Crashplan via Virtualbox?

[Pseudolife]

I'm not really liking the crashplan plug-in. It installs version 3.6 of crashplan in a headless configuration... and considering Crashplan is at version 4.5, the upgrade cycle isn't a lot of fun.

I got to thinking: what about installing Crashplan 4.5 in a virtualbox of windows? Remote desktop in, and control crashplan, right?

It's overkill, and system resource intensive, but it would work, right?

 

[danb35]

Yes, it would work. It might be a little less resource-intensive to install Linux on that VM rather than Windows, and share the appropriate datasets using NFS. That's pretty much what I'm doing (albeit the VM is on a different host).

 

[RichTJ99]

So you could install ubuntu in a VM & have it run crashplan on the shared dataset?'

I ask because I am having a hard time getting the crashplan plugin started (it keeps timing out). I also have a windows VM running PS3 media server since minidlna isnt offered in the pluggins but it isnt working perfectly.

Do the plugins tend to run better than a VM?

 

[pirateghost]

So you could install ubuntu in a VM & have it run crashplan on the shared dataset?'

I ask because I am having a hard time getting the crashplan plugin started (it keeps timing out). I also have a windows VM running PS3 media server since minidlna isnt offered in the pluggins but it isnt working perfectly.

Do the plugins tend to run better than a VM?

Jails (which is technically what a plugin is), run incredibly better than vbox VMS. They are native to the OS and they use the hardware. There is no virtualized hardware stack that it has to run on.

I keep iterating how bad a vbox VM is for production use in a NAS and you keep ignoring me. I don't know how else I can say it.


Also, minidlna is available to install in a jail, its just not made into a plugin.

 

[Pseudolife]

Spent some time poking around at the VirtualBox jail I setup, and unsurprisingly, it was fairly complicated. In particular, I had a hard time getting Java to work enough to actually load the "screen" and by the time I was ready with a Lubuntu iso, the virtualbox had stopped working. I attempted to track down the error message on a virtualbox forum and quickly saw I was out of my depth, and trashed the whole jail.

In short, I'm going continue to let my outdated Crashplan plugin keep doing its thing for now. It doesn't work well, but it does continue to backup files.

It certainly sounds like other people are using Virtualbox for Crashplan (and a lot of talk of Musicbrainz) but I'm still too much of a Newbie to try my hand at it.

 

[RichTJ99]

Piratehost - I would like to try out working on a jail but am concerned I will have the same issue as Pseudolife. It makes sense that the jails would work better with a native freebsd environment installing a freebsd version vs virtualizing the whole thing into another OS, etc.

I have the plex plugin installed. I started to play with a new jail (similar to Pseudolife) to install plex googling "install plex on freebsd commands". I found some information & freenas makes it very easy to make a jail so 'playing' is easy enough. However I also ran into issues.

Is there a rule of thumb you can offer us in working on jails? Some sort of common steps for most jails/installations?

 

[pirateghost]

I run lots of jails. Essentially they are treated as freebsd virtual machines. Not much to offer there. It all depends on what you want to do with them

 

[RichTJ99]

Well I would like to install Plex (I have it as a plugin) & see if I can understand how/why to install it. The same with minidlna.

Right now I have a virtualbox windows vm running PS3 media player (a dlna server). If i reboot freenas i need to log into the server, fire up the VM & then make sure the network drive is mapped properly & active. An autostart seems to cause the network drive not to connect in the vm. I would like to learn how to install crashplan & other software as well in the separate jails.

Can Jails be backed up?

 

[pirateghost]

You realize that Plex can act as dlna right?

You can snapshot a jail just like any other dataset.

Curious why you are mounting a network drive in windows VM. Can't you assign storage to that jail and present that to the VM?

 

[sremick]

Well I would like to install Plex (I have it as a plugin) & see if I can understand how/why to install it.

It is far easier, faster, less-complicated and safer to keep Plex (PMS) updated if installed as a regular FreeBSD app inside a generic jail than using the FreeNAS plugin. Also it's easy to use the PlexPass edition.

 

[pirateghost]

It is far easier, faster, less-complicated and safer to keep Plex (PMS) updated if installed as a regular FreeBSD app inside a generic jail than using the FreeNAS plugin. Also it's easy to use the PlexPass edition.

This.

Every so often I go into the jail and issue
'pkg update && pkg upgrade'

Restart the service if it gets updated and that's that.

 

[RichTJ99]

I tried to install Plex in a jail after the jail is created, SSH into the jail (using the web shell in jails) & perform:

pkg update -f
pkg install plexmediaserver

I answered yes to everything.

I then entered: service plexmediaserver onestart

It said it was starting plexmedia server.

I went to the IP:32400/web & IP:32400/web/index.html

Neither worked. It did mention editing the RC script but I dont know the user/pass for a putty ssh session. I would love to learn all this & find freebsd versions of software - very good learning experience but i am not getting an error message.

 

[danb35]

It did mention editing the RC script but I dont know the user/pass for a putty ssh session.

Not necessary. SSH to FreeNAS as root, 'jls', find the jail, note the JID (the number), 'jexec JID tcsh'. Once you're in there, you can add a user and set a password if you want, but there's no need to do so.

 

[RichTJ99]

It looked like i installed Plex to the new jail but it is not accessible at the IP i gave the jail. It says connection refused. I am able to ping the jail just not access the web.

 

[RichTJ99]

So this is strange, the DLNA plex server I made does show up on my TV as part of the list of servers. How can I access the web admin?

 

[pirateghost]

Ipofplexjail:32400/web

 

[RichTJ99]

Unfortunately nothing comes up. Not exactly sure what I am doing wrong. The jail is running.

 

[RoboKaren]

I'm not really liking the crashplan plug-in. It installs version 3.6 of crashplan in a headless configuration... and considering Crashplan is at version 4.5, the upgrade cycle isn't a lot of fun.

I got to thinking: what about installing Crashplan 4.5 in a virtualbox of windows? Remote desktop in, and control crashplan, right?

It's overkill, and system resource intensive, but it would work, right?

I finally gave up on getting Crashplan 3.63 to run properly as the headless plugin (and wish/pray for it to update itself); so I bit the bullet, the snowstorm was on me anyway and so I installed Ubuntu 15.10 under VirtualBox 4.3.12 and then installed CrashPlan 4.5.2 as a GUI Linux app.

Couldn't get the vboxfs module to compile, so mounted the FreeNAS volumes as CIFS shares instead.

Finally, after maybe a year of not having cloud backups, I'm back to having a properly running cloud backup again.

But it was a pain in the ass and took up most of this afternoon. VirtualBox 4.3.12 is an old version and didn't play nicely... :-(

 

[Pseudolife]

VirtualBox 4.3.12 is an old version and didn't play nicely... :-(

That's why I gave up on VirtualBox. After all: Crashplan X is still backing up for me right now. It's wonky and I can't connect to the headless server, but the files keep showing up on the cloud, which was the point. I currently intent to leave it alone for as long as it works.

 

[RoboKaren]

That's why I gave up on VirtualBox. After all: Crashplan X is still backing up for me right now. It's wonky and I can't connect to the headless server, but the files keep showing up on the cloud, which was the point. I currently intent to leave it alone for as long as it works.

Ain't that the truth. I had CrashPlan working headless for about six months then I touched something and it broke and never came back online after that. :-(

Now, I finally got VB/Ubuntu/CP to work and it's stable. Phew. I must say that having a GUI and having the CP configuration client on the same machine (VM or not) as the CP server makes life so much easier. I can see why we're moving away from jails and towards VM in future editions of FreeNAS>

K