CrashPlan is a unlimited, inexpensive (about $5/month), fully automatic, fire-and-forget backup service from a reputable company that works on most ReadyNAS units. Unfortunately, there is no app and CrashPlan is unsupported by its maker on NASes. That means that you need to ssh into your ReadyNAS to install the CrashPlan Linux client.
What's worse, there are a bunch of fiddly little incompatibilities that you need to fix manually after every install (or reinstall) of CrashPlan on the ReadyNAS. Even worse than that, this tends to be necessary at intervals just long enough that I forget exactly how the fiddly details work.
Having gone through the process of figuring it all out again, I thought I'd post it here, both to help me next time this process comes around, and perhaps to save somebody else the hassles.
# Download the latest Linux distro # check https://www.crashplan.com/en-us/thankyou/?os=linux for the most up to date version. wget https://download.code42.com/installs/linux/install/CrashPlan/CrashPlan_4.7.0_Linux.tgz
# Extract the archive tar xvf CrashPlan_4.7.0_Linux.tgz cd crashplan-install
# Install a full version of cpio (the CrashPlan install script doesn't like the busybox cpio that comes with your ReadyNAS) apt-get update apt-get install cpio
# Install crashplan; most defaults are fine, but on ReadyNAS 6, select /apps as the parent directory # but the /usr/local/bin default is fine for the executables. ./install.sh # Open /apps/crashplan/conf/my.service.xml and change the serviceHost line to read: <serviceHost>0.0.0.0</serviceHost>
# Open /apps/crashplan/conf/run.conf and change the memory option to "-Xmx1024m" to at least "-Xmx2048m" # (unless your ReadyNAS unit only has one gigabyte of memory, a larger number will prevemt many, many # crashes and make seemingly interminable process finish)
# Configure crashplan to autostart at boot correctly: update-rc.d -f crashplan remove update-rc.d -f crashplan defaults
# Start crashplan /etc/init.d/crashplan start
# Make sure crashplan is running ps -lF --cols 1000 `cat /apps/crashplan/CrashPlanEngine.pid`
# Note the secret UI access key (the lengthy alphanumeric string between 4243 and 0.0.0.0) cat /var/lib/crashplan/.ui_info
# Update the .ui_info file on your local machine # (location varies; for a Windows 10 machine with CrashPlan installed for all users, it is in C:\ProgramData\CrashPlan) # The three comma-separated values in that file should be: # 4243 (should already be that value) # the secret UI access key copied above # LAN IP address of your NAT (the original 127.0.0.0 value will not work)
# Start crashplan on your local computer. It should connect directly (without the need # for an SSL tunnel as some older solutions did) and you can enter your username/password/private-key
thanks for posting this, a clean writeup is helpful.
I've seen at least on poster here who says crashplan informed him that crashplan 5.0 will drop the headless operation we are using now. Also, there can be issues with crashplan filling the OS partition of the NAS. It's important to shift the cache (at least) to the data volume (which I think you are doing by changing the install to \apps, but on older NAS you'll need to create a folder on the data volume and use that).
I've been running crashplan for several years on my pro, but I am thinking shifting it to a PC is inevitable. The linux version of crashplan is limited to ~3.7GB of memory, and for large volumes that becomes a problem.
Disturbing news about crashplan 5.0 dropping headless support, but apart from that I agree almost entirely. Definitely do not put anything non-trivial on the boot partition if you can help it and using /apps/ avoids that pitfall.
But I was unaware that the Linux version of CrashPlan is limited to 2 GByte. In fact, I distinctly recall that certain crashes went away when I changed the -Xmx setting from 2 to 3 GByte of memory (on a 8 GByte ReadyNAS Ultra Pro with upgraded CPU running ReadyNAS 6). Are you sure?
It can reach about 3700 GB on my pro-6 before crashing (it uses the 32 bit JVM). So 2 GB was under the ceiling - I'll edit the post.
It's a problem because de-duplication is memory intensive (and the memory needed scales with the storage used on Crashplan Central, not the local storage of the NAS). So if you have unlimited retention, the memory needed continues to climb. When I ran into issues, in addition to maxing MX I set the max retention to 3 months.
> It can reach about 3700 GB on my pro-6 before crashing (it uses the 32 bit JVM).
Are you sure it always uses the 32-bit JVM? On my system, a ReadyNAS Ultra 6 Plus upgraded with a Core 2 Duo E7600, the custom JVM that Crashplan downloads is called 'jre-7-linux-x64.tgz' I understood the x64 to mean that it uses the 64-bit runtime (according to http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/downloads/java-archive-downloads-javase7-521261.html, the 32-bit environments have i586 instead of x64 for the 64-bit versions).
PRO:/usr/local/crashplan/jre/bin# ./java -d64 -version Error: This Java instance does not support a 64-bit JVM. Please install the desired version.
3.7G memory size works
PRO:/usr/local/crashplan/jre/bin# ./java -Xms3700m -Xmx3700m -version java version "1.7.0_79" Java(TM) SE Runtime Environment (build 1.7.0_79-b15) Java HotSpot(TM) Server VM (build 24.79-b02, mixed mode)
3.8G memory size fails PRO:/usr/local/crashplan/jre/bin# ./java -Xms3800m -Xmx3800m -version Error occurred during initialization of VM Could not reserve enough space for object heap Error: Could not create the Java Virtual Machine. Error: A fatal exception has occurred. Program will exit.
I am, ever since I took the trials and tribulations described here (and which you so kindly helped me with) as an opportunity to upgrade to OS 6 too. One more reason to be glad I did.
It's good to know that OS6 doesn't have the jvm limit. Hopefully Code42 will change the plan and still allow headless in crashplan 5.x
Though (off-topic) I am aiming towards using an application server with the NAS anyway - dedicating the NAS to storage, and minimizing installed apps. Putting everything together seems convenient, but it can create a lot of headaches too. Crashplan is pretty much the only app I have running on the NAS right now.
For what it is worth (and for everybody looking after the latest CrashPlan update once again borked their installation), the above still appears to work (the only change is the version number from 4.7.0 to 4.8.0 in the wget line).
