Amahi Forums

I have read through all the topics on here - especially this one:
viewtopic.php?f=5&t=4796&start=0

and can't find anything to match my questions.

Basically, it sounds like you do not want to run CP on an HDA that is using Greyhole because of all the read/writes taking place. Fine - I can understand that. But what about against a local USB attached to the HDA (acting as a local backup)? Basically, I have a very simple setup, 80gb system HD and 2 2TB HDs in GH. I also have a 2TB USB attached directly to my HDA backing things up directly. The USB is updated weekly thru rsync. I have mounted the shares locally using the Wikis and that is how I copy in new data from my Win7 machines. But I was wanting to use the Crashplan ("CP") "offsite to another computer" option. I can drop an HD in my father's machine (which is out of state) and then use CP to send all my data to that HD. I was figuring telling CP to use the USB data, not the GH shares or the samba shares, as its source. Since the USB is only updated weekly, I don't see any reason why it should be an issue with constant read/writes. But maybe I'm not understanding exactly how CP works.

Would this work? Or is there some flaw in my plan? Will CP even work from a USB?

Thanks

I don't use CrashPlan, but your logic makes sense to me. I am sure if you check their forums, it probably can work from a USB drive. Of course if it's mounted on the HDA, it will probably be seen as a normal drive.

By not including it in the storage pool, Greyhole will not touch that drive.

Is this is on Amahi 6 that you are wanting to use CrashPlan?

If it's Amahi 7, the app is broken and not LIVE. We have a bug report on it, but since there is no desktop for Amahi 7, it's going to be difficult to configure the app as a one-click install.
https://bugs.amahi.org/issues/1291

I just switched over to Amahi 7. I read the bug report you linked. I loaded the KDE Plasma GUI (because I'm a n00b and like to click on things) with the instructions in the wiki when I upgraded to ver. 7 so installing CP shouldn't be an issue...theoretically.

I posted a similar question to the Code42 forums to see if it is possible (but left out the details about GH and Amahi - I just said I wanted to backup a server-attached USB which is acting as a local backup to an offsite HD)

If I use the USB as my CP source, would the drive be unreadable to everything else? That is, let's say my server melts down but the USB is spared. Could I still attach the USB to a Win7 machine or something and access the data? I believe the data is compressed/encrypted with CP format (if what I remember from my CP trial months ago is true). I would probably have to load the CP software on a machine and then restore the data.

Thanks

If I use the USB as my CP source, would the drive be unreadable to everything else? That is, let's say my server melts down but the USB is spared. Could I still attach the USB to a Win7 machine or something and access the data?

The drive would be accessible via command line, but if you don't point a share to it then it will be isolated.

As for the second part, as long as the drive is not damaged I don't see any reason why it could not be connected to another machine.

Please let us know how the Amahi CrashPlan app works once you do get it installed. We would like to get it working for the most part with Amahi 7, then tackle the headless part in a different way to complete the setup.

Got a followup on my CP install.

Since I installed the KDE Plasma GUI, I was able to install CP using the instructions on the CP website (https://support.code42.com/CrashPlan/La ... _CrashPlan) and using the info in the Amahi wiki (which rocks) and the Backup forum. No issues with Java or anything else. I then installed the CP client on a Win7 machine and attached it to the backup service so I could then modify/configure CP settings on my Amahi box from the Win7 machine. As my USB drive is a rsync copy of my Amahi samba shares, I was able to run a test backup setting the \mnt\sdd5\Docs (the USB drive) as the Source folder and set the Destination as the Win7 machine. I sent over ~15GB of data in 27 minutes. Since it was the first time backup, I'm not surprised it took this long. Any incremental changes would be faster.

The next task is to try and send the backup data to a specific location. Crashplan automatically set C:\ProgramData\Crashplan\backupArchive on the Win7 box as the location for my ~15GB of data. I want to send it to a virtually-empty 2nd HD on the Win7 machine. If I can get this working, then I could add a dedicated 2nd HD in an offsite family PC and send my backup to that 2nd drive, not the C: drive.

If I get it working, I will post what I had to do. Just in case someone else is trying to do something as confusing and convoluted as I am.

Sounds interesting. Hope you get it working. We will be looking forward to hearing of your progress.