CrashPlan on headless debian server

I had been interested in using a backup solution for my photos when I came across CrashPlan. The price for one was a quick sale and the idea of being able to backup “unlimited” data from a single computer just seemed to fit what I had been looking for.

I recently changed my home file server (NAS) to OpenMediaVault based on Debian server which I must say is working out and exceeding my expectations. The only thing missing was how to get my data offsite. Taking advantage of CrashPlan seemed to be the perfect solution.

I preformed the following steps to get everything I needed up and running:

Step 1 – I installed CrashPlan on my windows machines so that I could setup an account. The software can be obtaining at http://www.crashplan.com

Step 2 – I logged into my NAS as root and downloaded the latest version of CrashPlan for Linux using wget. (wget http://download.crashplan.com/installs/linux/install/CrashPlan/CrashPlan_3.4.1_Linux.tgz)

Step 3 – I extracted the tgz and ran the installation:
tar -xvf CrashPlan_3.4.1_Linux.tgz
cd CrashPlan-install
./install.sh

Crashplan will  install and if Java isn’t install already (In my case it wasn’t it will prompt you to install. Follow all the installation steps. You should just answer ‘yes’ to each step. Once the installation has completed it will inform you that the service has started and some info about forwarding ports to manage the service remotely.

The ssh forwarding should look something like this: ssh -L 4200:localhost:4243 user@ip.of.server
I did this in putty by clicking on change settings and under connection > SSH > Tunnels

You will also need to change the setting of your client to connect to the forwarded port so that you can manage the backup service. This is done by going to the following path “C:\Program Files\CrashPlan\conf” and modifying the file ui.properties as such:

#serviceHost=127.0.0.1
servicePort=4200
#pollerPeriod=1000 # 1 second
#connectRetryDelay=10000 # 10 seconds
#connectRetryAttempts=3
#showWelcome=true

#font.small=
#font.default=
#font.title=
#font.message.header=
#font.message.body=
#font.tab=

Save this and open the client. You will be prompted to log in. This time the folder you manage will be on your Linux system. Select what you want to and let the uploading begin

– Jermal