As many of you may have noticed, Code42 updated the CrashPlan client to 3.6.3.
Unfortunately, despite my best efforts to contact them and let them know that their automatic upgrade script is nuking perfectly legitimate installations, their latest version keeps killing itself on the Drobos. So, to make everyone’s lives easier, here’s a new DroboApp with the latest code.
Please notice that it is no longer possible to “fix” the upgrade script. I tried to do so and basically made the problem worse on my Drobo. The recommended way to upgrade now is to do the manual upgrade way, which requires SSH access and a few command lines to reinstall the app while preserving the backups.
I haven’t tried to just do an in place upgrade (i.e., just drop the tgz in the DroboApps folder and restart). If anyone is brave enough to try, then please let us know how it went.
As usual, comments, suggestions, and feedback are welcome.
Thanks for the update! I am having a bit of trouble installing the new version though. I follow the instructions on the droboports site, I stop the old version and move the crashplan directory to crashplan.old, then save the tar for the new version to the DroboApps directory, but when I try to install it I get the following:
Installing /mnt/DroboFS/Shares/DroboApps/crashplan.tgz.
tar: invalid magic
tar: short read
I’m not familiar enough with the Drobo or Linux in general to try to troubleshoot on my own.
Are you sure you downloaded the file in its original format? On Mac OSX, for example, Safari is notorious for sneakily uncompressing tgz files when you download them.
You can check that you got the proper file by calculating the MD5 checksum. These are the values for both version:
On Linux you can use the “md5sum” command, on OSX the “md5” command, and on Windows you can use “fciv” (see here: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/889768 )
I’ll give it a shot when I get home - my local backup is primarily Steam games so that I don’t have to re-download them when installing on different local computers, so nothing critical. Will report back later.
The file downloaded fine, I was able to open it with WinRAR. I noticed that the installation had gotten at least as far as creating a new crashplan directory so I extracted all the files from the tarball into it and did a service.sh start, and it seems to be working fine now. All my other machines are able to back up to the Drobo and the Drobo itself is backing up to Crashplan Central. All’s well that ends well.
[quote=“robwoelich, post:4, topic:139430”]I’ll give it a shot when I get home - my local backup is primarily Steam games so that I don’t have to re-download them when installing on different local computers, so nothing critical. Will report back later.
[/quote]
Didn’t go so great - I dropped the file in DroboApps and restarted, and the upgrade didn’t seem to install completely. Then, the Drobo Dashboard thought there was a Crashplan update available, so I tried that and my Drobo stopped responding.
Had to restart via soft power-off using the power switch and it eventually came back up, then I just followed the manual upgrade instructions on DroboPorts and all is well now. Old backups are still there and picked back up.
@robwoelich: I’m glad to hear that at the end everything worked out for you, but I’m puzzled why the update did not work. I wish I could reproduce the problem. Thanks for the report.
Thanks for the information!
I had contacted Code42 and they responded and gave me links to the Linux and Mac versions of Crashplan, but the file from Code42 didn’t install.
Your version worked perfect, but I’m having 1 nagging problem.
When I open Crashplan on my Mac, it says “Archive Password Required”.
If I type in a password, I get a warning and then the Crashplan Engine crashes and the app closes.
[quote=“dkmillerii, post:8, topic:139430”]When I open Crashplan on my Mac, it says “Archive Password Required”.
If I type in a password, I get a warning and then the Crashplan Engine crashes and the app closes.[/quote]
That’s what my Drobo/CrashPlan was doing before the upgrade - once I noticed backups to the Drobo stopped, I SSH’d/pointed CrashPlan to the Drobo’s installation and it said “Archive Password Required”. Trying to set one didn’t work, though I thought it was weird that it would suddenly be asking for one, and then I realized there was a CrashPlan update that happened on my desktop client and the Drobo was behind.
It went away once I completed the upgrade to 3.6.3 on the Drobo, so check to make sure the upgrade installed completely. I just looked at the contents of the service.sh file in /DroboApps/crashplan for the version number - I did have to follow the manual instructions on DroboPorts though, just dropping the .tgz in the DroboApps folder didn’t upgrade CrashPlan completely.
I should have known it couldn’t be this easy. When I got home this evening I found that the VM I configured to use as the Crashplan frontend for my Drobo had disconnected. After a little investigating, I found that the Crashplan app in the Drobo Apps section of the dashboard was showing as stopped and that there was an update for it. I attempted to apply the update which failed (of course) so I removed it completely and redownloaded it from the DroboPorts site, and reinstalled. The service initially started properly and the frontend was able to connect, but as soon as I logged into my Crashplan account it attempted (and failed) to update again. Now if I try to start the service it starts and immediately stops.
Aparently the CrashPlan guys decided to release a new version and not tell anyone about it. I’ll be packaging a new version as soon as I can.
EDIT: I know that this is an extremely frustrating situation for everyone. If you want to help us get this fixed for good, please contact Code42 (the authors of CrashPlan) and ask them to change their upgrade script to support busybox. I have asked them in the past, but they basically ignored me. I believe that if enough people bother them about it, they’ll eventually fix it.
EDIT2: Code42 really screwed up this time. They released a new version, but haven’t updated the version number… so the website tells you that you have version 3.6.3, but not the actual version 3.6.3 that is out there.
In any case, I repackaged the CrashPlan DroboApp, and republished at the same address. Make sure you download the “v.2” of the file.
Edit: Thought I’d point out an interesting item I encountered over these upgrades/reinstalls. When I did the initial upgrade to 3.6.3, I named the old Crashplan directory “crashplan.old” as recommended in the directions. The new install seemed to locate the existing backupArchives directory automatically and move it into the new install directory on its own. When I did the reinstalls just now, I used a different name for the old install directory (crashplan.2-24) and this time I had to move backupArchives manually. So it seems the app may now have a hardcoded function to look for a “crashplan.old” directory and process it appropriately.
Oh boy. I applaud ricardo’s great efforts with the droboports and like having all the functionality in one box as much as the next fellow. I contemplated getting a networked Drobo myself but all this only reaffirms my opinion that the DAS Drobo + Intel NUC is the way to go. Granted, you have to shell out some extra, but you can now have one of these puppies for 150 bucks (RAM and drive not included) and you have a full-blown PC with a full OS which will happily serve all your home server 24/7 needs and keep asking for more.
Regarding the USB to Ethernet adapter - all models except the Thunderbolt one (red case) have Ethernet built in. As for the OS, it doesn’t come with any but it’s designed for Windows and I’m pretty sure you shouldn’t have any problems running Linux, either. So yeah, I might have just kind of stretched the price aspect a little for the sake of my argument…
@Zbig: I totally understand where you are coming from.
My dream Drobo NAS would have:
Either a low power Celeron or an ARMv8 processor. In any case, a 64-bit processor.
At least 4GB RAM. Ideally user-upgradeable to something like 16GB.
Last but not least, a proper Linux distribution. Ideal would be a full Debian armel setup.
Since the chances of that happening are about as good as of a snowball’s chance in hell, I advise anyone who does not want to bother themselves too much with the maintenance of the apps to get a Drobo DAS (Mini or 5D) and plug it to something like the NUC. Everything is much easier to setup and maintain.
[quote=“ricardo, post:17, topic:139430”]Since the chances of that happening are about as good as of a snowball’s chance in hell, I advise anyone who does not want to bother themselves too much with the maintenance of the apps to get a Drobo DAS (Mini or 5D) and plug it to something like the NUC. Everything is much easier to setup and maintain.
[/quote]
+1
The line between between “have a NAS that runs apps” and “server with storage that runs apps” is fuzzy and different for each person.
If you find you’re constantly tweaking your refrigerator to keep your food frozen then it’s probably time to invest in a true freezer.
The good news is; it worked on my Drobo5N, I have 3.6.3 running now. The other side of the story, I’m not exactly sure what made it work in the end, I’ve tried various things described here; not all were successful for me.
I had never worked with SSH before and hammering away at the terminal was new for me, but it reminded me of my old MS Dos days
In the instructions for the manual update, a few times a command is used to start/stop the Crashplan service. For some reason I did not have the proper rights to do that from the command line, but I also had the Drobo Dashboard App open from which I could start/stop as well.
On the Drobo Dashboard, it still shows that I can update the Crashplan App, but since it shows to be 3.6.3 now when I run it as a headless client, I won’t bother to upgrade it (for now).
For what it’s worth: I’ve asked Crashplan to contact you Ricardo in order to help you with the App, who knows…
