Finally got CrashPlan 4.5.2 to run under VirtualBox 4.3.12 with Ubuntu 15

[RoboKaren]

Prologue: I had been struggling on an off for almost a year to get the built-in, headless Crashplan plugin jail working in FreeNAS 9.2 and 9.3 but the Crashplan server in my plugin jail never seemed to update itself past the initial 3.6.3 install and the clients on my available machines had all upgraded to 4.5.2 and of course Code42 doesn't make the old 3.6.3 client apps available anywhere. Frustration city. I was at the point where I was going to hook up a small Ubuntu HTPC for the sole purpose of mounting shares and running CrashPlan. But then I thought: <VIRTUALIZATION>

Solution: So I decided to see if I could get a fresh install of CrashPlan 4.x-linux to run under a VirtualBox image with Ubuntu on my main FreeNAS box (a Supermicro X9SCM-F with 32GB ECC RAM). It took the better part of the entire day but worked and now I can configure CrashPlan with its own GUI control panel located in its own little Ubuntu virtual machine through VNC. Here are some notes that might help people:

1. VirtualBox 4.3.12: Perhaps because I'm an upgrader from 9.2, my VB jail didn't create properly because the link to the VirtualBox image broke. I created a new jail template with: http://download.freenas.org/jails/9.2/x64/freenas-virtualbox-4.3.12.tgz
2. Create VM: In VirtualBox, I allocated 1 gigabyte of memory, 1 CPU, and 32 gigabyte of HD space to the vm. I have CPU-cycles/RAM/HD to spare on this box but I didn't want to splurge either since that would take away from my ZFS/FreeNAS memory. Ubuntu itself takes up around 300M and the Java machine that CrashPlan spins up takes 512M too. So 1GB it was. Since FreeNAS wants 8GB + 1GB per TB of HD, I wouldn't recommend running a VM like this unless you have more than 16GB of real RAM memory.
3. Ubuntu 15: I'm not sure why, but Ubuntu 15 (ubuntu-15.10-desktop-amd64.iso) played nicer than Ubuntu 14 with VirtualBox 4.3.12 in terms of allowing me a screen larger than 640x480 even before installing the VB guest additions. It's very hard to do anything in Ubuntu when your screen is so small!
4. VirtualBox Guest Additions 4.3.36: You need to install the VirtualBox guest additions inside of Ubuntu in order to mount FreeNAS datasets as shared folders, as well as give you more control over your screen size. When installing the VirtualBox guest additions, ignore the usual practice of installing the same version as your VB (4.3.12) and instead grab the latest guest additions version in the 4.3.xx series -- in this case: VBoxGuestAdditions_4.3.36.iso <== this took me several hours to figure out (since I hadn't seen the very last comments in this thread). The 4.3.12 guest additions just wouldn't compile without throwing up errors and the 5.xx guest additions will cause havoc.
5. Shared Folders: Once you got VirtualBox 4.3.12 running, try mounting some of your datasets as shared folders. Inside the VB Ubuntu, your shared folders should appear under /media/, but by default they are owned by root with group perms in vboxfs. You do have to add your own user to the vboxfs group for access: sudo usermod -aG vboxsf <your username>
6. Crashplan: Then finally install the linux version of the CrashPlan 4.5.2 app from their website. You're doing the full install so you get to use the control panel in the jail itself without having to try going headless!
7. Success!

Seems so easy when listed like this but this took up the better part of a day. Fighting the VirtualBox guest additions was the main part. I had first tried 4.3.12 guest-additions and that wouldn't load, then jumped to the latest 5.x release and that hanged the vm. I tried running guest-additions as a package and an ISO. It took some sleuthing to find out that 4.3.36 guest additions would load and run properly. The other battle was fighting with Ubuntu 14 vs. Ubuntu 15 and a mistaken foray into Debian.

If anyone is running into errors, I think I battled just about every bug and user-error imaginable. Ask away!


FN 1: Of course after I do all this, I discover the thread that says why CP3.6.3 in a jail on FreeNAS won't automatically upgrade. See here for instructions on how to fix it: https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?threads/crashplan-not-updating.40374/

FN 2: Update 2016.11.25 - After upgrading to Freenas 9.10-U4, I decided to give bhyve/iohyve a swirl and create an Ubuntu vm using that. It's a bit harder since bhyve doesn't have a graphical console in 9.10, so you need to install the server version -- and then vncserver and then the GUI -- but it works fairly well too. Looking forward to the new VMM in Freenas 10 that will liberate us from all this.

 

[RoboKaren]

For future use.

 

[George Kyriazis]

RoboKaren,

thank you, very useful information! I was stuck with the CrashPlan plugin on 4.4.x not upgrading to 4.5.x because of (what CrashPlan folks described as) a dependency on a newer linux kernel, that we can't get on a jail with linux emulation.

Hopefully this scenario will work for me moving forwards. Since you may have run it for a a bit, I have a few questions:
- How stable is this setup? Have you had any issues with the VM crashing, host share not working right, etc.?
- I noticed that if I shut down the VirtualBox jail, the linux VM does not gracefully terminate, so the next time VirtualBox comes up it doesn't bring up the VM. Have you found a way for the VM to come up automatically?

Thank you!

George

 

[RoboKaren]

After doing all this, I decided to return back to the standard CP jail / headless configuration as mastax figured out how to update manually: https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?threads/crashplan-not-updating.40374/

 

[George Kyriazis]

After doing all this, I decided to return back to the standard CP jail / headless configuration as mastax figured out how to update manually: https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?threads/crashplan-not-updating.40374/

I ended up installing Ubuntu 15 on VirtualBox after all, and it seems stable for now. I think I'll let it finish backing up (could be a month or two), and then decide. (I want to have a safe second online backup of my data before I start experimenting with the jail configuration). I kinda like having a standalone "head" that runs the UI (even though it is virtual) as opposed to messing around with .ui_info ugliness, though. Also, easier auto-upgrades, and CrashPlan running on its native environment (linux), which has benefits with support.

I will try to update this thread with any news, for any other people that may find the info useful.

Thanks!

 

[RoboKaren]

After all the work I put into getting Crashplan to work in a jail, the update to CrashPlan 4.8 broke it yet again. And since jails and VirtualBox aren't being supported in FreeNas 10, I decided to give up on both of those and instead, I upgraded to Freenas 9.10 and put Crashplan into an Ubuntu VM using byhyve.

Was fairly easy: Create a byhyve VM, install Ubuntu, create a VNC connection to get to the GUI, then install Crashplan 4.8 from the website; share the volumes to be backed up from FreeNas to Ubuntu with a CIFS share (since byhyve doesn't support shared folders); and voila.

 

[golfleep]

1. Shared Folders: Once you got VirtualBox 4.3.12 running, try mounting some of your datasets as shared folders. Inside the VB Ubuntu, your shared folders should appear under /media/, but by default they are owned by root with group perms in vboxfs. You do have to add your own user to the vboxfs group for access: sudo usermod -aG vboxsf <your username>

Thanks for writing this up! I have Crashplan 4.8.0 running under Ubutu 16.04 using virtual box 4.3.12, and it appears to be working fine, but have been struggling to get the dataset I want to backup seen by Crashplan. I have the 4.3.12 guest additions installed, and I can mount the share via smb, and access the files, but they are not seen by Crashplan. The shared folders do not appear under /media/ so I do not believe I am mounting them correctly.

Would greatly appreciate any help in getting me pointed in the right direction!

 

[RoboKaren]

The shared folders do not appear under /media/ so I do not believe I am mounting them correctly.

You call use the virtualbox tools to mount the folders, or just SAMBA/CIFS. I just used SAMBA/CIFS since I was exporting the volumes as shares anyway.

Here's the commands I used to mount the volumes in my userspace. The only downside is that you have to mount them manually. I could figure out how to automount them but since I only boot once in a blue moon when the system upgrades, it's not worth the brain cycles for me:

Code:

mkdir ~/mnt
sudo mount -t cifs //192.168.1.6/music ~/mnt/music -o username=myusername,noexec
sudo mount -t cifs //192.168.1.6/video ~/mnt/video -o username=myusername,noexec