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

[deckeda]

I *think* this is the only post that mentions a Tiger server actually working, as opposed to supposedly working? Can't get it to work here for a 10.4.9 Mac serving a 10.6.2 client. I have SharePoints on the Tiger Mac; even sharing the desired network drive as SMB still shows it connected and mounted via AFP when viewed from the 10.6 client. I have no clue what's going on there but will look into that more.

 

TM fails trying to "make available" or "preparing" the network disk with an error regarding a −1 copy of the network share. The .tmp sparsebundle mentioned before is also made during this process and then deletes. Before and after, adding the .plist file with UUID as shown in System Profiler produces the same result.

 

OK, resolved the issue of the network drive mounting with AFP; I had been connecting via a Finder window instead of Cmd-K and entering the smb:// IP address.

 

Otherwise I still have the same issue as mentioned above.

[deckeda]

OK, resolved the issue of the network drive mounting with AFP; I had been connecting via a Finder window instead of Cmd-K and entering the smb:// IP address.

 

Otherwise I still have the same issue as mentioned above.

 

It seems to now be working. The sparsebundle volume appeared on the desktop and is now backing up to it.

 

I was connecting with smb://IP/username

What I should have done is use smb://IP/sharename

 

Windows Sharing is turned on too on the 10.4 Mac.

 

Unlike yesterday, today the 10.4 Mac now appeared "as a PC" (generic PC icon) from the 10.6 Finder window's sidebar SHARED list, in addition to listed as normally (as a shared Mac.) Connecting from the PC icon starting point gave me access to the server from "an SMB point of view," and so the available volume had the 10.4 server's shared SMB name, not the Finder shared name.

 

In fact that's how I connected at first, i.e. NOT via Cmd-K, inputting "smb:// …" etc. But another 10.6 wouldn't permit that because it never showed up in the sidebar.

 

Bottom line, use the Connect to Server dialog and smb://IP/sharename or smb://servername/sharename

[deckeda]

Notes on what you'll see/what I saw when working properly regarding the "multiple, ghost shares" anomaly mentioned earlier.

 

1. Prior to running Time Machine and after, nothing additional shows in /Volumes. This is consistent with any unmounted volume—they shouldn't appear as broken aliases there unless /Volumes/private/var/db/volinfo.database is corrupt. A logout usually cleans up the volinfo.database file.

 

2. While Time Machine is backing up, both sharevolume and sharevolume-1 appear in /Volumes

 

3. The .tmp sparsebundle mentioned previously won't be generated. That was a symptom of incorrect setup.

 

4. While waiting to run again, Time Machine's interface (i.e. in System Prefs) shows that it's gonna use sharename-1. Don't worry. Once it runs, it's using sharename now.

[jediknight36]

hey, Im new to the forums. I am having the same issue. Im not quiet sure how to run teh shell script, but I have an SMB NAS that actually has a TimeMachine function on it. I make a folder and told it to become a Time Machine. I set it up, except for the mac address and name. I really want to be able to back both my iMac and Macbook pro on it. Both run 10.6.2, my MBP has backups on an external that I am attempting to move to the server. Im not sure how to fill in teh blanks on the shell script. Terminal is still failry new to me so if someone could PM me with a little more detail. My NAS is a Buffalo Linkstation. Thanks

[fredbe1981]

Hi,

thanks for that very intersting article.

I am new to this community, and I am new again as a Mac user (means I had Mac before, then used PC for a while, and just using a Mac again now ;-)

 

All commands working just fine, but when trying to copy the sparsebundlefile to my share, I do receive the followings erros :

 

cp -pfr efmac.sparsebundle /efserver/efmac/efmac.sparsebundle
cp: /efserver/efmac/efmac.sparsebundle: No such file or directory
cp: efmac.sparsebundle: unable to copy extended attributes to /efserver/efmac/efmac.sparsebundle: No such file or directory
cp: /efserver/efmac/efmac.sparsebundle/bands: No such file or directory
cp: efmac.sparsebundle/bands: unable to copy extended attributes to /efserver/efmac/efmac.sparsebundle/bands: No such file or directory
cp: /efserver/efmac/efmac.sparsebundle/bands/0: No such file or directory
cp: /efserver/efmac/efmac.sparsebundle/bands/12a: No such file or directory
cp: /efserver/efmac/efmac.sparsebundle/bands/12b: No such file or directory
cp: /efserver/efmac/efmac.sparsebundle/bands/12c: No such file or directory
cp: /efserver/efmac/efmac.sparsebundle/bands/12d: No such file or directory
cp: /efserver/efmac/efmac.sparsebundle/bands/12e: No such file or directory
cp: /efserver/efmac/efmac.sparsebundle/bands/12f: No such file or directory
cp: /efserver/efmac/efmac.sparsebundle/bands/130: No such file or directory
cp: /efserver/efmac/efmac.sparsebundle/bands/131: No such file or directory
cp: /efserver/efmac/efmac.sparsebundle/bands/132: No such file or directory
cp: /efserver/efmac/efmac.sparsebundle/bands/133: No such file or directory
cp: /efserver/efmac/efmac.sparsebundle/bands/134: No such file or directory
cp: /efserver/efmac/efmac.sparsebundle/bands/135: No such file or directory
cp: /efserver/efmac/efmac.sparsebundle/bands/136: No such file or directory
cp: /efserver/efmac/efmac.sparsebundle/bands/137: No such file or directory
cp: /efserver/efmac/efmac.sparsebundle/bands/138: No such file or directory
cp: /efserver/efmac/efmac.sparsebundle/bands/139: No such file or directory
cp: /efserver/efmac/efmac.sparsebundle/bands/13a: No such file or directory
cp: /efserver/efmac/efmac.sparsebundle/bands/13b: No such file or directory
cp: /efserver/efmac/efmac.sparsebundle/bands/13c: No such file or directory
cp: /efserver/efmac/efmac.sparsebundle/bands/13d: No such file or directory
cp: /efserver/efmac/efmac.sparsebundle/bands/13e: No such file or directory
cp: /efserver/efmac/efmac.sparsebundle/bands/13f: No such file or directory
cp: /efserver/efmac/efmac.sparsebundle/bands/19: No such file or directory
cp: /efserver/efmac/efmac.sparsebundle/bands/1a: No such file or directory
cp: /efserver/efmac/efmac.sparsebundle/bands/1b: No such file or directory
cp: /efserver/efmac/efmac.sparsebundle/bands/1c: No such file or directory
cp: /efserver/efmac/efmac.sparsebundle/bands/1d: No such file or directory
cp: /efserver/efmac/efmac.sparsebundle/bands/1e: No such file or directory
cp: /efserver/efmac/efmac.sparsebundle/bands/1f: No such file or directory
cp: /efserver/efmac/efmac.sparsebundle/bands/20: No such file or directory
cp: /efserver/efmac/efmac.sparsebundle/bands/21: No such file or directory
cp: /efserver/efmac/efmac.sparsebundle/bands/22: No such file or directory
cp: /efserver/efmac/efmac.sparsebundle/bands/23: No such file or directory
cp: /efserver/efmac/efmac.sparsebundle/bands/24: No such file or directory
cp: /efserver/efmac/efmac.sparsebundle/bands/25: No such file or directory
cp: /efserver/efmac/efmac.sparsebundle/bands/259: No such file or directory
cp: /efserver/efmac/efmac.sparsebundle/bands/26: No such file or directory
cp: /efserver/efmac/efmac.sparsebundle/bands/27: No such file or directory
cp: /efserver/efmac/efmac.sparsebundle/bands/28: No such file or directory
cp: /efserver/efmac/efmac.sparsebundle/bands/29: No such file or directory
cp: /efserver/efmac/efmac.sparsebundle/bands/2a: No such file or directory
cp: /efserver/efmac/efmac.sparsebundle/bands/2b: No such file or directory
cp: /efserver/efmac/efmac.sparsebundle/bands/2c: No such file or directory
cp: /efserver/efmac/efmac.sparsebundle/bands/2d: No such file or directory
cp: /efserver/efmac/efmac.sparsebundle/bands/2e: No such file or directory
cp: /efserver/efmac/efmac.sparsebundle/bands/2f: No such file or directory
cp: /efserver/efmac/efmac.sparsebundle/bands/30: No such file or directory
cp: /efserver/efmac/efmac.sparsebundle/bands/31: No such file or directory
cp: /efserver/efmac/efmac.sparsebundle/bands/32: No such file or directory
cp: /efserver/efmac/efmac.sparsebundle/bands/33: No such file or directory
cp: /efserver/efmac/efmac.sparsebundle/bands/34: No such file or directory
cp: /efserver/efmac/efmac.sparsebundle/bands/35: No such file or directory
cp: /efserver/efmac/efmac.sparsebundle/bands/36: No such file or directory
cp: /efserver/efmac/efmac.sparsebundle/bands/37: No such file or directory
cp: /efserver/efmac/efmac.sparsebundle/bands/5004: No such file or directory
cp: /efserver/efmac/efmac.sparsebundle/bands/9fef: No such file or directory
cp: /efserver/efmac/efmac.sparsebundle/bands/9fff: No such file or directory
cp: utimes: /efserver/efmac/efmac.sparsebundle/bands: No such file or directory
cp: chown: /efserver/efmac/efmac.sparsebundle/bands: No such file or directory
cp: chmod: /efserver/efmac/efmac.sparsebundle/bands: No such file or directory
cp: chflags: /efserver/efmac/efmac.sparsebundle/bands: No such file or directory
cp: efmac.sparsebundle/bands: unable to copy ACL to /efserver/efmac/efmac.sparsebundle/bands: No such file or directory
cp: /efserver/efmac/efmac.sparsebundle/com.apple.TimeMachine.MachineID.plist: No such file or directory
cp: /efserver/efmac/efmac.sparsebundle/Info.bckup: No such file or directory
cp: /efserver/efmac/efmac.sparsebundle/Info.plist: No such file or directory
cp: /efserver/efmac/efmac.sparsebundle/token: No such file or directory
cp: utimes: /efserver/efmac/efmac.sparsebundle: No such file or directory
cp: chown: /efserver/efmac/efmac.sparsebundle: No such file or directory
cp: chmod: /efserver/efmac/efmac.sparsebundle: No such file or directory
cp: chflags: /efserver/efmac/efmac.sparsebundle: No such file or directory
cp: efmac.sparsebundle: unable to copy ACL to /efserver/efmac/efmac.sparsebundle: No such file or directory

 

efmac = my mac / also the name of the shared folder

efserver = my Windows Home Server

I named my sparsebundle efmac.sparsebundle

 

Maybe I did something wrong in the previous step, but I did not receive any errors.

So I try to copy the file efmac.sparsebundle to efserver/efmac/

 

Tried to perform the copy with my usual account, and also with root account.

 

Hope it not a newbie question, but help would be appreciated.

 

Best Regards

[jimmyb77]

sunkid - you are a star. worked first time. Thanks so much for taking the time to write something so useful that actually works!

[t.sjogren]

Does anybody know if this can be done with a drive without AFP support (i only have SMB support) using this drive: 'Iomega StorCenter ~350GB'

[jediknight36]

I'm still having issues. Can someone please help me out? PM me if you don't want to post here. Thanks.

[martinsz]

Thanks sunkid !!!

worked like a charm. it took me 2 mins to get it working after hours and hours of looking for a solution...

MBP 17 early 2008

Iomega Home Media Network Drive 1TB.

WiFi

 

the steps i followed:

- opened keychain manager and deleted all the entries for my nas.

- downloaded the makeImage.sh script

- mounted the nas/backup_dir (nas/backup)

- opened terminal, and logged as root (sudo su, su, etc)

- checked the volume name (/Volumes/backup)

- deleted any file inside

- ran the script with the destination (sh ./makeImage.sh 600 /Volumes/backup)

- when it was done, opened TM settings

- picked the nas/backup as destination drive

 

voila! when TM started, and it started copying files right away !!

 

awesome!

 

thanks!!!

[Fridex]

I can't get this working on 10.6.3

 

I have an external hdd attached to my pc. I want to backup my macbook which is on the same LAN.

I am able to see the mounted share but not to backup to it, it fails everytime.

[Jason J. Hill]

thanks for the guide!!

[chupalt]

I was able to get this working using the guide. Unfortunately I installed today's time capsule update and my backup is no longer working. Any ideas how to fix it. I've tried starting all over using the guide with no luck. I think something was changed with the update because the sparsebundle that the time machine attempts to create uses a different naming structure.

[causalloop]

Hey guys, I realize this is a bit of a dead thread, but I had the same problem where I couldn't backup following anyone's instructions and I found that my logs were telling me that backupd was crashing and I found this thread on apple's site:

 

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?t...7&tstart=30

 

I couldn't even get backups running on a USB drive. I haven't tried the afp or smb backup yet (still at work) but I suspect this needs to be working for you can try the network solutions.

[nanwania]

Hi complete mac noob here just bought my first macbook pro

 

i was just wondering can someone explain to me how to run the script and where to put the command line arguments in

 

my backup volume is a buffalo linkstation pro with the server name avana-hdd and the folder im trying to back up to is called time machine if that helps

 

thanks

nanwania

[Lane Roathe]

Thanks for the writeup, got my Time Machine backup under 10.6.3 going right now to my SS4200e NAS SMB share Not doing too bad either, averaging 35MB/s.

 

One thing to note is that during the copy phase of the setup I got a lot of errors:

cp: test: unable to copy extended attributes to /Volumes/Backups/test: Operation not permitted

and

cp: chflags: /Volumes/Backups/test/bands/0: Invalid argument

removing the p option will remove the invalid argument errors since you will no longer be preserving the Mac OS options for the files (owner, access, etc). For the SS4200e this is what you want, as the permissions must be set by the server in order for your user to have access to them.

 

The extended attributes error can be ignored, as Time Machine luckily is not depending on any of these extended attributes in order to perform it's work.

 

Thanks again, great to be able to have TM working to my NAS

 

PS: Intel apparently has stopped making the SS4200 devices, anyone looking for an inexpensive (when I got mine they were in the $250-$300 range) and fast NAS, there might be some close out deals around somewhere. Speed wise I tried many NAS devices, and most got 8-12MB/s max, a few got into the 20s. For straight file copies this one does ~30MB/s for lots of small files and 45-50MB/s (sometimes more) for large files.

[jamgill]

I was able to get this working using the guide. Unfortunately I installed today's time capsule update and my backup is no longer working. Any ideas how to fix it. I've tried starting all over using the guide with no luck. I think something was changed with the update because the sparsebundle that the time machine attempts to create uses a different naming structure.

 

I held off on the Time Machine update because I was worried that it would break my backups, and after I applied it today, it did break it.

 

Any clues as to what the update changed or how to get Time Machine working to my network server again post-update?

 

Thanks!

[jamgill]

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.

 

So, after the Time Machine update, it appears that appending the ethernet ID to the sparsebundle name is no longer necessary.

[wintelmac]

So, after the Time Machine update, it appears that appending the ethernet ID to the sparsebundle name is no longer necessary.

 

Seems to do more than that... update to 10.6.4 breaks my Time Machine Backups now can't even backup with new SPARSEBUNDLE disks.

[csddavies]

Great post. I got this working, however it keeps freezing up my Linksys WRT160N. Everytime I get almost a Gig into the copy the router stops working. All my other computers lose connection too. I've got the latest firmware on my Linksys. Argh!

[csddavies]

I upgrade to 10.6.4 as well and these instructions are no longer working. Anyone find a solution yet?

[ddstark]

This worked great for me! Thanks!! But it didn't work until I changed my sharing method from SMB to AFP.

[krajyk]

Considering that the thread was 10 months old, I thought maybe these steps would not work for 10.6.4 users especially since couple of these users stated it was not working for them. I can confirm that my configuration worked beautifully (OS 10.6.4, DLINK DNS323). Easier to run the manual steps. Since the first backup will do the entire drive make sure you're plugged in via Ethernet. I made a mistake of running it wireless for about 30 minutes before realizing it would take several days. But after the full backup, I tried it wirelessly and again worked like a charm.

 

Everything is fast and smooth just like before or maybe faster than before (probably psychological). I waisted about 2 weeks trying different techniques and going through two new routers before running into this thread.

[MacLover90211]

Just upgraded from 10.5.8 to 10.6.4 on my Imac.

 

I ran into the same issue. It erased the previous back-up copies from 10.5 and was unable to mount a backup volume.(Error-45).

 

Since I had my original sparsebundle on my hardrive savely stored. I repeated the original steps when I initally started and simply re-copied my sparsebundle back on the NAS drive (Maxtor Central Axis).

Without anything else Time Machine is backing up hitchless.

 

If you still have your original virgin sparsebundle somewhere stored, it will save a lot of time.

Simply reinstall it on the NAS drive and it should work. This also worked in the past when the file on the SMB drive got corrupted.

[fsto]

Great work!

The manual version worked perfectly for me, so far...

[jackmarshall]

This is fantastic

 

From a complete novice -so stating the obvious for most I am sure

 

-snowy is the name of his mac (the bit you replace with the name of your mac)

(sounds dumb I know, but when you have no idea what any of it means, took me a while)

 

Do not mount the sparsebundle file you create - which will happen if you double click on it in finder, this seemed to prevent it from working and I had to recopy a completely fresh copy.

 

You can put your backup in a subfolder of your share, you just have to directly mount that folder as a drive using Finder, select 'Go' then 'Connect to server' and enter the full path.

 

Pretty sure I have all the latest updates and it works well so far.