Starting and Stopping CrashPlan Engine

Overview

There are times when you might need to stop and restart CrashPlan, such as when you:

  • upgrade your operating system
  • move CrashPlan user to another computer
  • want to connect to a headless CrashPlan
  • are instructed stop and restart by CrashPlan support

Be sure to follow the instructions for your operating system.

How It Works - Mac

Default Installation (as Root)

Go to Go > Utilities > Terminal

To stop, enter the following comand:

sudo launchctl unload /Library/LaunchDaemons/com.crashplan.engine.plist

To start (load):

sudo launchctl load /Library/LaunchDaemons/com.crashplan.engine.plist

Use this command to view if the engine is running:

ps auxww | grep -i CrashPlanService

If the engine is running, the output looks like this:

c42-dhcp-183:~ renee$ ps auxww | grep -i crashplanservice
root        63   0.1  6.1   873644 126976   ??  SNs  Tue03PM  43:01.37 /System/Library/Frameworks/JavaVM.framework/Commands/java -Dapp=CrashPlanService -Xmn10m -Xms15m -Xmx512m -Djava.awt.headless=true -Dfile.encoding=UTF-8 -Djava.net.preferIPv4Stack=true -Dsun.net.inetaddr.ttl=300 -Dnetworkaddress.cache.ttl=300 -Dsun.net.inetaddr.negative.ttl=0 -Dnetworkaddress.cache.negative.ttl=0 -DCP_USER_NAME= -DCP_USER_HOME= -cp lib/com.backup42.common.jar:lib/com.backup42.service.jar:lib/com.code42.backup.jar:lib/com.code42.bplusj.jar:lib/com.code42.messaging.jar:lib/com.code42.os.jar:lib/com.code42.peer.jar:lib/com.code42.utils.jar:lib/com.jniwrapper.jniwrap.jar:lib/com.jniwrapper.macpack.jar:lib/com.jniwrapper.winpack.jar:lib/jtux.jar:lib/trove-2.0.1.jar:lang com.backup42.service.CrashPlanService
renee     3256   0.0  0.0   590472     84 s001  R+    2:11PM   0:00.00 grep -i crashplanservice

If the engine is not running, the output looks like this:

c42-dhcp-183:~ renee$ ps auxww | grep -i crashplanservice
renee     3265   0.0  0.0   599780    444 s001  R+    2:13PM   0:00.00 grep -i crashplanservice

Custom Installation (Installed as User)

If you've installed CrashPlan “as user” instead of as the default root method, your commands to stop and start are slightly different, but you can follow the exact same procedure outlined above. You can use the same commands as above to verify whether the engine is running.

To stop:

launchctl unload ~/Library/LaunchAgents/com.crashplan.engine.plist

To start:

launchctl load ~/Library/LaunchAgents/com.crashplan.engine.plist

How It Works - Windows

There are two ways to start or stop the CrashPlan engine.

From the MS Services Menu

  1. Navigate to the MS Services menu
  2. Right-click CrashPlan Backup Service.
  3. Choose Stop, Start or Restart from the menu

From the Command Prompt

net stop CrashPlanService
net start CrashPlanService

How It Works - Linux

The start / stop script is stored in the crashplan/bin directory (default for a root install is: /usr/local/crashplan/bin).

Usage:

CrashPlanEngine stop|start

Restart (All Platforms)

To restart the CrashPlan engine, follow these steps:

  1. Open CrashPlan.
  2. Double-click the CrashPlan logo in the upper right corner.
  3. In the text input area at the very bottom of the CrashPlan desktop, type: restart
  4. Press Enter.