Veeam Agent installation on AlmaLinux 8

The information in this document is relevant to the time of writing, which is Q1 2023.  The versions of software in this guide are the following: 

• Veeam Backup and Replication build: 12.0.0.1420
• OS: AlmaLinux is 8.7 (Stone Smilodon), running kernel 4.18.0-425.13.1.el8_7.x86_64
• Veeam repository:  veeam-release-el8-1.0.8-1.x86_64.rpm
• Veeam Agent: veeam-6.0.0.1060-1.el8.x86_64

The Veeam repository for Linux can be found at https://www.veeam.com/linux-backup-download.html. On this page select "RHEL/Oracle Linux 8" from the "Choose operating system" drop down box, and click "DOWNLOAD" for the "Repository package for RHEL/Oracle Linux 8".

This will download an RPM file.  It is likely that you will be unable to download this directly from this page to your Linux machine, as your server will most likely not have a GUI and a web browser.  To get around this it is best to download the RPM to your workstation, then use scp or rsync to copy the RPM file to your server via SSH.

Once the RPM is on your server, install it.

dnf clean all
rpm -hi veeam-release-el8-1.0.8-1.x86_64.rpm
dnf install -y veeam

This will install the required packages for the Veeam agent, including a kmod-veeamsnap package; however, you will notice that there are still issues with the Linux kernel module for veeamsnap.  If we inspect the files installed with kmod-veeamsnap, and compare it with our current kernel version, we can see that the kernel module is not installed for our version.  The difference is very minute.

[root@almalinux8 ~]# uname -r
4.18.0-425.13.1.el8_7.x86_64

[root@almalinux8 ~]# dnf download kmod-veeamsnap
Last metadata expiration check: 0:04:38 ago on Fri 17 Mar 2023 14:25:20 AEDT.
kmod-veeamsnap-6.0.0.1060-1.el8.x86_64.rpm                                 14 MB/s | 154 kB     00:00 

[root@almalinux8 ~]# rpm -qlp ./kmod-veeamsnap-6.0.0.1060-1.el8.x86_64.rpm  | grep ko$
/lib/modules/4.18.0-147.el8.x86_64/extra/veeamsnap.ko
/lib/modules/4.18.0-193.el8.x86_64/extra/veeamsnap.ko
/lib/modules/4.18.0-240.el8.x86_64/extra/veeamsnap.ko
/lib/modules/4.18.0-305.el8.x86_64/extra/veeamsnap.ko
/lib/modules/4.18.0-348.el8.x86_64/extra/veeamsnap.ko
/lib/modules/4.18.0-372.9.1.el8.x86_64/extra/veeamsnap.ko
/lib/modules/4.18.0-425.10.1.el8_7.x86_64/extra/veeamsnap.ko
/lib/modules/4.18.0-425.3.1.el8.x86_64/extra/veeamsnap.ko
/lib/modules/4.18.0-80.el8.x86_64/extra/veeamsnap.ko

From this we can see that the kernel module was installed for 4.18.0-425.10.1.el8_7.x86_64, but our current kernel is 4.18.0-425.13.1.el8_7.x86_64.  

Without this kernel module, our agent based Veeam backups will fail.

We can confirm that this module has not loaded by running lsmod, and grepping for Veeam.  We will see that grep returns 0 lines of output.

[root@almalinux8 ~]# lsmod | grep veeam -c
0

Fortunately, the difference in these kernel versions is small enough that the veeamsnap.ko file will still work for us.  

First, we need to create the /extra/ directory for our kernel version, then copy the kernel module over to this directory.

[root@almalinux8 ~]# mkdir -p /lib/modules/$(uname -r)/extra

[root@almalinux8 ~]# cp /lib/modules/4.18.0-425.10.1.el8_7.x86_64/extra/veeamsnap.ko /lib/modules/$(uname -r)/extra/.

[root@almalinux8 ~]# ls /lib/modules/$(uname -r)/extra
veeamsnap.ko

Next, we need to load the module into the currently running kernel using insmod

[root@almalinux8 ~]# insmod /lib/modules/$(uname -r)/extra/veeamsnap.ko

[root@almalinux8 ~]# lsmod | grep veeam
veeamsnap             225280  0

At this point, our agent based backups will run fine; however, the loaded module will not persist if we reboot.  We will need to create a file called /etc/modules-load.d/veeam.conf, and make sure that it has the name of the kernel module in it.  We will also need to run depmod to add the loaded kernel module into the kernel module dependencies list.

[root@almalinux8 ~]# depmod

[root@almalinux8 ~]# echo veeamsnap > /etc/modules-load.d/veeam.conf

[root@almalinux8 ~]# cat /etc/modules-load.d/veeam.conf
veeamsnap

Now, once we reboot the AlmaLinux 8 server, the veeamsnap module will automatically be loaded as a kernel module.

[root@almalinux8 ~]# uptime && lsmod | grep veeam
 14:55:59 up 0 min,  1 user,  load average: 0.00, 0.00, 0.00
veeamsnap             225280  0

And out agent based backups will now work correctly.