MyCloud EX4 rsync/SSH - Is rsyncd necessary? Persistent rsync/SSH config?

My Cloud OS 3 Personal & Network Attached Storage My Cloud EX4
1

After climbing up the learning curve, I am pleased to to report good progress with the 4TB WD MyCloud as automated NAS backup for Windows and Linux PCs and servers on my home network (see Setup of Linux/Windows shares on 4TB mycloud as NAS device on LAN). To date, the following backup scenarios are working well with one notable exception:

  • Windows 7 desktop: Image archive to NAS using Acronis ATH 2010; file backup with mapped NAS share.

  • Windows Server 2008 R2: Image archive to NAS using Windows Server Backup; file backup sync using FreeFileSync.

  • Centos 7 linux server: Image archive to NAS using USB-based Clonezilla; file backup to NAS using rsync not working. :confused:

In my attempts to get rsync working from the Centos 7 server, I enabled SSH on the MyCloud and in the process noticed some peculiarities which I suspect are by design. The BusyBox embedded Linux shell appears to reset its base configuration (as set by the html admin portal) upon reboot (as discussed in After a reboot everything is reset - is this documented? how to people work around it?). From a design perspective, this behavior is understandable as it provides protection for the embedded operating system, but contradicts the instructions for configuring a persistent rsync daemon in http://www.diogosoares.ca/blog/2015/08/30/how-to-enable-rsync-in-a-wd-mycloud/.

So to get a persistent one-way rsync WDmycloud receiver working on my LAN, my question is “Do I need to configure a persistent rsyncd on the MyCloud device?” Since my rsync usage is one-way into the MyCloud, and SSH is enabled on the MyCloud, can the MyCloud rsync respond to RPC invocation via SSH or does rsyncd need to be persistently configured and running?

Any help or references to rsync and persistent SSH credential registration on the MyCloud would be appreciated. Thanks.

2

Hi there,

I haven’t tried this myself. Let’s see if an experienced User can shed some light with us.
Please note that these types of proceedings are not warranted nor supported by WD.

3

I am making some progress on this topic but have not developed a fully automated system yet. A helpful posting on SSH/FTP I came across was from Nazar at Securing WDMyCloud SSH & FTP Remote Access | TeaNazaR.com but I think this posting is based on v4 firmware.

One issue I have resolved from basic testing is that rsync is already installed on my WDmycloud and incoming rsync already works for the root user without rsyncd running in the background. However, incoming rsync requests from other LAN computers only works when invoked with root credentials, and do not work when invoked using wdmycloud user credentials other than root. I think this may be due to “AllowUsers root sshd” being configured in /etc/sshd_config and the fact that I have not explicitly permitted other SSH users elsewhere.

If anyone has further guidance, I would surely appreciate.

4

Here’s another related topic I came across: SSH without password for NON root.