Installing Duplicati on a Netgear ReadyNAS

How-To
1

This article describes how I did get Duplicati working on a Netgear ReadyNAS. Due to my very limited Linux skills I suppose there are a number of things that could be done better, so feel free to comment what could be improved.

A ReadyNAS running ReadyNAS OS6 is required. Older models running RAIDiator (like the ReadyNAS Duo and ReadyNAS Ultra) are based on an ancient Debian version that doesn’t meet the minimum requirements for installing Duplicati.

  1. Create a new shared folder. Give it the name Duplicati.
  2. Enable SSH on the ReadyNAS: In the Netgear ReadyNAS Admin page, click System, Settings and activate SSH by clicking on the SSH button.
  3. Download and install PuTTY. Connect to your ReadyNAS (username: root, password: your admin user’s password).
  4. Install Mono with the following commands:
apt-get update
apt-get -y install apt-transport-https sudo nano git-core python python-software-properties software-properties-common
sudo apt-key adv --keyserver hkp://keyserver.ubuntu.com:80 --recv-keys 3FA7E0328081BFF6A14DA29AA6A19B38D3D831EF
echo "deb http://download.mono-project.com/repo/debian jessie main" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/mono-xamarin.list
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get -y install mono-devel
  1. Download the Zip version of Duplicati from https://www.duplicati/download
  2. Create a folder Duplicati in the Duplicati share on the ReadyNAS (step 1) and extract the Zip file to this folder.
  3. Test if the server can be started with these commands (You should get the help text for Duplicati.CommandLine.exe):
cd /data/Duplicati/Duplicati
mono Duplicati.CommandLine.exe help
  1. Type this command:
nano /etc/init.d/duplicati

Paste the following text in this file:

#! /bin/sh

### BEGIN INIT INFO
# Provides:          duplicati
# Required-Start:    $remote_fs
# Required-Stop:     $remote_fs
# Default-Start:     2 3 4 5
# Default-Stop:      0 1 6
# Short-Description: duplicati
# Description:       This script launches Duplicati.
### END INIT INFO

#! /bin/sh
# /etc/init.d/duplicati

# The following part always gets executed.

# The following part carries out specific functions depending on arguments.
case "$1" in
  start)
    mono /data/Duplicati/Duplicati/Duplicati.Server.exe --webservice-interface=any --webservice-port=8300 --portable-mode
    ;;
  stop)
    echo "Stopping Duplicati"
    ;;
  *)
    echo "Usage: /etc/init.d/duplicati {start|stop}"
    exit 1
    ;;
esac

exit 0

Press Ctrl+X and save the file.

  1. Type the following commands:
sudo chmod 755 /etc/init.d/duplicati
sudo update-rc.d duplicati defaults
  1. Restart the ReadyNAS
  2. After the ReadyNAS is back online, Duplicati can be reached at port 8300 (port 8200 seems to be in use by something else).
4 Likes
2

Thanks a lot for those explanations. It still works well 3 years after on a RN102 running ReadyNAS 6.10.3

3

Ditto from the last poster. It’s Sept 2022 and the above process still works. Did have to follow some instructions from the Duplicati GUI related to installing some certificates when performing off-site backups over SSH. But once I did this, the solution is working great on my quite dated ReadNAS 102. Thanks to the original poster for sharing this.

1 Like