oh please oh please oh please

 

I am currently using CrashPlan on ALL of my computers, plus I've convinced (read: forced) my parents and sister to use CrashPlan to backup to my desktop as well.  The only hole in my backup network is unRAID.  I would love to be able to tell my friends and family that they can backup to my parity protected server.  Of course then I would have to explain what parity is....but you get the picture.

 

You're aware of this of course but the 'other' thread tells you how to setup and run crashplan on your unraid server. It's not slick and it's not packaged up but it does work. Help is available if you get stuck along the way.

 

Anyone willing to take what I've done so far and bundle it up for a slicker experience is more than welcome.

The main thing though is that for this to be truely useful for the majority of unraid users it has to fall within the marketing point of the unRAID product. namely easy to setup and easy to use.

 

Hard core forum users like us revel in your fine work but to tick the box i am requesting here it needs to be core or at least an official addon thats completely idiot proof

Hard core forum users like us revel in your fine work but to tick the box i am requesting here it needs to be core or at least an official addon thats completely idiot proof

 

From my understanding there is a step in the instructions requireing port forwarding on the client to the server.

This is where a good part of the complexity comes from.

 

Once that .identity file is created do you still need openssh on unRAID?

No port forwarding required.

 

This is only required for certain network types (crap NAT etc)

Hard core forum users like us revel in your fine work but to tick the box i am requesting here it needs to be core or at least an official addon thats completely idiot proof

 

From my understanding there is a step in the instructions requireing port forwarding on the client to the server.

This is where a good part of the complexity comes from.

 

Once that .identity file is created do you still need openssh on unRAID?

 

openssh not required again unless you ever need to reconfigure the Unraid crashplans configuration - in which case you have to repeat the port forward. It's the only method to allow connection to a headless crashplan server (right now!).

 

Aware this thread is mostly about having it included with unraid by default but I read Rajahal's post to say he would really like it running *right now*. Just letting him know it does work well and help is at hand to get him there if needed.

 

Sorry to derail.

Thanks boof, I'm aware of your detailed instructions, and if I have some time and some courage some day, I may give it a try.  However, based on the length of your walkthrough, it looks like an all day project, even if nothing goes wrong.  Like NAS said, I'm hoping for an 'idiot proof' Crash Plan package install type of unRAID add on.

Thanks boof, I'm aware of your detailed instructions, and if I have some time and some courage some day, I may give it a try.  However, based on the length of your walkthrough, it looks like an all day project, even if nothing goes wrong.  Like NAS said, I'm hoping for an 'idiot proof' Crash Plan package install type of unRAID add on.

 

The trickiest part of the guide is port forwarding from your windows machine / other crashplan machine to unraid to configure crashplan running there with your login credentials etc.

 

This, as best I can tell, cannot be got round unless the crashplan devs change how crashplan behaves in this manner. Encryption keys and other 'things' are generated by doing this - I couldn't see any other way to generate them.

 

So although the actual crashplan program could be made into a neat package (I can always send you my ready to go .tar.gz if you like) this step will always need to be manually done

Is it possible to do the port forwarding with netcat for windows?

Is it possible to do the port forwarding with netcat for windows?

 

I don't think so as the crashplan server, on the unraid box, only listens for its control connection on localhost.

 

tcp        0      0 127.0.0.1:4243          0.0.0.0:*              LISTEN      6276/java

 

Some combination of netcat and pipeage at both ends perhaps...

 

I could be wrong, if this is a serious endeavour we could / should probably start badgering the devs on the crashplan forum for changes or secret tips on better ways to do this.

 

I would presume that the important file we need which is generated at login is probably the same across any old linux install. So another option, rather than the portforwarding mess, would be to simply install crashplan on another linux machine with a fully fledged X install as normal. And copy the resulting file into unraid after installing crashplan.

 

There are encryptiony things in that file so it may be unique per machine or otherwise tied to the originating machine id somehow. But I suspect it might just work.

 

Edit: looking at my work desktop which has crashplan installed with the same credentials as my unraid box - the files are the same with the exception of the machine guid. I doubt that this is an issue. The private and public key pair are the same and is obviously something assigned to you uniquley when you originally create your account on their servers.

 

I'm not very sure if this option is any easier for most people though.

I would be game to attack this at the crashplan end for a slicker user addon. I firmly believe this could be one of unRAIDs biggest selling points

Hmm, Ok perhaps with stunnel or rinetd. I'm sure there are other tools too.

 

I do agree, the ideal solution is to have the folks at crashplan add hooks for this sort of install.

 

I suppose a talented Java programmer could create something which can forward a local tcp socket to the unraid server whereby a remote java program could accept the connection, then forward it back to the local host port.

 

Just thinking of an easier way to handle the port forwarding as this can sometimes be a difficult concept for linux/unix newbies.

 

Ideally we want either :

 

1) a way to generate and download the critical settings file with your crashplan credentials, guid and encryption keys via the crashplan website - to be generically saved / exported to a file in a location of your choice.

 

2) a way to configure the headless servers credentials without requiring the use of *any* gui (command line parameter..)

 

3) a nicer and easier way to connect the crashplan GUI on another machine to a headless (or any other!) crashplan instance. (i.e no port forwarding involved)

 

The problem, from the crashplan developers point of view, is that setting up credentials is only a small part of what the GUI lets you do. So I suspect 1 and 2 would not be attractive to them as it's only really fixing things from an unraids-particular-itch point of view.

 

1) This allows us to distribute a crashplan.tar.gz package to install or an unmenu addon. We then tell the user to scp or copy the credentials file obtained from the crashplan website to the correct location either manually or by clever scripting to let them drop it into a certain place on their samba flash share and have it auto sync'd. They never need to see ssh.

 

2) This would only let you configure credentials. There are so many more things that can be configured using the GUI and that you might want to be configured which this would not help with.

 

Therefore 3) is the developer friendly option. It would work for all crashplan installs, not just headless or unraid. And it would also let you manipulate all settings of that install easily.

 

This would further extend unraid by allowing an easy way to backup, using crashplan, *from* unraid to another offsite crashplan server. Thus giving internal lan backups -> unraid, external site -> unraid backups and unraid -> offsite backups all wrapped up in one. This is of course possible right now but requires all the port forwarding for initial set up and each time you want to make a change or check on status.

 

To me (unknowledgable in the exact innards of crashplan) this requires :

 

- Crashplans admin port listening not on localhost. Or having an option / flag that can be passed to the server instance to set it to bind elsewhere on purpose. (I'm assuming there's a security reason they do not allow this out the box)

 

- The crashplan GUI having an option to accept the IP address of a separate instance to administrate. This could be very nicely wrapped up by the devs by taking a username and password and then using it to list all the crashplan servers in your profile (this is stored by them centrally anyway - they even know the IP addresses). You could then select one to manage and optionally choose to use it by default if having that prompt each time is wasteful. Even a default 'login to localhost' action, but with a drop down list top right of the screen to instantly change what machine you're managing could be an option.

 

I think that would be the angle to take as most of the functionality is there already - it's just tcp port manipulation and a nicer frontend to an existing config file that's required. It may even be on their roadmap.

 

Edited to add: a slightly different take on it would be to make the crashplan GUI entirely webbased. Thus you need just point a browser at the machine you want to manage...

Is it possible to install X11 on the unRAID server so that the configuration could be done locally?

 

If this were scripted with wget/installpkg commands and subsequently stored on the boot flash then it can be installed on an as needed basis.

A reboot would eliminate the X11 portion (or a script with the respective removepkg commands).

 

I'm just throwing out different idea's.

 

 

 

Assuming we remove the need for remote management (and lets face it almost everyone unraid will be on same LAN) then surely we just need to wget netcat and do some port forwarding?

Assuming we remove the need for remote management (and lets face it almost everyone unraid will be on same LAN) then surely we just need to wget netcat and do some port forwarding?

 

I think this only works on the server side.

I.E. netcat added with the correct params to inetd can forward stdin to a redirected internal local host port.  thus externalizing it.

 

Now how do you redirect a local port on the windows machine to a remote?

There is a version of nc for windows I suppose you could run one version of nc in listen mode which will write it's output via stdout, then you need to redirect this to the remote port. It's a bit ugly and I'm not sure how will it will work under windows.

 

Assuming we remove the need for remote management (and lets face it almost everyone unraid will be on same LAN) then surely we just need to wget netcat and do some port forwarding?

 

The need for remote management is the entire crux of the issue.

 

I'd argue that wget, netcat and variations of portforwarding using them are probably more tricky to use and configure than an ssh tunnel.

 

However another option would be to look at some dedicated windows tunneling software in an stunnel fashion. These might be easier to configure for someone than logging in via ssh with port forwarding options in the client.

 

You also still need to fiddle the crashplan GUI config file whatever you do.

I have not tried setting up crashplan yet but will probably be trying tonight when I get home.  I am on a Macintosh system so I will not be following the directions verbatum but I will let everyone know what needs to be done to get it working from a mac perspective.

 

As for this whole discussion.  It should like it would be nice if we could "point" the GUI to a different machine and manage all of the login stuff remotely.  Something  like a web front end would be very nice and much easier to use, at least for the "headless" installs.  I will have to give this some more thought, but I think contacting the dev group of crashplan could be beneficial.

I have not tried setting up crashplan yet but will probably be trying tonight when I get home.  I am on a Macintosh system so I will not be following the directions verbatum but I will let everyone know what needs to be done to get it working from a mac perspective.

 

As for this whole discussion.  It should like it would be nice if we could "point" the GUI to a different machine and manage all of the login stuff remotely.  Something  like a web front end would be very nice and much easier to use, at least for the "headless" installs.  I will have to give this some more thought, but I think contacting the dev group of crashplan could be beneficial.

 

Principal should be the same - ssh from the command line using -L port:localhost:port instead of via a nice GUI

 

Not sure where the mac config bits live. Could you update the 'other' thread with your findings?