Some time ago I installed Crashplan on my QNAP NAS with Docker. As in the meantime there were a lot of updates available for all moving parts, it was certainly time to update. What a scary idea!

Much to my delight, the update went very smooth and CrashPlan works properly as expected. The update involved some steps, but with the Docker setup in place, the update was really easy.

Update Procedure

The steps I took to update Crashplan are the following:

1. Update to the latest version of QTS
2. Update all apps from within the QNAP app store. Make sure that you are running the latest version of the ContainerStation.
3. Update the docker image.

The first two steps are easily done from within the QNAP admin interface. The third step is detailed in the following section.

Updating the Crashplan Docker Instance

To update the Crashplan docker instance, hop on your favorite shell and ssh admin@<your-qnap-nas-ip>. Then, update the container as follows (learn more about existing docker container upgrades):

# stop old container
docker stop crashplan

# keep a backup, just in case
docker rename crashplan crashplan_old

# update the docker image to the latest version
docker pull jrcs/crashplan

# launch the new container
docker run -d --name crashplan -e TZ --publish 4242:4242 --publish 4243:4243 --net host  \
    --volume /share/CACHEDEV1_DATA/Containers/crashplan/config:/var/crashplan \
    --volume /share/CACHEDEV1_DATA:/storage \
    jrcs/crashplan:latest

# check if it is running (after some minutes)
docker exec crashplan /etc/init.d/crashplan status
> CrashPlan Engine (pid 37) is running.

That’s about it! Now you have an updated CrashPlan container running on your NAS. As the CrashPlan configuration files are stored outside the docker container, the new instance will pickup the existing configuration and needs no further adjustment. How awesome is that?

Note: I have updated to QTS 4.2.2 and running the crashplan container without the --net host option still does not work.

After the update, you may want to open the ContainerStation app in the QNAP admin interface and verify that the “Auto start” option is enabled for the new crashplan docker image. Also adjust the memory limit, if necessary.

Housekeeping

If you are sure the upgrade was successful and files are backing up properly, you may remove the old container:

docker rm crashplan_old

Conclusion

The update experience was very smooth and I am very satisfied with the current setup, as it just works. It probably took me longer to write this post than to actually update CrashPlan on the NAS, which is great.