Installing veeam agent for Debian/Ubuntu

Reading Time: 3 minutes

Last Updated: 8/28/2022

There are a number of backup choices out there. I recommend looking at more than a few of them. That’s just plain common sense.

What is it?

Veeam Agent for Linux is a tool that backs up physical Linux systems such as a workstation, a server or machines in the public cloud. This tool creates image-based backups that are stored in VBK format,

The Veeam Agent for Linux comes in different editions. You do not need to obtain or install a license to use the free
edition. It comes in Free, Workstation, and Server editions.

Now, and this is just an opinion I hold, Veeam makes it a bit more difficult to install veeam then needs to be. You can go to their web page and then download it and then transfer it. But – I have no idea why they just didn’t offer it as part of the distribution. I ask, would it be so hard? The short version of this is simply to update “sources.list.d” with a suitable reference. Aka:

echo ""deb [arch=amd64] http://repository.veeam.com/backup/linux/agent/dpkg/debian/public stable veeam" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/veeam.list" 

You should then bring your repository update up to date with a.

sudo apt update

Now that we are up to date we can install it.

ubuntu@node5:~$ sudo apt install veeam
[sudo] password for ubuntu:
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree... Done
Reading state information... Done
The following additional packages will be installed:
  dctrl-tools dkms libfuse2 veeamsnap
Suggested packages:
  debtags menu
The following NEW packages will be installed:
  dctrl-tools dkms libfuse2 veeam veeamsnap
0 upgraded, 5 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 49.6 MB of archives.
After this operation, 52.8 MB of additional disk space will be used.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n] y

Note the above shows the machine as “node5”. The screenshots below as “vm-s3”. <shrug> I have installed this a few times this year and have updated what was absolutely necessary. Now we can configure veeam. To do that we execute the following:

veeamconfig ui

A quick Note: If you plan on using veeam to backup to a NFS or SAMBA destination … please remember to install the appropriate agents in advance. Don’t worry though if you forget the “veeamconfig /ui” does a right proper job of reminding you if you forget.

Example:

root@node5:/home/ubuntu# apt install nfs-common
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree... Done
Reading state information... Done
The following additional packages will be installed:
  keyutils libnfsidmap1 rpcbind
Suggested packages:
  watchdog
The following NEW packages will be installed:
  keyutils libnfsidmap1 nfs-common rpcbind
0 upgraded, 4 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 381 kB of archives.
After this operation, 1,447 kB of additional disk space will be used.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n]

You may now configure to your tastes.

Note:

Veeam recovery medium for linux can be found at:

https://repository.veeam.com/backup/linux/agent/veeam-recovery-media/x64/

References:
https://www.veeam.com/blog/veeam-agent-linux-is-available.html
https://www.hostdime.com/kb/hd/backups/install-and-configure-the-veeam-agent-for-linux
https://forums.veeam.com/veeam-agents-for-linux-mac-aix-solaris-f41/apt-get-install-veeam-t40472.html