Crashplan on freenas 9.3?

[mattlach]

A few post indicated CP does not support backup to CIFS resource hosted by Freenas, can anyone expand on this issue ?
If this is TRUE I expect CP can't backup files to any SAMBA server, this sound very unlikely to be valid ? any comments ?

I can't speak to SAMBA as I have never tried it. I can see how the client might block samba mounts in Windows, but this becomes a little tricker if you use the linux version, especially if you have statically mounted network shares using /etc/fstab

This is how I do it, but I use NFS instead of SAMBA. The NFS shares are mounted on the Linux install in /etc/fstab

Then a userspace reverse filesystem encryption is done using encfs, which is where I have told Crashplan to look for things to back up.

This works fantastically, (apart from the fact that it is tough to see which file is which, if I don't want to restore everything, as the file and folder names are all encrypted too.

So, I'm going to say, it depends.

If they have blocked anything, SMB shares on a Windows client are probably blocked. SMB shares on a Mac client might be. Statically mounted SMB shares on a Linux box, probably not, and statically mounted NFS shares on a Linux box, definitely not.

If you are hellbent on using Windows as your client OS, try some things to see if they work. Enable NFS and use it instead of SMB. Check if Crashplan will back up now. If not, try placing a symbolic link from the shared network file system to somewhere else on your windows machine and see if you can "trick" it.

 

[cudencuden]

I installed it yesterday, so I'm far from an expert. My main resources were this article, this article, and this video (including the second part). Here are at least the rough steps I followed:

• Install the crashplan plugin through the web GUI
• In the left-hand frame of the FreeNAS web GUI, expand Plugins, then click on Crashplan. Scroll down to accept the Java EULA.
• Add storage to the crashplan jail for whatever on your server you want to back up to crashplan. Add each dataset separately under /mnt/ in the jail, and make sure the "read only" and "create directory" checkboxes are checked. For example, if you have a dataset called "documents" that you want to back up, the source would be /mnt/pool/documents, and the destination would be /mnt/documents.
• SSH to your FreeNAS server as root
• Run "jls" to list your jails. Note the JID (number) of the crashplan jail
• Run "jexec (JID of the crashplan jail) csh". For example, if the JID is 3, run "jexec 3 csh"
• Run "echo crashplan_enable=\"YES\" >> /etc/rc.conf"
• Run "service crashplan start" and see if it starts without errors
• Run "sockstat -l" and see that you have a lot of java processes listening on port 4243.
• Run "service crashplan stop"
• Run "ee /usr/pbi/crashplan-amd64/share/crashplan/conf/my.service.xml"
• Scroll down to find the line that says "<serviceHost>127.0.0.1</serviceHost>". Change 127.0.0.1 to 0.0.0.0
• Hit Esc to bring up the menu, a to leave the editor, and save the file.
• service crashplan start
• sockstat -l -- the java processes should now be listening on *:4243
• Install the crashplan client on your desktop machine
• Edit the ui.properties file (see here for location) to uncomment the serviceHost line, and to change the IP address to the address of your crashplan jail

Now, when you run the crashplan client, it will control the crashplan installation on your FreeNAS server. I have it running, backing up a dataset on my FreeNAS server to Crashplan central. Still not sure about how to set up backing up my desktop machine to my FreeNAS server.

not sure about the last line..do you have to leave your PC running while backing up to the crashplan cloud (central) ?

 

[danb35]

Crashplan will run on the FreeNAS box and back up whatever data you've told it to back up, whether or not your client machine (the one you're running the CrashPlan client on) is running.

 

[cudencuden]

Crashplan will run on the FreeNAS box and back up whatever data you've told it to back up, whether or not your client machine (the one you're running the CrashPlan client on) is running.

ohhhh..okay....a client machine is just for accessing backed up files, etc...i thought client is referring to the backup agent/service...thanks

 

[Biornius]

Link to the feature request for official CrashPlan FreeNAS support. Please vote if you haven't already: https://helpdesk.code42.com/entries/23700388-CrashPlan-on-FreeNAS