$ sudo service crashplan start
Starting CrashPlan Engine ... Using standard startup
OK
However, the desktop portion of the CrashPlan software kept saying that it was "Unable to connect to the backup engine, retry?". Weird. So I checked to see if the server was actually listening on the port it's supposed to be listening on:
$ netstat -ln | grep 4243
$
Nope. So it must not be starting up as "OK" as it claims. Digging through some of the logs (specifically /usr/local/crashplan/log/service.log.0) I found this gem that shows up just before the service automatically shuts down:
[03.22.14 22:05:04.511 WARN main com.backup42.service.CPService ] >>>>> CPService is already listening on 0.0.0.0:4242 <<<<<
Wait, wat? Something (it thinks it's itself, but that's not the case) is already bound to port 4242. Netstat shows who actually is bound to that port:
$ sudo netstat -anp | grep 4242
tcp 0 0 127.0.0.1:4242 0.0.0.0:* LISTEN 11466/ncsvc
tcp 0 0 127.0.0.1:45982 127.0.0.1:4242 ESTABLISHED 11466/ncsvc
tcp 0 0 127.0.0.1:4242 127.0.0.1:45982 ESTABLISHED 11466/ncsvc
ncsvc! That's the Juniper VPN software (aka JunOS Pulse). Well that's no good, I'm almost always connected to the VPN. Luckily, CrashPlan lets you configure the port that the server uses to something other than 4242!
The fix that made it work happily ever after was simply modifying a line in /usr/local/crashplan/conf/my.service.xml:
Change:
<location>0.0.0.0:4242</location>
To a port that isn't already in use:
<location>0.0.0.0:4244</location>
Now the CrashPlanEngine portion of the software runs smoothly even when I'm on the VPN!
