Woot! CrashPlan client running on ReadyNAS Pro

[Infinite]

I am very pleased to say that the CrashPlan linux client runs nicely on my ReadyNAS Pro. I expect that any of the ReadyNas Ultra models should be able to run the Java client. I was looking for a inexpensive solution that could back up my 1TB of family photo's. I'm sure that ReadyNAS Vault and many of the more expensive packages are far better suited for business, but for me CrashPlan was the right price. All and all I really like CrashPlan and having it run locally on my ReadyNAS is just AWESOME! 🙂

Compared to other options CrashPlan is super affordable, it has a great client, and you can 'seed' your data. 'Seeding' your data means that they will ship you a HD drive that you can backup ~1.5TB of data on, then you ship it back and then they upload that data to the 'Cloud' (Servers). For me it will save about 10 months of data transferring. After the data has been 'seeded' I only have to upload new data or stuff that changed. For me the delta's are pretty small on new files.

CrashPlan has a great video here for the less geeky:
http://b3.crashplan.com/consumer/features-tour.html

My setup, is a ReadyNAS Pro that does the main file share functionality for the family and I have another older ReadyNAS backing certain share's on my Pro.

Here is the tutorial that helped get Java running on my ReadyNAS Pro. It was SUPER simple. Once Java is running and you install the CrashPlan Linux client the only tricky part is doing the SSH forwarding. For Mac users you can add the SSH forwarding setup to JellyFiSSH.
http://www.grepsoft.net/jellyfissh.html.

Thank you very much to 'avpman', for writing the great Java walk-though!
http://www.readynas.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=61&t=18139&p=270147&hilit=CrashPlan#p270147!

Oh yeah... I do NOT work for CrashPlan. 😄 I'm just a happy customer. I really like my ReadyNAS's too. 😄
-i

[Infinite]

Update:

I ended up running into a minor compatibility issue between the CrashPlan Seed drives and the ReadyNAS Pro. The USB Seed drive, a LaCie Rugged Hard Disk, did not perform well once plugged into the ReadyNAS Pro. The drive runs great with Windows or OSX, but for some reason it didn't play nicely with the ReadyNAS. Luckily I had enough free space that I was able to make a temporary share on my ReadyNAS Pro: 'CrashPlanBackup'. Then from the CrashPlan Client I did a 'Folder Backup' directly to the new CrashPlanBackup share (instead of backing up directly onto the USB Drive). Once the CrashPlan backup was completed on the ReadyNAS, I plugged the USB Seed Drive into my Mac, an Rsyn'ed the backup folder onto the USB drive. It's not ideal, but you are only doing the Seed drive backup once.

I have no idea why the USB drive performed so poorly, but it didn't seem related to the CrashPlan Java client, nor did the drive seem to have any issues.

Otherwise, I've had the linux CrashPlan client running on my ReadyNAS Pro for almost a month now and I have no complaints.

[noah_odonoghue]

Infinite wrote:

Update: I ended up running into a minor compatibility issue between the CrashPlan Seed drives and the ReadyNAS Pro. The USB Seed drive, a , did not perform well once plugged into the ReadyNAS Pro. The drive runs great with Windows or OSX, but for some reason it didn't play nicely with the ReadyNAS. Luckily I had enough free space that I was able to make a temporary share on my ReadyNAS Pro: 'CrashPlanBackup'. Then from the CrashPlan Client I did a 'Folder Backup' directly to the new CrashPlanBackup share (instead of backing up directly onto the USB Drive). Once the CrashPlan backup was completed on the ReadyNAS, I plugged the USB Seed Drive into my Mac, an Rsyn'ed the backup folder onto the USB drive. It's not ideal, but you are only doing the Seed drive backup once. I have no idea why the USB drive performed so poorly, but it didn't seem related to the CrashPlan Java client, nor did the drive seem to have any issues. Otherwise, I've had the linux CrashPlan client running on my ReadyNAS Pro for almost a month now and I have no complaints.

Just as an educated guess to what your problem may have been, NTFS filesystem performance in linux is somewhat less than that of ext3/ext4, So that may have caused your problem with the seed drive. The workaround is a good one though.

[dholoski]

Just out of curiosity, what crashplan, plan are you using? I'm guessing crashplan +?

[Infinite]

dholoski wrote:
Just out of curiosity, what crashplan, plan are you using? I'm guessing crashplan +?

Sorry for the super late response. Yes, I have a single CrashPlan+ account. It's Unlimited data and a 3 year plan for the best price. They now have 4 year plan which is just $2.92/month which is just amazingly inexpensive.

Some of my good friends lost a ton of their family photo's recently when there home was robbed. The thieves stole their computer that had a lot of backup data, so sadly they lost a lot of their family photo's.

CrashPlan has been running beautifully on our ReadyNas Pro. We average we shoot about 10Gig of family photo's a week which get put on the NAS and then uploaded to the cloud. I think I'm going to be building the same setup for my parents with one of the smaller ReadyNAS devices.

-i

[Philos31]

Is there maybe a walk trough for the less geeky how to get this up and running on the readynas?

[ferrold1]

Philos31 wrote:
Is there maybe a walk trough for the less geeky how to get this up and running on the readynas?

Has anyone come across a "guide for dummies" for doing this?

I am looking at possibilities of backing up my NAS to a cloud service, but as many others I find tha Vault service overpriced.

CrashPlan seems like a great alternative to Vault, but I am not really comfortable with messing around in the kernel without very clear instructions on how to do this - I assume I can use the client software on my Mac and have it backup my NAS to the CP cloud, until such a guide is available?

Cheers,
Christian

[joneric]

ferrold wrote:

Philos31 wrote: Is there maybe a walk trough for the less geeky how to get this up and running on the readynas? Has anyone come across a "guide for dummies" for doing this? CrashPlan seems like a great alternative to Vault, but I am not really comfortable with messing around in the kernel without very clear instructions on how to do this - I assume I can use the client software on my Mac and have it backup my NAS to the CP cloud, until such a guide is available?

I've been happily running CrashPlan on my Ultra 6 for a couple months now. (And I highly recommend it!)

There are two issues: Installing the service and configuring the service.

To install the service, all I did was blindly follow the steps that dkerr listed here:
http://www.readynas.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=61&t=18139&p=270147#p269908
Possible typo-correction here:
http://www.readynas.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=61&t=18139&start=15#p297737

As you assumed, once installed, you have to configure (what to backup, where to backup to, etc.) CrashPlan on the NAS, using the desktop client on another computer (your Mac) via SSH forwarding. CrashPlan has a tutorial on how to do this:
http://support.crashplan.com/doku.php/how_to/configure_a_headless_client

I could blindly follow CrashPlan's tutorial because I have a Windows desktop. The OP (Infinite) indicates that he was able to successfully use JellyFiSSH on Mac (instead of PuTTY on Windows).

I don't really feel qualified to write a guide (since I'm just blindly following someone else's steps), but I'll be happy to help if anyone has questions. I do (mostly) understand what I'm doing at least.

[skim32]

Need some help. I have a ReadyNAS Ultra 4 Plus running the latest Radiator at 4.2.21. I followed the directions to a T except I am running CrashPlan 3.2.1 for linux on my ReadyNAS. The point where I am failing is that I am unable to telnet to localhost on port 4200 from the readynas. I have properly setup my ui.properties file with servicePort=4200. When I try to launch the Desktop Client I get the failure message and if I would like to try the backup. The only problem that I can tell is that when I run the netstat command on my Readynas, I don't see it trying to listen on 4242. It does however listen on 4343. I am on a windows box and made sure I have tunneling setup on my putty settings. I also rebooted both the desktop and readynas. But still it won't listen on 4242. I do however see that it listen on 4243.

*EDIT*
So it turns out that even though I get a connection refused when trying to telnet to localhost on port 4200, the Desktop Client works fine. Has anyone seen this situation?

[StephenB]

Normally you don't telnet to port 4200. You open putty first, and connect with SSH and log into the NAS. This is on the normal SSH port (22). Putty is also configured to forward (as stated in the instructions) PC port 4200 to the NAS port 4243.

After putty is running and you have logged in, you launch the desktop client.

Is that what you are doing, or something else?

[Retired_Member]

I'm interested in getting this set up as well. Commenting on this thread to bookmark it in my profile....

[simon0117]

I have a ReadyNAS Duo 4.1.9 . Following the instructions I seem to have come to a roadblock.

My /etc/apt/sources.list

jupiter:~# cat /etc/apt/sources.list
deb http://www.readynas.com/packages readynas/
deb http://archive.debian.org/debian sarge main contrib non-free
deb-src http://archive.debian.org/debian sarge main contrib non-free
deb http://archive.debian.org/debian-backports etch-backports main non-free

When I try to install the jre:

jupiter:~# apt-get install sun-java6-jre
Reading Package Lists... Done
Building Dependency Tree... Done
Some packages could not be installed. This may mean that you have
requested an impossible situation or if you are using the unstable
distribution that some required packages have not yet been created
or been moved out of Incoming.

Since you only requested a single operation it is extremely likely that
the package is simply not installable and a bug report against
that package should be filed.
The following information may help to resolve the situation:

The following packages have unmet dependencies:
  sun-java6-jre: Depends: java-common (>= 0.24) but it is not going to be installed
                 Depends: sun-java6-bin (= 6-07-3~bpo40+1) but it is not installable or
                          ia32-sun-java6-bin (= 6-07-3~bpo40+1) but it is not installable
E: Broken packages
jupiter:~# apt-get install sun-java6-bin
Reading Package Lists... Done
Building Dependency Tree... Done
Package sun-java6-bin is not available, but is referred to by another package.
This may mean that the package is missing, has been obsoleted, or
is only available from another source
However the following packages replace it:
  sun-java6-jre
E: Package sun-java6-bin has no installation candidate

[simon0117]

Nevermind, I just realized the Duo is a sparc, unlike the Pro.

[psindrup]

simon0117 wrote:
Nevermind, I just realized the Duo is a sparc, unlike the Pro.

Does that mean that you can not get the CrashPlan to run on your Readynas Duo at all, or do you just have to follow a different installation procedure?

T.i.a.

Peter

[simon0117]

psindrup wrote:
Does that mean that you can not get the CrashPlan to run on your Readynas Duo at all, or do you just have to follow a different installation procedure?

Nope, couldn't get it to work because I think I can't install Java on the Duo sparc architecture?

[simon0117]

Although I haven't looked for a deb package for it yet. It may be possible to download a tarball from somewhere and install manually, or even try and compile it from source. That will have to be a project for me for another weekend 🙂

[mdgm-ntgr]

Even if you could run Java on the Duo (v1) it wouldn't be advisable. Java is resource intensive and would work best on an Intel NAS (i.e. NVX/Ultra/Ultra Plus/Pro)

[kirkfrey]

Working thru a scare so looking to beef up my offsite backup solution. Is there any reason I wouldn't want to go his way with my Pro? Are there any drawbacks or stability concerns?

[StephenB]

I've been running CrashPlan on my Pro 6 for about 8 months. No stability issues so far. The speed varies (depending on server load), but it is keeping up. Getting the initial seeding done takes some patence though (took a couple of months to upload 6 TB).

[mdgm-ntgr]

The things you do have to be aware of with something like Crashplan are:

1. You need SSH installed. If you break stuff using SSH you may be denied support till you do a factory default (wipes all data, settings, everything)
2. You have to install it yourself manually. If a firmware update breaks it you need to fix it yourself (should be able to get some help with this on the forum if you need it)

Having said that if you follow instructions properly you should be fine and anyway with your backup up to date in the unlikely event something goes badly wrong you can always restore from backup.

[edalquist]

I followed the steps here: http://www.shasam.net/blog/2012/3/21/cr ... s-x86.html

Those steps worked amazingly well on my ReadyNAS Ultra 4 and I'm in the process of doing the initial backup of ~650GB of data to CrashPlan Central. I also have two family members that are backing up their systems to my ReadyNAS from remote locations for free.

[Westyfield2]

Is http://www.shasam.net/blog/2012/3/21/cr ... s-x86.html the current set of instructions? Just bought it today in the Black Friday sale, and fancy installing the client on my NAS to send a few TB from my Pro 6 up to their cloud storage.

[StephenB]

This step needs to be updated to CrashPlan 3.4.1:

enter “wget http://download.crashplan.com/installs/linux/install/CrashPlan/CrashPlan_3.2_Linux.tgz”

You might also wade through this thread: viewtopic.php?f=4&t=61152

[chirpa]

Westyfield2 wrote:
Just bought it today in the Black Friday sale

Same here,

Sub Total: $119.99
Discount: -$111.35
Total : $8.64

🙂

[StephenB]

chirpa wrote:
Westyfield2 wrote: Just bought it today in the Black Friday sale Same here, Sub Total: $119.99 Discount: -$111.35 Total : $8.64 🙂

First time buyers only though :shock: Too bad...