I have struggled for a few months trying to get my mycloud mirror device at my office to backup to a mycloud mirror device at my house over the internet. Here is my solution. The problem is ssh and port 22 being closed at the remote backup site because my router preventing me from forwarding external port 22 to internal port 22. Port 22 is needed by the primary mycloud mirror device to see and backup to the mycloud mirror device at the remote site. In order to use the GUI to schedule backups, you have to have port 22 open since there is no way in the GUI to specify a different port for ssh to use so it tries to connect to the remote site on port 22 only. If you connect to the primary mycloud mirror device via ssh command line, you can use rsync or scp to copy the data over manually by specifying a different port number and make sure that the router at the remote backup site has that port forwarded to port 22 on your device. For example, use port 8022 as the external port have the router forwarded external port 8022 to internal port 22 and point the port forwarding to the device ip address (e.g. 192.168.1.100). I use internal static IP addresses on both the primary device and backup device so that its easier to remember and easier to specify on your router which IP you want the forwarded port to point to.
The way I forced the myCloud Mirror GUI to default to port 8022 instead of port 22 is by using the .ssh/config file to force it to use port 8022. You have to use command line ssh client like putty and ssh into the system using root login account and the password you gave your device and then use a text editor like Vi to create that file. Don’t forget to change the security of the file to 700 by using “chmod 700 $HOME/.ssh.config” .
contents of $HOME/.ssh/config
Host example.ddns.net
HostName example.ddns.net
Port 8022
User root
Now when you use the backup GUI on the web interface for the device, it should be able to login and see the remote mycloud mirror and give you a directory list. This will allow you to backup to the remote site directly. I use noip.com so that both devices can have a permanent DNS name instead of a dynamic ip that can change without notice.
Hope this saves people from the struggles I’ve had to go through the last several months. Hopefully Western Digital would allow folks to specify a port number in future firmware releases for the product.
