Help to setup on a remote (headless) Linux server?

Hi,

I’m another Crashplan user, looking for a new backup solution.

I have a remote server, running Ubuntu Linux, that I would like to backup using Duplicati instead. I have to initial questions.

  1. Are there any plans to establish/submit to package repository for Ubuntu/Debian?
  2. If I try to install the .deb-package, how do I configure and secure remote connections, without accessing the web interface locally first?

Thanks in advance for your help!

Teknolai

An alternative model is to run it inside of Docker. That’s what I am doing on my server. There is a well-maintained Docker image here:

https://hub.docker.com/r/linuxserver/duplicati/

Pretty easy to pass in volumes to back up and you don’t have to worry about Mono or anything else since it’s in the container.

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We did attempt at one point, but it is a bit cumbersome to get all the dependencies into debian as well. As everything is platform independent, I would like to just supply all libraries in the correct versions, but that does not really play well with Debian’s package policy.

I have wanted to setup a PPA for some time, but never gotten around to it. That would also make it possible to provide timely updates.

Before starting the service, run the server with a password command:

duplicati-server --webservice-password=secure-password

Wait a few seconds til it has started, then CTRL+C it and when you start it as a service, it has the password you supplied.

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That would have been really neat. Unfortunately, my ancient server (from 2003) does not have a 64-bit processor.

I see that the repositories clearly might be stricter than necessary. IMHO a PPA will be a lot more convenient than downloading .deb’s at least.

Thanks a lot! I tried to install the .deb, and had some error messages while doing so, with missing dependencies:

duplicati needs libappindicator0.1-cil | libappindicator3-0.1-cil
duplicati needs gtk-sharp2
dpkg: error processing package duplicati (--install):

I tried to run the password command as stated. For me at least, I also had to run the command:

sudo duplicati-server --webservice-interface=any

It seemed a good idea to me to do this in sudo, but maybe not? Possibly obvious, but the password seems to be set for the user running the command.

Lastly, I’m still on Ubuntu 14.04, which is from before systemd was introduced in Ubuntu. Meaning the systemctl-command referred to elsewhere in the forum, does not work yet. I’m sure I’ll be able to figure out how to put it into init.d, but for now I can test it and just keep the server running in screen. I’ll upgrade to a more modern Ubuntu version sometime soon, but I would like a backup I can trust before I do, that’s why I’m here. :slight_smile:

My first tries of setting up a backup seems to fail, but I’ll try some different settings before asking for more help.

Beware that this will expose the webserver to the LAN, and possibly the internet depending on your network configuration.

Depends on what you want. But yes, the password and other settings are stored in ~/.config/Duplicati/ so what settings you load depends on the user starting the program.

No problem, it is a very simple script, essentially calling:

OPTIONS=
duplicati-server $OPTIONS &
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Regarding security, are there any issues I should be aware of if I’m opening the server to the internet? The web interface seems secure enough with a decent password, but are there other ways to access Duplicati remotely that is also opened up with this setting?

Thanks for your all your answers! :slight_smile:

The http server is by no means security vetted, so I advise against exposing it to the internet. There are no extra things that are opened, and all non-static content requires a password, but I would not expose it to the internet myself.

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Okay, that is good to know. I guess I finally have to figure out how to setup a tunnel over to the server!

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