GMVault installed on Synology DSM 6

[Richard Coleman]

Hi, I've recently installed GMVault 1.9.1 on my Synology NAS running DSM 6 which I thought I would post how so others might find it useful, and this seemed the most appropriate place to put them, so hope it's okay.
My instructions were based on those from https://workingconcept.com/blog/synology-gmail-backup and http://jimmybonney.com/articles/install_gmvault_on_a_synology_nas_follow_up/
Thanks to those guys for documenting their efforts.

So here's what I did:

A. Install Python and GMVault.
B. Configure GMVault for each user.
C. Get the Synology to run GMVault each night.


A. Install Python and GMVault:

1. Log into Synology NAS as Admin and go to Main Menu -> Package Center -> Settings and set Trust Level to "Synology Inc. and trusted publishers".

2. In the "Package Sources" tab, click Add, type "SynoCommunity" as Name and "http://packages.synocommunity.com/" as Location and then press OK to validate.

3. Go back to the Package Center and install Python 2.7 package ("Python") in the Community tab. (Synology provide Python 3, so if a later version of GMVault is made compatible then you wont need to do steps 1-4)

4. Remove Package Source and reset Trust Level to "Synology Inc."


5. Create folder "GMail" in Shared Folder "Shared_Folder_1" <== Programs will be installed in this "GMail" folder.
(Have thought about this afterwards and I would probably create a shared folder called "GMVault" to store the programs in. Also if you have more than one disc then you will need to know which volume this shared folder is on for step 9 onwards - mine is on "volume1")

6. Create folder "GMail" in Shared Folder "homes/Richard" <== Need to do this for each user who uses GMail, so I have 3 other users that I also created "GMail" folders for.

7. In Control Panel -> "Terminal & SNMP" -> Enable SSH service
(Security Advisor will complain about the SSH service not being secure if you use the default port of 22, which I didn't bother changing as I was only logging in via my local network)

8. My PC runs Windows 7 so I use PUTTY to connect to the Synology, so open a Command Window on "C:\Users\Richard\PUTTY" and run "putty.exe -ssh admin@mySynNas"
(Change "mySynNas" with the name of your Synology box, and if prompted about the server host key is not cached, click "Yes")

9. Install the Python Virtual Environment:
In PUTTY, enter:
cd /volume1/Shared_Folder_1/GMail
wget https://pypi.python.org/packages/source/v/virtualenv/virtualenv-1.10.1.tar.gz
tar xzf virtualenv-1.10.1.tar.gz

10. This will create the directory "virtualenv-1.10.1" which I renamed as "virtualenv"

11. Now install GMVault:
In PUTTY, enter:
cd virtualenv
python virtualenv.py gmvault_env
gmvault.env/bin/easy_install gmvault
sh /volume1/Shared_Folder_1/GMail/virtualenv/gmvault.env/bin/gmvault -h

Should display the help for GMVault, if installed okay!

12. Exit PUTTY


B. Configure GMVault for each user:

13. Add the user into the Administrators group (Can't login under SSH otherwise!) and make sure they have Read/Write access to "homes" and "Shared_Folder_1"

14. ssh into the Synology as that user:
In Command Window, run "putty.exe -ssh Richard@mySynNas"

15. Need to generate the OAuth key for that user:
In PUTTY,
if you don't have too many emails, enter:
sh /volume1/Shared_Folder_1/GMail/virtualenv/gmvault.env/bin/gmvault sync -t full --db-dir /var/services/homes/Richard/GMail/ --emails-only --no-compression my_email...@gmail.com

OR:  (To restrict the number of emails downloaded to begin with - I had nearly 14,000 emails, which took just over 3 hours to download when I did a full download later)
sh /volume1/Shared_Folder_1/GMail/virtualenv/gmvault.env/bin/gmvault sync -t custom --imap-req 'Since 1-Sep-2010 Before 1-Nov-2010' --db-dir /var/services/homes/Richard/GMail/ --emails-only --no-compression my_email...@gmail.com

GMVault will then prompt to open a web browser to grant OAuth2 access.

16. Press Enter to open the browser - which won't happen!

17. Highlight the web address that GMVault displays - DO NOT PRESS CTRL C !    Otherwise you'll stop GMVault and will need to run it again!

18. Open a new window in your web browser and paste the web address into the address bar.

19. Login to Google Mail and grant access to GMVault.

20. Copy the authentication token that Google will display and paste into the SSH session. GMVault should now continue and download the emails.

21. Once done, exit PUTTY.


22. Remove user from the Administrators group.
(The users on my Synology are disabled and have Read Only access to "homes" and "Shared_Folder_1" so I also reset those)


23. Repeat steps 13 to 22 for each user


24. In Control Panel -> "Terminal & SNMP" -> Disable the SSH service


C. Get the Synology to run GMVault each night:

25. Use Synology's Text Editor to create the script "GMail_Backup.sh" which was saved to "/homes/Richard". Copy the lines inbetween SCRIPT BEGIN: and SCRIPT END: changing path names , username and email address as required.

SCRIPT BEGIN:
#!/bin/sh

# This runs as root so user environment is not set so need to configure HOME
HOME="/var/services/homes/Richard"
cd ~
NOW=$(date +"%Y-%m-%d")
LOGFILE="$HOME/GMail_log-$NOW.log"
CURTIME=$(date +"%r")

echo "------------------------------------" >> $LOGFILE
echo "$CURTIME: Starting email sync..." >> $LOGFILE
echo "------------------------------------" >> $LOGFILE
printf "\n" >> $LOGFILE

set >> $LOGFILE
printf "\n" >> $LOGFILE

sh /volume1/Shared_Folder_1/GMail/virtualenv/gmvault.env/bin/gmvault sync -t quick --db-dir $HOME/GMail/ --check-db no --emails-only --no-compression my_email...@gmail.com >> $LOGFILE

CURTIME=$(date +"%r")

printf "\n" >> $LOGFILE
echo "------------------------------------" >> $LOGFILE
echo "$CURTIME: email sync finished." >> $LOGFILE
echo "------------------------------------" >> $LOGFILE
printf "\n\n" >> $LOGFILE
SCRIPT END:

26. I copied this script into each users home directory, editing the script each time to replace "/Richard" with the correct username to set $HOME correctly, and the correct email address for GMVault.

27. Open Control Panel -> Task Scheduler -> Create Scheduled Task -> "User-defined script"
Set Task = "GMail Backup Richard"
Set User = admin <== Though this is probably superflous as the script runs under root anyway!
Set the day and time to run. (Mine is set to run Daily at 04:00)
Set User-defined script = "sh /var/services/homes/Richard/GMail_Backup.sh"

(I also set mine to email me when the script terminates abnormally)

28. Repeat steps 25 to 27 for each user, setting the path, username and email address for each user.

29. The end.


It will then create a log file in the user's "home" directory and put the actual emails in the GMail directory for each user.
These log files will need to be manually deleted unless you want to set up a script to tidy them up.

I also found having the output of the Task Scheduler useful in debugging the script, which is how I found out I needed to set the $HOME variable in the script (The script would end but would not connect to the Mail server and download the email - the script log file didn't show any error message but the task output did). You can turn that on in Task Scheduler -> Settings.

If you restricted the number of emails when generating the OAuth key (step 15) then you may want to create another script which you run manually, which has the GMVault option "-t full" instead of "-t quick". That way you get the Synology to download all your emails before the Task Scheduler kicks in and does a quick update each night, or whatever you've set the task as.

My script above does not delete emails when they're deleted from the server - if you want that then replace the GMVault option "--check-db no" with "--check-db yes".
I have created another script with that setting to "yes" and I'll run it manually every few months once I've updated my offsite backup.

I'm a complete novice when it comes to shell scripts, so any questions you'd be better asking elsewhere, but I hope someone else finds these instructions helpful.

And thanks for GMVault!