Linuxmint or Ubuntu: Crashplan backup using headless Synology NAS

Posted on by rcragun

If you’re using a Synology NAS box and would like to back up your files to offsite storage service Crashplan (which is relatively inexpensive), there is a relatively easy way to do this.  However, you need to think about the Crashplan software as having two components.  There is the backup engine, or the software that communicates with Crashplan’s servers and sends the files you want backed up to their servers.  Then there is the “head” or user interface which tells the engine what to back up and when.  If you’re backing up your Synology box, then the engine will go on there.  You can use any OS for the head, but I’m running Linuxmint and here is how I got it to work.

1) On your Synology box, first you need to download and install Java SE for embedded packages following these instructions.  Then you need to download and install the Crashplan package for Synology NAS following these instructions. Make sure you choose the correct version of Crashplan from the link above.  You don’t want to install CrashPlan Pro if you’re just running CrashPlan – it won’t work.

2) Once you’ve got both of those up and running on your Synology box, you should see something like this:

crashplan-01

crashplan-02

crashplan-03

3) The next step is to install CrashPlan on your desktop computer so you can control the engine on your Synology box (i.e., tell it what to backup and when).  First, download the CrashPlan software for your OS here.  Once you’ve downloaded the .tgz file, uncompress it to a folder (doesn’t really matter where; your’e desktop or home folder will work).  Then open a terminal and navigate to where you unpacked the CrashPlan files.  At the terminal, type:

sudo bash install.sh

You’ll then need to follow the prompts, but it should install the software on your computer.

4) Now is the tricky part.  If you follow the directions on CrashPlan’s website to connect the “head” to the “headless engine” it won’t work.  Their directions say to edit the file /usr/local/crashplan/conf/ui.properties by uncommenting the line #servicePort=4243 and changing it to servicePort=4200.  You then need to set up an SSH tunnel.  Here are their directions.  I tried a lot of variations of this and didn’t work.  But you know what did?  Editing a different line.  In that same file, uncomment the line that says #serviceHost=127.0.0.1 and change it to serviceHost=192.168.2.100 (i.e., the IP of your Synology box).  Save the file and close it.

5) You should now be able to open the CrashPlan GUI and control your Synology box remotely.

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LinuxMint or Ubuntu: How to Automount Synology Shares

Posted on by rcragun

UPDATE:  As of Ubuntu 13.04, these directions no longer work.  I figured out a way to get this to work, however.  See the updated directions at the bottom of this post.

——————Old Directions————————————

If you’d like to share your network attached storage from a Synology file server with your Linuxmint or Ubuntu machine and have it appear as just another folder, you can set the Synology unit to automount on your computer.  These steps assume that you have already set up your Synology unit and are sharing at least one folder over the network.  It also assumes that you are already connected to the same local network as your Synology unit.

To set up the automount, do the following:

1) Install the package nfs-common, either using synaptic or the command line:

synology-01

(from the command line: sudo apt-get install nfs-common)

2) Open a console or terminal and type “ifconfig” to find out your IP address on your local network.

synology-02

 

Let’s assume your IP on the local network is 192.168.2.1 (as shown in the figure).

3) Open the Synology interface and then open the Control Panel:

synology-03

4) Click on “Shared Folder” which will show you a list of your shared folders.  Synology comes with the ability to share folders using the nfs protocol.  It is a secure protocol that requires you to add the IP address of the computer that is going to be allowed to access files on the Synology NAS.  Once you see the shared folders, select the folder you want to share, then click on “Privileges” and then “NFS Privileges”.

synology-04

 

5) In the next window, click on “Create” and then add the IP address of the computer with which you want to share that folder.  You should also decide what privileges you want to grant that computer.  If you grant it read/write privileges, that computer can modify files.  If you grant it the read privilege, that computer can only read files.

synology-05

6) Once you’ve done that, you should be able to access the shared folder over your network.  However, what we want to do is make any shared folders automatically mount over the network every time you start your computer.  To do so, you’ll need to do two more things.  First, create a folder on your computer to map the shared folder to.  An ideal location is in your home folder since you already have read/write privileges there.  So, for instance, if you are sharing photos over the network, create a folder in your home directory called “NASphotos” by doing the following from the terminal (or just create it in a file explorer): mkdir /home/user/NASphotos

7)  Next, you’ll need to edit your /etc/fstab file.  To do so, open a terminal and type: sudo kate /etc/fstab

(You could also use gedit or some other text program, like nano.)

8) This should open the /etc/fstab file in a text editing program.  You’ll need to add the following lines to your /etc/fstab file:

Any line that starts with the pound sign “#” is a comment line.  I like to add a comment line so I know what my command is doing.  Here’s the line I add:

# automount file synology

Next is the line that actually does the work:

     192.168.2.100:/volume1/photos /home/user/NASphotos nfs nouser,rsize=8192,wsize=8192,atime,auto,rw,dev,exec,suid 0 0

You’ll need to change the parts that are bolded.  The IP is the IP of your Synology unit on the network.  If you have a different name for your volume on your Synology unit, you’ll need to change “volume1” to whatever it is.  Replace “photos” with the name of the shared folder on your Synology unit.  Replace “user” with your username.  And replace “NASphotos” with whatever folder you created in step 6.

Save the file and close it.

8)  Now, assuming you’ve done everything correctly, type the following into a terminal to mount the shared folder: sudo mount -a

Your shared folder should now show up in your file explorer (e.g. Dolphin) and should do so every time you start your computer.  Depending on the privileges you granted yourself on the Synology NAS, you should be able to read and/or write whatever files you’ve stored on the Synology unit as if they were on your own computer.

 

——————————————New Directions—————————————

UPDATE: As of Ubuntu 13.04, the directions I gave above stopped working. After tinkering with the settings for a while, I found a way to make it work.  Follow all of the above steps.  However, when you edit the fstab file, try using the following format for each share you want to mount:

192.168.2.100:/volume1/photos /home/user/NASphotos nfs rw,hard,intr,nolock 0 0

This is working for now.  This was based on this article on the ubuntu help site.

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