25 May Build your own NAS part 2: Configuring SSH and Rsync in OpenMediaVault

In Part 1 of ‘Build your own NAS’ I showed you how to create a folder share in OpenMediaVault we could use to store remote server backups. In this second part I’ll run through how to set up the SSH server and configure a user account to store the backups.

Setup a user account

The first step is to create a new user that we’ll use to authenticate the remote server and store the backups under its home folder.

Open Access right management > User and choose Add.

Add a new user using the following details….

I have chosen a username of site1bauser and a strong password, I’ve also made sure the shell used is changed to ‘/bin/bash’ and that the user is in both the ‘ssh’ and ‘users’
groups.

Next, under the settings tab, enable the user’s home folders and choose the ‘users-folders on [100GBXFS]’ share.

Choose ‘OK’ to save the changes.

Enable the SSH service

to allow ssh access to the OpenMediaVault server we must enable the service under Services > SSH.

Here you should also tick ‘Enable compression’ to help speed up transfers, then you can click ‘OK’ to save the changes.

At this point the configuration at the OpenMediaVault end is complete, so all that’s left is to set up the BackupAssist job to rsync the backup data.

Configuring BackupAssist to run an ‘rsync over SSH’ job

Within the BackupAssist interface, simply set up a new rsync job and at the destination screen enter the following details…

In this example I’ve used the internal IP address of the OpenMediaVault server, but if you’re connecting to a remote server over the internet you can use a public IP address and where required, a NAT port translation on port 22 (SSH) to point to the internal IP of the OpenMediaVault server. Also, you may notice that I’ve chosen to put the backups in a folder called ‘Backups‘ in the root home folder. You’ll need to click on ‘Register with the server‘ and’ ‘Test connection’ to register and check the connection with the SSH server.

Ok, so that’s us all done! You should now be able to run the BackupAssist job to backup the data using Rsync over SSH.

Just a quick note in case you were wondering – we haven’t needed to configure the OpenMediaVault rsync service as this is only required for direct and unsecured connections which I generally don’t recommend you use over the internet.

In Part 3 I’ll show you how you can use the Windows SMB/ CIFS service to share out these backups as a standard windows share on the network so they’re available for quick access.