Synology Hyper Backup can backup to WebDAV servers. Stack has support for WebDAV but They don’t seem to like each other. If you follow a few Dutch forum threads  (1 2 ). Users mention that the use of Sparse files is the problem. Hyper Backup creates a Sparse file in WebDAV backups in nas_1.hbk/Pool/bucketID.counter.1

The filename tells us that it’s used as a counter. After creation of the backup task it seems to be empty (I tested this with another WebDAV server 😉 ). If we manually try to upload this file to Stack we receive an error. “Method not allowed”

So, let’s see what is actually in this file. Well it’s empty…

 

gijs@Carbonite:~$ hexdump -C bucketID.counter.1
 00000000 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 |........|
 00000008

After creating the backup task, this file is empty but as soon as the backup runs the file will be replaced with another one. When I check the contents of this new file it was not empty.

 

gijs@Carbonite:~$ hexdump -C bucketID.counter.3
 00000000 00 00 00 00 00 00 01 5e |.......^|
 00000008

Uploading this new file is accepted by Stack. Below I will guide you through the steps to get Hyper Backup use Stack as a backup destination.

Step 1: Have another WebDAV server

Before we can create a backup to Stack we need a separate WebDAV server that supports the use of Sparse files.
This can be remote or local with the WebDAV server package.
I choose to use the local package.

Step 2: create a WebDAV backup task to this server.

Create a new backup task and select the server from step 1 as the destination.

  • The server address should be the address of your WebDAV server (in my case the Synology itself)
  • The folder needs to be the folder you like to use on Stack (you may need to create a temporary folder on your WebDAV server.)

step-21

After clicking Next you can choose the folders you want to backup and all the options you like to use. It’s not important for now so I don’t cover it here.

Hyper Backup will ask if you like to create a backup now. Click NO.

step-22

Step 3: Copy files to Stack

Upload the complete nas_1.hbk directory to Stack in the folder with the same name as in step 2. Stack will not accept the file nas_1hbk/Pool/bucketID.counter.1 but you can skip it.

In my situation my folder in Stack was:  stack_backup > nas_1.hbk

Step 4: Edit the backup task

Go to your Stack settings page and copy the WebDAV url: https://YOUR-STACK.stackstorage.com/remote.php/webdav/

In Hyper Backup: Edit the backup task by clicking on the menu and then Edit.

step-41a

Open the Target tab and replace the current values with those from your Stack account.

step-42a

Click OK and Hyper Backup will recognize the backup task at your Stack storage 🙂

I have tested the following and they all work fine:

  • Initial backup (17GB)
  • Adding a file and doing an incremental backup
  • Recovering 1 file
  • Recovering the complete folder (17GB)

 

Note: Having a decent backup plan is important. Test your backups and have multiple destinations. Also Off-line.

43 thoughts on “Make Synology <3 TransIP Stack”

    1. I had the same problem. It went wrong during copying the BACKUP.hbk to Stack. What I did is downloaded the hbk folder to from my NAS, deleted the bucketID.counter.1 file from the pool folder and uploaded the hbk folder to stack. After that, my backup came online again.
      Maybe it helps….

      Liked by 2 people

      Reply

  5. It seems the local NAS username and the remote TransIP username password combination needs to be the same. Otherwise you cannot modify the Hyper backuptask I found.

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  9. I cannot seem to get the connection to work. I can create a folder, but when I want to apply the task, I get the error: Insufficient privileges to access this destination shared folder

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  11. Does not work for me, even not after having same user and password and deleting the mentioned counter file and even not after deleting all 0 byte files.

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    1. Thanks for sharing @Gijs

      In my case even though the destination is online, the backup fails at start.
      I must say that apart from the mentioned file, I also have trouble copying the NAS_1.hbk/Control/@Writer/sequence_id file.
      It’s also that file I found an error message in the messages log file.

      Anybody solved that problem?

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  16. I had trouble getting this to work. The file I downloaded from the temp webdav server was a zip file. It was not clear to me that I needed to extract it and place the extracted folder onto stack.
    After doing that it worked immediately.
    Thank you for the information.

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  17. De afgelopen twee jaar kijk ik eens in de paar maanden of er een oplossing is. Teleurstellend dat TransIP niet hier actie op heeft ondernomen, maar geweldig dat jij het probleem hebt gehackt en deelt! Veel dank Gijs, ik ben hier erg blij mee

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  18. Works perfectly. Thank you very much, Gijs!

    I missed some information about how to setup the temporary webdav server. So perhaps helpful for others:
    I just installed it from the package center and enabled the http server.
    Next, when you create the backup task you should login with an account which has administrative rights (perhaps not stricly needed, but it is only for the temporary webdav server. So doesn’t matter much).
    Remember that the last field called directory (in Dutch both fields are called folder. blehh) will be eventually be the target directory on your stack storage.
    I miss step 5 which is removing the webdav server. Go back into the package center and remove the webdav server as it is not needed anymore.

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  19. Did anyone succeed in restoring files from their Windows workstation using the hyperbackup windows client? I was testing the scenario where my nas would be stolen or fried and I wanted to recover my stuff directly to my Windows pc. And unfortunately this does not seem to work. Don’t know whether or not this has to do with the stack storage or just a general bug in the hyperbackup Windows client.

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  21. Thanks for sharing @Gijs

    Sorry for posting this twice, but i just noticed that my previous reply was on the wrong position within the thread ;(

    In my case even though the destination is online, the backup fails at start.
    I must say that apart from the mentioned file, I also have trouble copying the NAS_1.hbk/Control/@Writer/sequence_id file.
    It’s also that file I found an error message in the messages log file.

    Anybody solved that problem?

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  22. Bedankt Gijs!!

    Heeft iemand dit in 2019 nog aan de praat gekregen?
    Samen met Trans-IP kom ik er niet uit.

    Het blijkt dan niet alleen de sparse bestanden een probleem zijn maar ook de lock files.
    Waren die lock file problemen er in 2018 ook?

    Foutmelding:
    failed to create lock keepalive: keepalive file: [lock/lock_keep_alive.@writer_version_0.f4f67b15-d29c-163e-7125-0240846ec14d]

    Trans-IP zegt:
    “De foutmelding waar je naar verwijst betreft het ‘locken’ van een bestand. Hiermee wordt het bestand in kwestie vergrendeld om te voorkomen dat deze bewerkt kan worden door een andere gebruiker of een ander proces. Omdat STACK geen file locking ondersteunt, lukt het niet om de lock aan te maken.
    Zoals aangegeven hebben we momenteel helaas geen andere oplossing als de stappen op gijs.io niet werken.”

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    1. In reactie op mezelf:

      Na dagen lang foutmelding-mails van mijn NAS te hebben ontvangen dat de backup ‘FAILED’ is, krijg ik sinds de nacht van 6 maart ineens mails dat de backups geslaagd zijn!
      (Ik heb in die dagen niets gewijzigd.)
      Op een NAS van een kennis begon dezelfde nacht (bleek uit de logging) de backup ook ineens te lopen.
      Het probleem lijkt dus te zijn opgelost !

      Bij Trans-IP zeggen ze: “Ik heb dit voor de zekerheid voor je nagevraagd, maar aan onze kant is er ook niets gebeurd. Ik durf dus helaas ook niet te zeggen of dit stand houdt.”

      René

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  23. Hi,

    Thank you for the guide, followed the steps and everything seems ok but once I start the backup I get the following error message:

    Exception occurred while backing up data. (No permission to access the backup destination [backup]. Please check you have the right permission to the backup destination

    I can see HyperBackup changes files on my stack but the backup fails.

    Tried the setup several times but it keeps failing, does anybody have suggestions on how to fix this ?

    Regards,

    Jeroen

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  25. I’ve been busy trying to follow this tutorial today and somehow I didn’t get this to work. After I followed all the steps and tried to start an initial backup it simple failed. I gave it a last shot this evening with my windows PC (first I tried to copy the files (step 3) using a Macbook) and it worked. Copied the files using WinSCP using the webdav protocol.

    Maybe its a good idea to mention this in the article!

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    2. Thank you, sir! That was my missing link: I used Commander One on Mac to copy the files to STACK via WebDAV. Copying them through the web interface didn’t work, and using a WebDAV connection in Synology DSM File Manager didn’t work either.

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  28. The steps I did to make it work:

    Make a webdav backup towards the NAS itself (install packages make a shared folder make a user with the same creds as for stack. Just saving time when trying to get it working)
    Select a small folder to backup.
    Make a full backup.
    After this use the webbrowser to download the .hbk
    Use the Transip desktop client to upload the .hbk to stack. (using the webpage failed.)
    After the upload change the target in the job to stack.

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  29. In the user guide, It’s stated to not backup immediately as it is not necessary. For me, it didn’t work and I had to perform the first backup. My target medium wasn’t larger enough, so I just started it, waited until Synology created all the database files and config files and then I just aborted the backup task. At that moment I copied the .hbk folder to Stack. Then I had to remove the lock file that Synology has placed under /Control/lock. And now, everything works fine!

    For those having difficulties to upload a folder, it’s not needed to get the client app or use the web browser. Under Linux, WebDAV FS can be mounted immediately.
    Ubuntu (Nautilus): davs://username@username.stackstorage.com/remote.php/webdav
    Kubuntu (Dolphin): webdav://username@username.stackstorage.com/remote.php/webdav
    More info: https://doc.owncloud.com/server/user_manual/files/access_webdav.html#accessing-files-using-linux

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  30. I have found that the backup only works after I shortly start and cancel the backup, as @Thomas Devoogdt mentions. Also be sure to generate a one-time-password if you have 2 factor authentication enabled.

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  31. Make sure you actually copy ALL the files from XXX.hbk to Stack. Preferably by web interface, since it will accept all the files instead of the desktop app (syncing will cause at least one file to not be uploaded to stack), which causes the backup to fail.

    Once you’ve got that going, Synology will run a fine backup of whatever you want to Stack. Which is great, since Stack was (or still is) 1000GB for free at the time being.

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  32. What worked for me:
    • connect to your webdav with https://127.0.0.1:5006
    • let a backup run on hyper-backup for a pretty small folder on your local webdav
    • Use WinSCP to copy everything (the “directory”) over to Stack into the “folder” name on Stack
    • Change the address and credentials to the ones of Stack in Hyperbackup

    Works like a charm ❤

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  33. It worked for me, but only after taken the useful comments into consideration! Especially the mention of @Thomas Devoogdt. Key is to Run the Backup = Yes. And after that to copy the .hbk directory to your Stack Webdav.

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  34. Thanks for this guide. Took me some tinkering but it works. I was a it confused about folders, directories and shares. In one of the first screenshots you see stack_backup and nas_1 (first one is an existing “share”, second one you can name what you want).

    Folders: now when loging into Stack I created a directory start_backup in the root, and in that directory I uploaded the folder nas_1.hbk (when you download it you will see the .hbk part has been added, contrary to what you see in the first screenshot when you name it. Also if your names are different, substitute as you like, I did but thought it would be easies to explain using the names in the screenshots here.

    -I did run the backup, just select a very small folder as you can easily change what needs to be backupped when all is done
    -I used winscp, the server is YOURSTACKNAME.stackstorage.com, make sure under advanced you don’t point to the login directory (will give an error) but under directories point to: /remote.php/webdav. Went fine first time but second time somehow it pointed to the wrong folder.
    -For up and downloading I used winscp, got no errors, saw no zip files and could down and upload everything. As said I downloaded nas_1.hbk folder completely and uploaded it completely
    -I wanted encryption. You can’t add that when you are done so needs to be activated when you create the first local hyperbackup job.

    Many, many thanks to the author and the tips above!

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