SOLVED crashplan - restore disabled by administrator

[Siggy]

FreeNAS 9.3
OK.. so I installed crashplan via the plugin. Configured it for headless. Downloaded the client from crashplan, running on windows 7 machine. Connected and running backups to the cloud.. all good.

The issue I see is that when I go to the Restore tab, I can't see any of my backups. All I see is a message "restore disabled by administrator" (If I log into crashplan via web, I can see all my backed up files out there on their servers.)

Looking at the crashplan website, it appears this is a function that would involve crashplanPRO. I only paid for a single home computer, and the client doesn't say anything about PRO.

Is the plugin running the PRO version? Anyone have any suggestions?

 

[Pasquale61]

I'm running the plugin and I have a Crashplan Family home plan and am not getting this error. I would think yours should work as well even though you have a single user license. (You just can't backup more than one computer to the cloud.) I believe that the Pro version is for businesses, where a company administrator can control backups and encryption keys. You may want to contact Crashplan on this one; their support has been helpful for me in the past. It seems that they disabled your restoring privileges for some reason. (Maybe your encryption key doesn't match, if you're using your own?)

 

[Siggy]

The weird thing is this happens only on the crashplan headless client running in the freeNAS jail. If I run from any other client, on any other computer, I can see the files and pull down a copy of backed up files. I just can't pull them down on the freeNAS install.

I thought maybe I had the attached storage as read-only or something.. but double checked that and thats not the case... Wondering if there is some account/permissions mismatch thing going on....

 

[Pasquale61]

That is strange. I just checked mine and it I can restore from the cloud fine. If you go to Settings, Account, does the license and everything look okay? You may want to look in the logs in your Crashplan jail. Mine are in /usr/pbi/crashplan-amd64/share/crashplan/log . Maybe you can run a tail -f on each of these files to give you a hint of what might be happening while you try to do your restore.

 

[tinny9001]

I'm having the same problem on my system. I have a custom key so that CrashPlan does not have the key. I wonder if that's the difference between the systems that are working and not.

Pasquale61, do you have your backup set with a custom key?
https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?members/pasquale61.43920/
Siggy, did you ever figure this out?

 

[Pasquale61]

Yes, I'm using my own 448bit key, and I have successfully restored files from their cloud server to my FreeNAS via the plugin.

That is really strange that both of you are having this problem. Did it ever work for you, or did this just start? I'm asking because I originally installed this a few months ago. You may want to ask Code42/Crashplan what that error actually means. They actually helped me one time using the online chat which was surprising. It almost sounds like they disabled something on their end with your account.

 

[Siggy]

No custom key on my end... one request into crashplan got the response of "freenas not supported" ... next time I'll tell them FreeBSD :)

Doing some research on the web, I do have one theory.. now that someone else has the same issue perchance we can compare.....

Looks like when you sign up for the free intro, what you actually get is an intro to the pro plan. I followed up and actually signed up for the 1 year individual plan afterwords on the same email account. I'm wondering if some of those intro pro-plan pro settings are carrying over... My current game plan is to wait two weeks for the free-intro-demo stuff to completely fall off my account then start digging again. The "restore disabled by administrator" is a function in their pro plan.

Also.. does anyone know what user-ID crashplan runs under in the jail? Is it possible to get it running under a different ID? Thinking maybe "root" is disabled by default in the crashplan pro or something like that....

And yes, I do firmly believe this is something being pushed down from the crashplan servers. Doing a tail on the logs, I saw some type of key pushed down, and immediately afterwords the GUI updated to "restore disabled by administrator <1 minute ago" (or something very similar.. at work right now so that is from memory..)

Sigg

 

[zwiffs]

Have the same problem, have sadly not yet figured it out.
About one and a half year ago i started with crashplan on a other server. Did reasonably move to freenas and installed everything on it.
Moved my crashplan account over without problem part from the restore that is.
Never had this issue on same account on the old server.

 

[tinny9001]

Ok - I made a little progress. :) I have a feeling this has to do with the mismatched version of the server side components and the client. I am running the 3.6.3 server side plugin on my freenas instance. The client i have is 3.7.0, which doesn't work with restores as described above. This behavior is happening for both the linux and windows clients. I downloaded the 3.6.3 client (on windows) and it allows me to restore fine.

Interestingly enough, i downloaded the Pro-e client first and that was able to let me see/restore files. I then found the home version and that worked as well. So, it's either a version incompatibility problem or they have disabled this with the latest 3.7.0 version.

Here are the links to the old versions if you're interested:
Pro-e Version
http://support.code42.com/Administrator/3/Planning_And_Installing/Code42_Platform_Installers/3.6.x_Installers

Home Version -
http://download2.us.code42.com/installs/win/install/CrashPlan/jre/CrashPlan-x64_3.6.3_Win.exe

Pasquale61, out of curiosity, what version of the client/server are you running?

 

[Siggy]

Both the links above go to the PRO client...

Any chance you could double check the link you have for the Home version?

Also: How do you check what version the plugin is running on the freenas box?

Thanks,
Sigg

 

[tinny9001]

Fixed the link.

As for the version, I was just looking at the plugin version referenced in the freenas administrative interface. I did a grep in the installation directory and confirmed it.

grep -r "3\.6\.3" *
/usr/pbi/crashplan-amd64/share/crashplan/log/app.log:CPVERSION = 3.6.3

 

[Siggy]

looks like the version mismatch was my issue also... Many thinks for finding those links ...

Sigg

 

[Thirtybird]

I've actually got the same problem you've described, My client is 3.7. I'm also running 3.7 on other machines backing up to the same destination (built a dedicated backup server for this), so it seems crashplan is the odd server out version wise. I'd really rather not break anything at this point because, as of 4 days ago, I am now seeing smart errors on one of the drives in the FreeNAS (32 currently unreadable sectors & 32 offline uncorrectable sectors - the smart long test is currently running).

Any thoughts on whether having a machine running 3.7 backing up to 3.6.3 will be functional? Or should I just throw the 3.6.3 client on another machine for use in connecting to the FreeNAS?

 

[tinny9001]

Any thoughts on whether having a machine running 3.7 backing up to 3.6.3 will be functional? Or should I just throw the 3.6.3 client on another machine for use in connecting to the FreeNAS?

It sounds like the only system actually backing up to the cloud in your setup is the 3.6.3 crashplan instance you have installed in the jail in freenas. As long as you confirm that data is being sent to the cloud and that you can restore it, i think you're fine. I don't think that having a different version of CrashPlan on these other systems is a concern. Again, as long as you can restore, you should be gtg. Also, when i was using the mismatched client desktop instance pointing to my crashplan instance running in the jail, the backup was running fine. The backup engine is separate from the desktop client. The client portion is just used to manage what you want to backup, some settings, and it allows you the means to restore. The mismatched client only caused me issues with a restore.

I personally went the route of backing up all of my files from my desktops and servers using rsync over ssh to a set of backup volumes on my nas box. Then i backup the nas shares to the cloud. And to another separate hard drive. :) I didn't like using CrashPlan to backup my clients to the central crashplan nas instance b/c i couldn't see my files. My simple rsync script is obviously not as robust as the things you get with the CrashPlan client, but I like seeing what is on the backup volume to easily verify it is correct.

 

[nickt]

Ok - I made a little progress. :) I have a feeling this has to do with the mismatched version of the server side components and the client. I am running the 3.6.3 server side plugin on my freenas instance. The client i have is 3.7.0, which doesn't work with restores as described above. This behavior is happening for both the linux and windows clients. I downloaded the 3.6.3 client (on windows) and it allows me to restore fine.

Interestingly enough, i downloaded the Pro-e client first and that was able to let me see/restore files. I then found the home version and that worked as well. So, it's either a version incompatibility problem or they have disabled this with the latest 3.7.0 version.

Here are the links to the old versions if you're interested:
Pro-e Version
http://support.code42.com/Administrator/3/Planning_And_Installing/Code42_Platform_Installers/3.6.x_Installers

Home Version -
http://download2.us.code42.com/installs/win/install/CrashPlan/jre/CrashPlan-x64_3.6.3_Win.exe

Pasquale61, out of curiosity, what version of the client/server are you running?

Hi tinny9001 - wondering if you are able to locate a link for Mac version of 3.6.3 (non pro-e version)?

Many thanks.

 

[stualden]

I see that we are calling this issue "solved." But if you are using a Windows Crashplan client to restore files using the FreeNAS Crashplan plugin, you need to make sure you are running an out-of-date version of the Windows client? If you have 3.7 currently, you need to uninstall it (since Crashplan barks if you try to install an older version on top of a newer version) and install 3.6.3?

I'm just getting started with FreeNAS and I want to make sure I have a good backup/restore procedure in place. This gets me a little concerned. Who is the contact who can advise us of when the FreeNAS plugin could be upgraded to a 3.7 equivalent--and perhaps more importantly, is someone committing to continuing these updates in the future?

 

[raidflex]

I do not see this error with the Crashplan plugin. My plugin is also currently updated to version 3.7, which happened automatically after I installed the plugin. I have 4 machines both Windows 8.1 and Linux PCs that all backup properly and are on version 3.7. Please reference the thread below for the update process to 3.7.

https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?threads/update-crashplan-to-3-7-0.27019/

 

[stualden]

Thank you - for some reason my plugin is not "updating itself" and that thread looks like it will help me figure out why.

I only installed FreeNAS about 3 weeks ago so I had assumed (incorrectly) that the distribution came with the latest version of the plugin.

 

[nickt]

Hi tinny9001 - wondering if you are able to locate a link for Mac version of 3.6.3 (non pro-e version)?

Many thanks.

For anyone else looking for the Mac version of 3.6.3, the following URL works (home version):

http://download1.us.code42.com/installs/mac/install/CrashPlan/CrashPlan_3.6.3_Mac.dmg

 

[nickt]

Interesting to note that Crashplan plugin was steadfastly refusing to upgrade from 3.6.3 for me for a few weeks running (although working just fine). Without warning, the upgrade started a night or two ago. The timing seems to line up with Crashplan releasing a new version (4.2.0 now latest). My guess is that the plugin won't get upgraded for the first time until Crashplan incidentally pushes out a new version.

I had to follow the method described in this post a few times to move the upgrades through (3.6.3 -> 3.6.4 -> 4.2.0).

https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?threads/crashplan-3-6-3.18416/#post-101205