Alternate to CrashPlan Plugin on FreeNAS 9.10+

[jadz]

I was introduced to CrashPlan through the FreeNAS plugin, and have worked over the years to keep it working through the automatic upgrades and various nuances and compatibility issues.

I thought I would post here to offer a tutorial I wrote up as an alternate to the CrashPlan plugin that I have used over the past few years. I believe that FreeNAS is moving towards bhyve virtualization, so this approach may be more in alignment with the future approach, though I'm not sure.

I've had it up and running for the past few days and it seems like a decent solution.

https://github.com/jadzdotcom/freenas-crashplan-bhyve-centos-vm

 

[ovizii]

Sounds great. I cannot currently test it as I have yet to update to 9.10 but I was wondering about this bit of information:

Then copy contents of /var/lib/crashplan/.ui_info into the local GUI .ui_info file (for Windows this is often atC:\ProgramData\CrashPlan\.ui_info) with the last IP the IP address of the centosguest instead of 0.0.0.0.

Seeing that you mention Windows, do I assume correctly that I need to install some kind of Crashplan client on my client machine be it Win/OSX and then copy that info from the Centos Crashplan Server to the client?

I always wanted to try Crashplan for local backups but was put off by the old Crashplan plugin for freeNAS.

 

[Nick2253]

Seeing that you mention Windows, do I assume correctly that I need to install some kind of Crashplan client on my client machine be it Win/OSX and then copy that info from the Centos Crashplan Server to the client?

Correct.

Crashplan requires a GUI in one form or another to be configured to run. The way this is set up is to run the service headless on the VM, and then use the GUI from your desktop computer to control it. The GUI also works on Linux, not just Windows or OSX, though Windows and OSX are far more common.

CrashPlan has an official "headless" install guide, but it has you unnecessarily set up SSH forwarding, which is not required for CrashPlan to work. It makes sense if you're connecting over a compromised or questionable link, but not so much for just connecting over your home network.

 

[jadz]

To further clarify, the GUI is required for initial setup and for configuration changes.

Once this is done the back end server will run without the need for the GUI.

I usually open it once and a while to check on things, though I get an automated status email from CrashPlan too.

Sent from my A0001 using Tapatalk

 

[-MG-]

Is this still a valid way to make CrashPlan work? I'm a newbie to a lot of this stuff and I was able to follow your guide until starting the vm to install. I get this error:

[

Code:

root@NAS] ~# iohyve install centosguest CentOS-7-x86_64-Everything-1611.iso
Installing centosguest...
GRUB Process does not run in background....
If your terminal appears to be hanging, check iohyve console centosguest in second terminal to complete GRUB process...
Could not create VM ioh-centosguest
Error in initializing VM
[root@NAS] ~# vm_create: No such file or directory

Any ideas?

 

[jadz]

Yes - I think this is still a valid way to get CrashPlan to work, but there were some regressions introduced either by iohyve (https://github.com/pr1ntf/iohyve/issues/224) or grub2-behyve that were preventing CentOS VMs from being created.

This regression was introduced after I wrote the guide. In reviewing that iohyve ticket it is still not clear to me where the source of the problem was or if it is fixed currently.

 

[-MG-]

A lot of the lingo is above my current understanding.

It feels like I don't have any options presently as I can't get past this error. Seems like you mentioned iohyve is the future. Is there another way for me to accomplish this? My research tells me going the VirtualMachine jail won't help me either.

 

[styno]

With the state of FreeNAS 10 and upgrade paths from 9 to 10 being worked on on a daily basis, what would be the best Crashplan implementation right now?
This means stable, working and supported on both 9.latest and upgrade-able to stable 10 when available?

edit: 10 is available!

 

[jadz]

I believe that using iohyve to run a VM that is supported by CrashPlan is still the best option, and this should work with both the current 9 release as well as the future 10 release.

Let me see if I can spark up a clean FreeNAS VM and identify what the workaround would be. The easiest workaround might just be to use an different linux distribution that does properly install on the versions of iohyve and grub2-bhyve included in the current FreeNAS release (i.e. it doesn't have to be CentOS).

With today's release of FreeNAS Corral (10) I think I test the install process in that environment and see what the results are.

 

[styno]

With today's release of FreeNAS Corral (10) I think I test the install process in that environment and see what the results are.

Yes please! If possible and time permits, can you test the FreeNAS upgrade scenario from 9 to 10 as well? I am really curious what will happen with existing vms.
(I really really need to replace my testrig as the cpu is not capable to run any FreeNAS 10 vm's).

 

[jadz]

Good and bad news. The CrashPlan install works nicely by switching to Ubuntu instead of CentOS on FreeNAS 9. The bad news is that the iohyve VMs from FreeNAS 9 are not automatically migrated to 10.

https://forums.freenas.org/index.ph...hyve-vms-from-9-10-when-10-is-released.46613/
https://bugs.freenas.org/issues/18185

This means that the CrashPlan server would need to be re-installed on a fresh VM once you upgrade to version 10.