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Installing SnapRAID

SnapRAID is a single self-contained program. There is nothing to configure at install time and nothing runs afterwards until you invoke it. This chapter covers the package, the source build the lab performed, and Windows in brief.

The declared deviation, up front

The lab's array is made of directories on one filesystem, standing in for disks. SnapRAID normally refuses this: it checks the device behind each path and stops if two members of the array turn out to live on the same device — quite rightly, since parity on the same physical disk as the data protects against nothing. Every lab command after chapter 4 therefore carries SnapRAID's own test option, --test-skip-device, which turns that refusal into a warning and lets the workflow run. Transcript t12 shows the refusal happening without the flag, so you can see both behaviours.

Everything else in the lab is the genuine workflow: real parity computed over real files, real corruption repaired from it. What the deviation cannot prove is anything about physical devices — SMART data, spin states, temperatures — and those are labelled documented-only wherever they appear.

Option 1: your distribution's package

On Debian and Ubuntu, SnapRAID is in the universe repository:

sudo apt install snapraid

Check: the version prints its name and author:

$ snapraid --version
SnapRAID CLI v15.0 by Andrea Mazzoleni, https://www.snapraid.it

(The lab's binary says 15.0 because it was built from the 15.0 source. A packaged install may be a release or two behind the project's latest — for SnapRAID that is normally fine, and chapter 10 covers upgrading deliberately rather than accidentally.)

Option 2: build from source (what the lab did)

The release tarball is on the project's GitHub releases page. The build is the classic three steps, needing only a C compiler and make:

tar xzf snapraid-15.0.tar.gz
cd snapraid-15.0
./configure
make
sudo make install

The lab ran ./configure and make in this sandbox and used the resulting binary in place, without the make install step; the project's own make check regression suite exists and takes a few minutes if you want the extra assurance before installing.

Windows

SnapRAID ships Windows binaries (32- and 64-bit) on the same releases page; the program is the same, the config uses drive letters (data d1 E:\), and the commands in this guide translate directly. The lab ran on Linux only, so Windows specifics — service scheduling, path quirks — are documented-only in this guide and the project's manual (which has a Windows section) is the source to trust.

Where things go

Two placements to decide now:

  • The binary: wherever your package manager or make install puts it, conventionally /usr/bin or /usr/local/bin.
  • The config: SnapRAID looks for snapraid.conf in the current directory and in system locations (/etc/snapraid.conf on Linux). Chapter 4 writes one and every later command names it explicitly with -c, which is the habit to keep: the config in use is never a guess.

The one-sentence version

Install the package if your distribution has one; build the tarball if it doesn't; either way you end with one binary, no daemon, and a version command that proves it works.