Virtualbox and crashplan

[BahBah]

Hi

In the past I've had trouble with the crashplan plugin installation on my freenas box.

Could I install virtualbox and mount my freenas shares? If so, could I run the crashplan client natively in a vm and then backup my shares like that?

Many thanks

 

[Robert Trevellyan]

Yes, you could.

 

[danb35]

You could, but it may take a bit more messing around. Off the top of my head, it would require:

• Mounting the datasets you want to back up to your VirtualBox jail as storage
• Installing the VirtualBox guest tools in the guest OS
• Configuring the Shared Folders feature to make those datasets visible to the guest OS

...in addition to the usual mucking about with the headless crashplan configuration.

 

[katit]

...in addition to the usual mucking about with the headless crashplan configuration.

You mean "instead of" - becaue if he installs GUI OS in VirtualBox - Crashplan will be complete install, you just need to remote desktop or something..

 

[danb35]

Well, I didn't mean "instead of", because I hadn't considered that. Not sure if it would be more hassle to remote desktop in rather than configure Crashplan to run headless, but it would definitely be another option.

 

[katit]

Given how much trouble I have connecting from Mac, changing ports, starting up channel, etc. If I went through the trouble of installing OS in VirtualBox - I would use Crashplan "as designed" and just remote desktop into there...

 

[Robert Trevellyan]

I would use Crashplan "as designed" and just remote desktop into there...

The nice thing about doing this from a Mac is that the Screen Sharing app comes with OS X (it supports VNC so there's no need to install another remote desktop client). Just enable remote display in the VM's settings and click the link to connect.

 

[katit]

I guess it's about "what you have already". For my work I routinely remote desktop or SSH into machines so for me it's very common and usual thing. Now that I think about it, it may be more reliable way than fixing crashplan in jail after each update. But what to run in VirtualBox? Windows7? Another license needed :( And also crashplan on windows is probably reliable and all, but how reliable is to share folders to VM windows on FreeNAS?

 

[Robert Trevellyan]

But what to run in VirtualBox?

Linux is a supported platform for CrashPlan...