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[Guide] 10.6 (Snow Leopard) Time Machine backup to network share

sunkid

By sunkid,
in OSx86 10.6 (Snow Leopard)

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sunkid
sunkid
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<snip>i mounted the iMac.sparsebundle volume to the computer to drag/drop the .com plist file</snip>

 

Therein lies your problem! Don't mount the sparsebundle but copy the plist file into the sparsebundle directory using terminal or by selecting "Show package contents" in the Finder's contextual menu (not sure if the second option is available).

dopey423
dopey423
Posted
Posted

i have tried the "show package contents" by right clicking on the sparsebundle and seeing the bands, info.bckup, info.plist, and token files.......

 

i dragged the machineid.plist file in there and it keeps on creating a tmp.sparsebundle..... this thing is driving me nuts

 

 

error 45: Time Machine could not complete the backup.

rbonon
rbonon
Posted
Posted

Hello,

 

Not being able to use the sparsebundle created. Here is what I did:

 

- My scenario: running 10.6.1 trying to do TM backups to a Linux SAMBA file share

- I run the script to create the sparsebundle locally in the Hackintosh

- I used the cp -fvr command to copy the sparsebundle directory to the SMB share (got some chflags warnings, I suppose related to the fact that there are no Permissions to be unsupported on SMB shares

- I was able to mount the sparsebundle, and see it as a mounted volume in Finder

- Opened Time Machine and could not see the mounted sparebundle volume as one of the available options for backup.

 

What am I missing? I tried running

defaults write com.apple.systempreferences TMShowUnsupportedNetworkVolumes 1

but that only showed my SMB shares.

 

Thanks for your help.

sunkid
sunkid
Posted
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Posted
<snip> I tried running

defaults write com.apple.systempreferences TMShowUnsupportedNetworkVolumes 1

but that only showed my SMB shares.</snip>

 

Point TM to the SMB share that contains your sparsebundle. No need to mount it, TM will do that for you. In fact, it may complain about it already being mounted, so best unmount first.

hagfish
hagfish
Posted
Posted

Can someone tell me if this is normal? Got everything working and I'm in the middle of my first backup now.. Is it normal for TM to still report the full size of my NAS? Its saying that I have over 2 TB available for backup!! The sparsebundle I created is only 250 gb. Is this something that will fix itself and report correctly after the first backup or did I miss something? Thanks

 

edit: first full backup done and its still reporting over 2 tb available... this normal?

bm28
bm28
Posted
Posted

Although the file name i created is called 'bm28's Macbook.sparsebundle' the one Time Machine tries to create is called 'bm28's Macbook.tmp.sparsebundle' I hav tried even changing the name to reflect this but TM still tries to create it.

I have tried everthing shown above and still have difficulty. Has anyone had this problem, if so any suggestions?

 

Just to make sure I'm doing this right, how do you copy the plist file into the sparsebundle's image directory?

themage
themage
Posted
Posted

HI- First of all thanks a lot for the instruction - I have managed to create the sparsebundle and transferred to my NAS ( QNAP 119) and time machine also recognises it . When I start the back up, as it is the first time I am doing it , I decided to connect to my NAS through the firewire cable.However it is taking too long while the first few 1-2 gb are transferred fine the system hangup after that and I get the irritating beach ball. the only way I can get back to my system is through emergency shutdown by holding the power key down and reboot. Can anyone help please.

 

The NAS drive is formatted as EXT3 and I am using snow leopard and have also stopped spotlight form indexing the TM backup.

 

Thanks in advance .Appreciate any help anyone can provide.

ElectroLund
ElectroLund
Posted
Posted

Thanks, the script works really well on my iMac and WD MyBook network drive! Two questions though:

 

1) Why would Time Machine not open? After my first successful Time Machine backup, the Time Machine app won't open. It's not running in the Activity Monitor after I double click it a bunch of times. Just doesn't open. I've unmounted and remounted the network drive to be sure.

 

2) I have a Mac Mini as well and have done the same setup for that machine. Rand the sparse bundle script and put the new hardware ID in the plist, but that computer isn't seeing the volume in the Time Machine settings. Any idea why not?

 

2) I have a Mac Mini as well and have done the same setup for that machine. Rand the sparse bundle script and put the new hardware ID in the plist, but that computer isn't seeing the volume in the Time Machine settings. Any idea why not?

 

Ok, answered my own question #2 above. I had to turn on the ability to read unsupported drives with this bit of terminal-fu:

 

defaults write com.apple.systempreferences TMShowUnsupportedNetworkVolumes 1

 

Now my Mini is set to use the SMB network share and is now backing up too! Now I just have to figure out why Time Machine isn't loading.

ElectroLund
ElectroLund
Posted
Posted
1) Why would Time Machine not open? After my first successful Time Machine backup, the Time Machine app won't open. It's not running in the Activity Monitor after I double click it a bunch of times. Just doesn't open. I've unmounted and remounted the network drive to be sure.

 

Ok, now I answered my question #1 above. Finder wasn't running on my iMac when I was trying to launch Time Machine (duh!). The reason is that I use a Finder replacement called Path Finder, which can run without Finder. Apparently, Time Machine needs Finder to work.

static416
static416
Posted
Posted

Seems to be sort of working for me. The backup will start, but it's extremely slow, and eventually stops completely saying something else is accessing the file. It won't begin again until I restart the NAS, or manually remount the drive.

 

Any ideas anyone? Feel free to ask for more details if necessary.

jamgill
jamgill
Posted
Posted

Very nice.

 

After getting this to work on a 10.6 Snow Leopard machine, all I had to do to get these instructions to work on a 10.5 Leopard machine was add the underscore - ethernet ID to the sparsebundle filename as discussed in this article:

 

http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?sto...080420211034137

 

Thanks x 2,000,000,000.

mr_yellow
mr_yellow
Posted
Posted

Hi Guys,

 

I've been doing some digging trying to find out if using a WHS SMB share is a viable solution for Time Machine Backups...

 

There are been more than a few posts from various people over the years that have recommended against doing this hack because of the high probability that the Time Machine backups will get corrupted.

 

How are the experiences here regarding this? Has anyone actually been able to restore using TM backups from an SMB share? Have there been any horror stories? Has anyone confirmed that their remote connected SMB shares have *not* corrupted over time? Does anyone run the TM backups on WiFi connected SMB shares?

 

Thanks,

static416
static416
Posted
Posted
Seems to be sort of working for me. The backup will start, but it's extremely slow, and eventually stops completely saying something else is accessing the file. It won't begin again until I restart the NAS, or manually remount the drive.

 

Any ideas anyone? Feel free to ask for more details if necessary.

 

To answer my own question I found out that it was probably a combination of using the wireless and a messed up .inprogress file in the Time Capsule volume. Deleted the .inprogress file, connected with ethernet and I was good to go for the initial backup. Later wireless backups have worked great.

 

How are the experiences here regarding this? Has anyone actually been able to restore using TM backups from an SMB share? Have there been any horror stories? Has anyone confirmed that their remote connected SMB shares have *not* corrupted over time? Does anyone run the TM backups on WiFi connected SMB shares?

 

Thanks,

I've only had it going for a couple days, but it seems to be working as advertised so far. I've heard from others that restoring individual files or folders is not a problem.

 

However, I'm not sure if you could restore an entire system from a non-Apple NAS during install, getting the installation software to see the TM volume might be a problem. I'd like to know if this is possible actually if anyone knows.

Sean Ferigan
Sean Ferigan
Posted
Posted

Just wanted to share my experiences with Time Machine backups to a non-Time Capsule device (in my case, a SMB share).

 

I followed the instructions provided and it still would not work, giving me a "NetAuthConnectToServerSync failed with error: 80" in the logs.

 

After much head-scratching, I found that the only way to fix it was to use the IP address of the server providing the SMB share instead of it's (resolvable) name. I had read other posts saying you had to have a numeric password but that was certainly not the case for me, so may be a red-herring.

 

Once I did this, the backups sprang into life and, so far, seem to be working perfectly.

 

regards

Sean

hdavie
hdavie
Posted
Posted

Hi all,

 

Looking through the posts, it seems people can either get this working fine, or their time machine has problems doing a backup.

 

I'm having a slightly different problem and wondered if anyone else had come across it. I can't get Time Machine to show the NAS disk at all in it's "Select Disk" setup dialogue.

 

I have followed the steps to create the sparsebundle, added the plist file and copied to my NAS (a QNAP 209 mounted via afp). I've done this quite a few times in various combinations: in terminal, in terminal as root, in Disk Utility. I've also tried mounting via SMB and using IP instead of hostname but neither make any difference.

 

I've added the "TMShowUnsupportedNetworkVolumes 1" preference to the com.apple.systempreferences domain as recommended in various other forums (though that domain didn't already exist on my 10.6.1 MBP - not sure if there's a clue there), and rebooted for good measure. Still no visible backup disk.

 

I'm extremely new to Mac (though not to unix) so I'm wondering if I've overlooked something really really basic. Can anyone point me toward some useful logs? I've checked Console and the logs shown in the Profiler but can't spot anything relevant.

 

Any hints gratefully received.

Hugh

Sean Ferigan
Sean Ferigan
Posted
Posted
Hi all,

 

Looking through the posts, it seems people can either get this working fine, or their time machine has problems doing a backup.

 

I'm having a slightly different problem and wondered if anyone else had come across it. I can't get Time Machine to show the NAS disk at all in it's "Select Disk" setup dialogue.

 

I have followed the steps to create the sparsebundle, added the plist file and copied to my NAS (a QNAP 209 mounted via afp). I've done this quite a few times in various combinations: in terminal, in terminal as root, in Disk Utility. I've also tried mounting via SMB and using IP instead of hostname but neither make any difference.

 

I've added the "TMShowUnsupportedNetworkVolumes 1" preference to the com.apple.systempreferences domain as recommended in various other forums (though that domain didn't already exist on my 10.6.1 MBP - not sure if there's a clue there), and rebooted for good measure. Still no visible backup disk.

 

I'm extremely new to Mac (though not to unix) so I'm wondering if I've overlooked something really really basic. Can anyone point me toward some useful logs? I've checked Console and the logs shown in the Profiler but can't spot anything relevant.

 

Any hints gratefully received.

Hugh

 

Not sure if this will help -- but have you mounted the share *before* trying to find it in Time Machine? If not, then mount the share and you should see it listed. You only have to do this the first time.

 

regards

Sean

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