Backblaze Installer won't install

[TheEvilMonkey]

I had it working previously as a trial but then paid for a subscription so wanted to start over from scratch. I deleted my Backblaze config folder and deleted the container. Now when starting the container I can see "bzinst_win32_self_extract..." down on the taskbar but it never seems to finish. When I try to click on it to move/restore it, it disappears. Looking in Task Manager in Wine, I can see that the process quits. I try and start it the exe again using Task Manager and get the same results.

[csharpengineer]

I saw here: #174 that Backblaze has had the latest good installer removed from archive.org. Until a new last-known-good installer can be hosted somewhere, I'm not sure it's going to work.

[TheEvilMonkey]

Does anyone have a copy of the last working installer? I'd expect I could at least manually install it via Explorer once Wine is up and running.

[csharpengineer]

I'm working on extracting one from a month and a half ago from a NAS backup. I'll let you know if that one works, and maybe we can find someone who would host it somewhere and then they could update the containers to download that one?

[TheEvilMonkey]

I did find a website containing all of the previous Backblaze installs - I went back about a year and selected one and was able to get it installed.

[csharpengineer]

Can you run the installer with -unpackonly and see what version the installer is?

[TheEvilMonkey]

8.5.0.659 (I'm sure I could have gone to a newer version - that's just the version I grabbed). The site I found had all of them listed along with version numbers.

[TheEvilMonkey]

Also, check your LinkedIn profile - I sent you an invite and message there...

[csharpengineer]

9.0.2.805 (October 2024) installer is working.

[csharpengineer]

Here is a link to 9.0.2.805.

https://paste.c-net.org/StripesCourtney

[TheEvilMonkey]

My only concern is whether or not this is going to be a case of “whack-o-mole” ?

Will BackBlaze keep changing their installer so that it doesn’t work properly with Wine? I imagine at some point in the future the current version being used will no longer be supported for backups?

[ubrfkr]

I've tried 8.5.0.659 and 9.0.2.805 by launching the installers through explorer in wine. Both still seem to hang on the "bzinst_win32_self_extract..." part but the installer starts if I close that window. However, then I get a connection error to the backblaze servers. Have they disabled old installers now?

[TheEvilMonkey]

I installed the old version (8.5.0.659) without issues but then it got hung up on "Initial Backup Paused" after awhile and wouldn't resume again. So I downloaded and installed (over the top of the old version) 9.0.2.805 and haven't run into the issue you indicated. My backups are running right now.

[ubrfkr]

I installed the old version (8.5.0.659) without issues but then it got hung up on "Initial Backup Paused" after awhile and wouldn't resume again. So I downloaded and installed (over the top of the old version) 9.0.2.805 and haven't run into the issue you indicated. My backups are running right now.

Good to hear that they are currently working for you, for now at least!

Can I ask what tag of this container you are using? And did you just launch the older installers from the explorer in the virtual desktop? I still can't resolve my issue with the older installers.

[ubrfkr]

Is anyone else having this issue with the old installers:

They seem to hang on the "bzinst_win32_self_extract..." part but when you right-click and select move on the window on the taskbar the bzinst window closes and the installer launches. Then the installer runs but it has a connection error to the backblaze servers so can't complete.

I've had this same issue with versions 8.5.0.659 and 9.0.2.805 which others have said have worked for them.
I've tried using this docker container on two different systems (Unraid and Ubuntu) and used all three ubuntu tags as well as v1.4. Same result.
I've also tried running the installers directly in an Arch distro with Wine and saw the same thing.

Edit:
These older installers don't seem to work on Windows 10 or 11 either. It looks like Backblaze may be blocking them?

[axemanozh]

I haven't tried any of the old installers but I did try to update to the latest 9.1.0.817 version which I do by stopping the container, removing bzbui.exe from root\wine\drive_c\Program Files (x86)\Backblaze, and then restarting the container, which normally prompts the container to go out to Backblaze and download the latest from their servers. It seemed to do this but definitely exhibited the crashing/disappearing behavior noted by @TheEvilMonkey.

I hate saying it but seems like Backblaze might have figured out a way to stop the application from working in Wine? I was able to get 805 working again by restoring the bzbui executable to the proper path.

[xorrosive]

not working for me either unfortunately. Gonna have to delete this app.

[Gasaraki69]

That's too bad. I have this issue in the UNRAID docker also. I guess this whole thing is dead now.

[axemanozh]

Reviewing the logs from when I attempted to run the new version and found it seems to try to loading mscoree.dll during the process. I presume this might not be included in WINE? Not sure if there's anything that can be done there? It also references .NET framework being needed.

[jimlind]

The winetricks package is already installed. If lack of mscoree.dll is part of the problem you can get it to be force installed with something like: winetricks --force dotnet48

[axemanozh]

The winetricks package is already installed. If lack of mscoree.dll is part of the problem you can get it to be force installed with something like: winetricks --force dotnet48

I actually just was playing around with this today on my day off from work and installed .NET Framework 4.8 but it didn't make a difference with the installer for 817 crashing when I tried it. Just throwing crap at the wall here to see if I could figure anything out; I'm not really a developer, so if there is any possible fix for this issue, somebody smarter than me will need to figure it out.

I'll keep rolling with the 805 version which hopefully Backblaze will support for a while.

[axemanozh]

Well, I wasn't able to leave well enough alone with my existing setup and accidentally borked my previously existing config. The good news is that this led me to figure out a way that works (for me) to get the setup running.

I'll try to get a writeup of what I did posted, but the long story short is that for whatever reason, the installer that downloads from Backblaze doesn't self-extract in Wine. The binaries contained inside still seem to run fine, although it takes some extra work to get it running full steam from a fresh setup. I wasn't able to try an upgrade install due to my circumstances of messing up my existing install.

During playing around, I also tried previous Backblaze releases on my Windows box and as @ubrfkr mentioned, it looks like Backblaze made some kind of backend infrastructure change that prevents those from connecting. I tried changing host file IPs to get around that to no avail. I see in the Backblaze release notes they recommend the latest version to "maintain full functionality of the Backblaze Backup Client" and that "improvements were implemented to strengthen the Windows installer," which I presume relate to the trouble we're all now having.

https://www.backblaze.com/computer-backup/docs/backup-client-release-notes-windows

I don't know Wine or Ubuntu well enough to speculate why the installer is crashing on the self-extraction, but I see that the container installs Wine 9.0 during setup, and there's been a number of 9.x releases over the last year, and that 10.0 seems to be in Release Candidate stage, so maybe it's something that's addressed in one of those releases? Complete speculation on my part, and as mentioned the official release notes hint that Backblaze did something to try to prevent Wine installs. Towards that end, I do know that Backblaze is 100% aware of this project's existence.

[sebas05000]

I was able to install the latest installer that was downloaded (With the latest image(Ubuntu 22) on a Synology NAS) but had to rerun it manually after installing donet48 with wintricks this is the only things that were installed before running the backblaze installer.

Also after running the installer it will show the self extract and I simply waited a few seconds to kill it with taskmgr so the installer runs without any issues.

This is the version of backblaze that got installed.

Even so the backup is running I got perms a issue window( I did follow all instructions to give 0:0 root and high privilege)

[axemanozh]

@sebas05000 Interesting! I did try installing .NET Framework 4.8 previously and it didn't seem to work for me to be able to run the installer, but maybe I screwed something up somewhere. The Permission Issue window is a known occurrence running this container; it doesn't affect functionality and can be ignored. Working on my procedure and hope to have it posted later today.

[sebas05000]

@sebas05000 Interesting! I did try installing .NET Framework 4.8 previously and it didn't seem to work for me to be able to run the installer, but maybe I screwed something up somewhere. The Permission Issue window is a known occurrence running this container; it doesn't affect functionality and can be ignored. Working on my procedure and hope to have it posted later today.

I was trying multiple different things as well but after I simply did a clean install with only installing dotnet48 is what helped.

Since I was also trying to update winetricks since the one that is installed is a very old ver.

Couldn't really update it manually sadly (Will try to look more of how to do it later on)

I see thanks for letting me know.

[axemanozh]

I'm able to confirm @sebas05000's method works for me on QNAP Container Station. I'm going to pass on documenting my previously mentioned method as it was way more convoluted - basically I used 7-Zip to extract the Backblaze installer on a separate Windows box, copy that extracted directory into the container after installing wine-mono. then running some commands via cmd with the files/folders in that folder to install Backblaze. Overall, a little more complex than that, but that was the jist of it.

Here's what I did to get it work using sebas05000's suggestion:

• Run your docker initialization command via SSH/PuTTy. Mine looks like this (some variables obfuscated with X's for privacy, a few other v variables omitted completely:

docker run
--init
--name Backblaze_Personal_Backup
-p 7050:7050
-e USER_ID=0
-e GROUP_ID=0
-e TZ=America/X
-e CLEAN_TMP_DIR=1
-e DISPLAY_WIDTH=1280
-e DISPLAY_HEIGHT=720
-v "/share/CACHEDEV1_DATA/X/:/drive_d/"
-v "/share/CACHEDEV1_DATA/X/:/drive_e/"
-v "/share/CACHEDEV1_DATA/X/:/drive_f/"
-v "/share/CACHEDEV1_DATA/Container/Backblaze/:/config/"
tessypowder/backblaze-personal-wine:latest

• After the container initializes, interact with the self-extractor on the taskbar in Wine to close it out (as everyone seems to have been experiencing.)
• Once the screen goes black, run winetricks --force dotnet48 via terminal
• After .NET Framework installation completes, re-run the installer on the C: drive in the container. You can send a winecfg command via terminal if you need to make the desktop environment visible.
• Wait a few moments with the extractor visible on the taskbar, then close it out via right-click.
• Installation proceeds normally from this point.

It seems to be that installing .NET Framework 4.8 didn't work for me previously because I had wine-mono installed. At least I believe that was the case.

[dkeraudren]

Can't make it to work in unraid, winetricks works only when launching it with sudo but doesn't seem to work as the wine install is not owned by root I think
Would it be possible to add dotnet48 install directly in the startup.sh script ?

[MrSheen123]

Can't make it to work in unraid, winetricks works only when launching it with sudo but doesn't seem to work as the wine install is not owned by root I think Would it be possible to add dotnet48 install directly in the startup.sh script ?

I found a jank workaround for people using UnRAID (and probably will work elsewhere). Here is the steps I did to get it working:
Download the installer from the website on a windows machine
Run it
Copy the files from C:\Program Files (x86)\Backblaze while the installer was open to the D drive (UnRAID share) I am backing up
Copy the files to the same location via the copy command in cmd inside the gui
Run the redist in the redist folder (unsure if this was needed)
Run "bzdoinstall.exe -doinstall "C:\Program Files (x86)\Backblaze""

It is currently analysing the drive (may take some time due to over 8TB of data). I will report back when I can

[axemanozh]

Can't make it to work in unraid, winetricks works only when launching it with sudo but doesn't seem to work as the wine install is not owned by root I think Would it be possible to add dotnet48 install directly in the startup.sh script ?

I found a jank workaround for people using UnRAID (and probably will work elsewhere). Here is the steps I did to get it working: Download the installer from the website on a windows machine Run it Copy the files from C:\Program Files (x86)\Backblaze while the installer was open to the D drive (UnRAID share) I am backing up Copy the files to the same location via the copy command in cmd inside the gui Run the redist in the redist folder (unsure if this was needed) Run "bzdoinstall.exe -doinstall "C:\Program Files (x86)\Backblaze""

It is currently analysing the drive (may take some time due to over 8TB of data). I will report back when I can

I definitely think this should work. It's very nearly the same as the method I had done before sebas05000's method worked for me (which I think is superior, definitely easier, and probably should be the first one people use unless it doesn't work for them.)

[MrSheen123]

I agree however, it unfortunately would not install .net 4.8 for me via winetricks :(

[sebas05000]

I agree however, it unfortunately would not install .net 4.8 for me via winetricks :(

I wonder if UnRAID Perms are strict as Synology since I had to give privileged, init on my docker compose file as well change the user ID and group ID to 0 in order for Wine and winetricks to work without any issues or errors.

[monteroman]

The winetricks thing worked for me, but I had to first do a winetricks -v win10 then restart the container. Once that was done, the dotnet48 installation would execute.

[csharpengineer]

Even with automatic updates disabled and a manual install of 9.0.2.805 from October and performance turned all the way up I am getting less than 1MB/s as well.

Maybe they decided to just throttle Wine users instead of blocking us.

[rursache]

thanks all for all your investigative work, more progress was made in this issue than the repo maintainer did from the start

i modified the Dockerfile and the startapp.sh script to incorporate all these new discoveries in my new-client branch

• using the latest ubuntu version
• using the latest wine version
• using the latest winetricks version
• grabbing the latest installer from backblaze (run it to uncompress, copy files, cancel install, put files back)
• installing dotnet48

docker images are available as well (use new-client tag for this new version, use latest for the old way but improved over this repo):

docker run -d \
  --name backblaze-new-client \
  --restart unless-stopped \
  --privileged \
  -p 5800:5800 \
  -e TZ=Europe/Bucharest \
  -e USER_ID=0 \
  -e GROUP_ID=0 \
  -v ~/.backblaze:/config \
  -v ~:/drive_d:ro \
  ghcr.io/rursache/backblaze-personal-wine-container:new-client

the initial install may take up to 10 minutes, dotnet4 (required for 48) and dotnet48 take a while to install. be patient!

i can observe however that we are speed capped with these new clients. i will try and investigate if i can reproduce this issue in a VM, in windows sandbox etc.

if not, then wine is targeted indeed and more work will be required. i will do what i can to dig more

[sebas05000]

thanks all for all your investigative work, more progress was made in this issue than the repo maintainer did from the start

i modified the Dockerfile and the startapp.sh script to incorporate all these new discoveries in my new-client branch

* using the latest ubuntu version

* using the latest wine version

* grabbing the latest installer from backblaze (run it to uncompress, copy files, cancel install, put files back)

* installing dotnet48

docker images are available as well (use new-client tag for this new version, use latest for the old way):

docker run -d \
  --name backblaze-new-client \
  --restart unless-stopped \
  --privileged \
  -p 5800:5800 \
  -e TZ=Europe/Bucharest \
  -e USER_ID=0 \
  -e GROUP_ID=0 \
  -v ~/.backblaze:/config \
  -v ~:/drive_d:ro \
  ghcr.io/rursache/backblaze-personal-wine-container:new-client

the initial install may take up to 10 minutes, dotnet4 and dotnet48 take a while to install. be patient!

i can observe however that we are speed capped with these new clients. i will try and investigate if i can reproduce this issue in a VM, in windows sandbox etc.

if not, then wine is targeted indeed and more work will be required. i will do what i can to dig more

I do want to say that winetricks that is installed is a very old version. What happens if you update winetricks do you still get the same slow speeds?

[rursache]

I do want to say that winetricks that is installed is a very old version. What happens if you update winetricks do you still get the same slow speeds?

the winetricks version does not really matter, winetricks is only used to install packages into the wine prefix/bottle. i will update the script to get the latest winetricks but i dont expect changes from this

[artupoiret]

i can observe however that we are speed capped with these new clients. i will try and investigate if i can reproduce this issue in a VM, in windows sandbox etc.

if not, then wine is targeted indeed and more work will be required. i will do what i can to dig more

I also tried installing backblaze on a Windows 10 VM and observed the same slow speeds as in Wine.

EDIT: The VM is a KVM-QEMU VM installed on an Unraid system and the VIRTIO drivers were installed in the VM.

[rursache]

i will try with a vmware VM and with windows sandbox later today

[artupoiret]

thanks all for all your investigative work, more progress was made in this issue than the repo maintainer did from the start

i modified the Dockerfile and the startapp.sh script to incorporate all these new discoveries in my new-client branch

At the time of this comment, the installation failed with this docker container image on my Unraid system. After a while, the VNC Gui shows this error:

And the Docker log shows (only the last lines):

[app         ] + '[' -f '/config/wine/drive_c/Program Files (x86)/Backblaze/bzbui.exe' ']'
[app         ] + fetch_and_install
[app         ] + log_message 'Downloading latest version'
[app         ] ++ date
[app         ] + echo 'Fri Jan  3 10:51:39 AM UTC 2025: Downloading latest version'
[app         ] + curl -L https://www.backblaze.com/win32/install_backblaze.exe --output install_backblaze.exe
[app         ]   % Total    % Received % Xferd  Average Speed   Time    Time     Time  Current
[app         ]                                  Dload  Upload   Total   Spent    Left  Speed
[app         ]   0     0    0     0    0     0      0      0 --:--:-- --:--:-- --:--:--     0
[app         ]   0     0    0     0    0     0      0      0 --:--:-- --:--:-- --:--:--     0
[app         ]   0 39.5M    0 16019    0     0  17227      0  0:40:07 --:--:--  0:40:07 17227
[app         ]   4 39.5M    4 1896k    0     0  1000k      0  0:00:40  0:00:01  0:00:39 1949k
[app         ]  55 39.5M   55 21.8M    0     0  7677k      0  0:00:05  0:00:02  0:00:03 11.0M
[app         ] 100 39.5M  100 39.5M    0     0  10.4M      0  0:00:03  0:00:03 --:--:-- 13.8M
[app         ] + log_message 'INSTALLER: Starting install_backblaze.exe'
[app         ] ++ date
[app         ] + echo 'Fri Jan  3 10:51:43 AM UTC 2025: INSTALLER: Starting install_backblaze.exe'
[app         ] + sleep 10
[app         ] + wine64 install_backblaze.exe -nogui
[app         ] + cp -R '/config/wine/drive_c/Program Files (x86)/Backblaze/' '/config/wine/drive_c/Program Files (x86)/Backblaze-safe/'
[app         ] + sleep 2
[app         ] + pkill -f install_backblaze.exe
[app         ] + pkill -f bzdoinstall.exe
[app         ] + sleep 2
[app         ] + rm -rf '/config/wine/drive_c/Program Files (x86)/Backblaze/'
[app         ] rm: cannot remove '/config/wine/drive_c/Program Files (x86)/Backblaze/': Directory not empty
[app         ] + sleep 2
[app         ] + mv '/config/wine/drive_c/Program Files (x86)/Backblaze-safe/' '/config/wine/drive_c/Program Files (x86)/Backblaze/'
[app         ] + sleep 2
[app         ] + wine64 '/config/wine/drive_c/Program Files (x86)/Backblaze/bzdoinstall.exe' -doinstall 'C:\Program Files (x86)\Backblaze'
[app         ] wine: failed to open "/config/wine/drive_c/Program Files (x86)/Backblaze/bzdoinstall.exe": c0000135
[app         ] + log_message 'Backblaze installed, login and enjoy'
[app         ] ++ date
[app         ] + echo 'Fri Jan  3 10:52:01 AM UTC 2025: Backblaze installed, login and enjoy'
[app         ] + start_app
[app         ] + log_message 'STARTAPP: Starting Backblaze'
[app         ] ++ date
[app         ] + echo 'Fri Jan  3 10:52:01 AM UTC 2025: STARTAPP: Starting Backblaze'
[app         ] + sleep infinity
[app         ] + wine64 '/config/wine/drive_c/Program Files (x86)/Backblaze/bzbui.exe' -noquiet
[app         ] wine: failed to open "/config/wine/drive_c/Program Files (x86)/Backblaze/bzbui.exe": c0000135

In my file system, "/config/wine/drive_c/Program Files (x86)/Backblaze" contained no files, but it did contain a folder "Backblaze-safe" which contained the Backblaze files, except however the "license.txt" file.

[rursache]

works fine for me on a dual core, 4gb ram mint VM. is your machine slow? maybe i should increase the sleep duration before install run and killing it. missing files are a sign of this as well.

[artupoiret]

works fine for me on a dual core, 4gb ram mint VM. is your machine slow? maybe i should increase the sleep duration before install run and killing it. missing files are a sign of this as well.

It's a bare metal Unraid machine with an Intel® Xeon® CPU E3-1275 v6 @ 3.80GHz CPU and 64GB or RAM.

Are you sure it's normal that I ended up with a "/config/wine/drive_c/Program Files (x86)/Backblaze/Backblaze-safe" directory during the installation process ?

[rursache]

of course not,

[app         ] + rm -rf '/config/wine/drive_c/Program Files (x86)/Backblaze/'
[app         ] rm: cannot remove '/config/wine/drive_c/Program Files (x86)/Backblaze/': Directory not empty

this failed for no reason
hence the move

[app         ] + mv '/config/wine/drive_c/Program Files (x86)/Backblaze-safe/' '/config/wine/drive_c/Program Files (x86)/Backblaze/'

got fked. no clue why tho, the purpose of having this in docker is to have the same flow on all machines

[artupoiret]

I saw you published a newer Docker image file earlier today, it was like literally a minute after I installed the Docker container image. I ran a force-update to grab your latest image but maybe it screwed things up. I'll completely delete the image and appdata files and see what happens. I'll revert here when it's done.

[monteroman]

After getting the update installed, I too am seeing very slow speeds. Even with setting the thread count to 100 (max), I'm getting nothing faster than 0.65 Mbits/sec on a gig connection.

[rursache]

I saw you published a newer Docker image file earlier today, it was like literally a minute after I installed the Docker container image. I ran a force-update to grab your latest image but maybe it screwed things up. I'll completely delete the image and appdata files and see what happens. I'll revert here when it's done.

just the winetricks update which won't change anything

After getting the update installed, I too am seeing very slow speeds. Even with setting the thread count to 100 (max), I'm getting nothing faster than 0.65 Mbits/sec on a gig connection.

the real fix for now is to use the old version but i see folks can't fresh install it

[artupoiret]

of course not,

[app         ] + rm -rf '/config/wine/drive_c/Program Files (x86)/Backblaze/'
[app         ] rm: cannot remove '/config/wine/drive_c/Program Files (x86)/Backblaze/': Directory not empty

this failed for no reason hence the move

[app         ] + mv '/config/wine/drive_c/Program Files (x86)/Backblaze-safe/' '/config/wine/drive_c/Program Files (x86)/Backblaze/'

got fked. no clue why tho, the purpose of having this in docker is to have the same flow on all machines

I did a fresh install and encountered the same issue.

I think the issue might come with these commands on my system:

wine64 install_backblaze.exe -nogui
cp -R '/config/wine/drive_c/Program Files (x86)/Backblaze/' '/config/wine/drive_c/Program Files (x86)/Backblaze-safe/'
sleep 2
pkill -f install_backblaze.exe
pkill -f bzdoinstall.exe
sleep 2

I actually have a hidden file ".fuse_hidden00100d78000000ba" of 3+MB and a "bzcustom.dat" of 200B in the "/config/wine/drive_c/Program Files (x86)/Backblaze/".

Your assumptions about "increasing the sleep duration before install run and killing it" and you noticing "the missing files" might actually be right.

Why I end up having a "/config/wine/drive_c/Program Files (x86)/Backblaze/Backblaze-safe" directory remains a mystery though...

[csharpengineer]

the real fix for now is to use the old version but i see folks can't fresh install it

I think it affects the old versions too. I am running one of the original older versions and it is still less than 1MB/s.
#194 (comment)

[TheEvilMonkey]

I'm not sure if this is the reason for slower uploads, but the "chunks" that Backblaze is sending seem to be a lot smaller than I remember when I was running on a regular Windows PC.

[artupoiret]

I'm not sure if this is the reason for slower uploads, but the "chunks" that Backblaze is sending seem to be a lot smaller than I remember when I was running on a regular Windows PC.

Maybe that is a reason, but I did notice slow upload speeds also on files that were only a few MB and therefore not split into several chunks.

[artupoiret]

maybe i should increase the sleep duration before install run and killing it. missing files are a sign of this as well.

I created a fork of your repo, I increased sleep time from 10 to 60 (probably overkill but anyway), I built a new docker image and tried again. The installation process could complete successfully.