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

[djboff]

HiYa Folks, may I thank you all for your contributions to this thread, it has been very useful for me.

 

My Time Vault went west about 3 months ago 18 months old, Apple have kindly offered to replace it (it was one in the batch of bad psu's) - somewhere in the region of 45 minutes ago this got me thinking.. what if I could use the replacement TimeVault as credit towards a new macmini SLServer... I mean my router has Wifi N, and is stable - my replacement Ethernet Hub/switch is 1G So really all the TimeVault offers is space, this way Apple make more money and if I could get the SLServer to work as the Time Vault Drive for 1 Macbook Pro, 1 Mac Pro, and 1 iMac G5 (TV in the Kitchen ;-) ) I'd get a much better result and the server could hide behind the HiFi Rack replacing an Apple TV which I could then sell too....

 

So this all hinged on the Network TimeVault to the PC's we own - And I was well rewarded by my searches (thanks to whoever made the Entourage Database point.... that may save me one day!)

 

So I'm happy to say that all the advise is cool - however I've had a much simpler time/journey so far - BUT this is not stress tested yet, but is working.

 

To test this I'm backing up my MacbookPro to the imac g5 in the kitchen, if I loose the drive on that it's no major shakes.

 

I decided to put the backup in root, this is bad in an environment other than trusted behind a firewall at home, the next step will make that clear

 

I went to System Pref on the imac G5 (Remember for the rest of this the G5 is the Time Vault) and I went into Users, I created all user accounts on the home PC's on that machine, and I made them all administrators.

 

I then went Show All and into sharing, I pressed add on Shared Folders and added Macintosh HD, and then under Users for the Macintosh HD share I added all the Users on the G5 and gave them all full Read&Write Access (THIS IS WHERE AN EXTERNAL DRIVE WOULD BE PERFECT - that way any inhouse hackers can only mess up that drive) but bear in mind this is just a test, I'll build it more securely when I get the SLServer. In the options section accessed by the button under the Read&Write accesses I only have share files and folders by afp ticketed.

 

Back to Show All, this time into energy - one that's not mandatory, but useful, Allow Ethernet to Wake up the PC so that when the PC's come online they can just get it turned on and going (obviously the G5 will only ever sleep now, no full shutdown)

 

Back to Show All and close that now, the G5 was now configured.... bless it's ancient socks - 5 years old, a wedding present with uses!!

 

I'm now back on the Macbook PRO (I'll call it PRO from now) I went into Macintosh HD on my desktop screen, the window that opens shows the G5 under Shared, I click on the G5 and then press the button in the top right of that window "connect as" and I enter my user details as i had created them on the G5 - that's all cool and Macintosh HD on the G5 springs up as an option to connect to, i click on that and leave that window alone but open.

 

on the PRO I goto System Preferences and click on the Time Vault Icon, in there I select "select disk" and lo and behold the G5 Macintosh HD shows up, I select that and press the Use Drive for Time Vault Button. Because this is only a test I have to stop it backing up things like the Entourage Database, Music, Photos etc, just to make it fit the old G5's smaller HDD.

 

Then the PRO starts its countdown, I watch the HD root and lo behold the G5 creates this:

 

/Volumes/Macintosh HD-1

afp://Mrs djboff’s iMac G5._afpovertcp._tcp.local/Macintosh%20HD/Mrs djboff’s Computer.sparsebundle

 

The Spaces did not matter (I edited my wifes name out) the afp does contain Firstname Lastname

 

During the time it has taken me to write this the Wireless LAN on the PRO has backed up 10Gb to the Ethernet connected G5

 

The Pro is running OSX 10.6.4

The G5 is running OSX 10.5.8

 

My next tests will be to start adding the Mac PRO on, and trying different Users. But it seems for some odd reason I've not ended up with too much pain here - like the wooden forum look - as i'm touching wood.

 

Will keep you all posted, hope that was useful. I think the key things are permissions and free space vs. backup size

 

 

 

 

 

Just read that back - i think the excitement made it a bit rambly sorry about that, post if you need and clarification so all can benefit. Cheers

 

dj boff

[djboff]

Hi All

 

Just to confirm this works from the Mac PRO on 10.6.4 is also backing up to the G5, I tried to use the guest account to get to the G5 share, which did not - so even though I'd given Files and Folders sharing "Everyone Read&Write" the G5 still requested a user authentication, so I authenticated against my username and opened Macintosh HD on the G5. On the workstation Mac PRO I already Had TimeVault Drives from the system preferences window open, As soon as I had authenticated and added auth to keychain the drive just turned up in the Time Machine Select disk window.

 

I selected a small test backup and the Mac pro made this on the G5:

 

afp://Mrs djboff’s iMac G5._afpovertcp._tcp.local/Macintosh%20HD/Mr(me) djboff’s Mac Pro.sparsebundle

 

And 4Gb of a 6Gb backup has been written, I'll report if it works, and if after a full reboot of both it manages to pick it all up

 

Both machines rebooted,

 

I clicked backup-now in the drop down for Time Vault backups on the workstation Mac Pro, without any intervention at all from me it then mounted the G5's hard drive, completed a backup and then unmounted the G5, it's as if it was never there! very cool like it and it opens up some backup strategies / options

 

now to convince Mrs djboff that I need a SLServer

 

take care

 

djboff

[Tigra Mastercoder]

I am new to mac world, and after using it for several weeks decided - its time to make backup.

But mine mac mini is way limited with storage, so wanted to use my windows multimedia center / file server for storing backups, but met some troubles implementing it.

 

Just registered here to download script, and to say - thank you

Confirming, works wonderful at mac mini with latest(10.6.4) OSX.

[Filipe Grillo]

Many many many thanks!

You're the man!

 

And the best thing is: I'm sharing my hard drive with samba! I mean... smb is working so far, I'm currently in the middle of the first(HUGE) backup.

 

[]s

[midgetin0gravity]

I'm trying to get this to work with a freenas box. I'm totally new to computer stuff, and wasn't really able to follow the directions very well. I have AFP enabled on freenas but it doesn't show up in the finder unless I manually connect to the freenas' IP. When Time Machine tries to run the backup to my freenas disk volume I get error number 45 "the disk image could not be created". If anyone could help by giving more detailed instructions (for a newbie like me) I would appreciate it.

[vinceymac]

Thanks man, it works like a dream

[liriel]

I couldn't get this working in Snow Leopard. The Samba share was not displayed as a possible backup drive in time machine.

 

However, the instructions at the following site worked for me. I wonder if the MAC ID in the sparsefile filename made a difference?

 

https://wiki.zealnetworks.com/tiki-index.ph...chine+and+Samba

[bea_alex]

I spent ages looking for a fix for this. Thank you so much. Your manual solution worked brilliantly. Backing up as I'm writing this.

[Tolida]

Hi,

 

Is there anybody using TimeMachine backup over the Internet?

 

I cannot get it to work...

 

 

TIA, To

[Hannes72]

Thanks so much. I had no hope to find a solution for that. I spent months ...

It works with your the script. Backup up since 5 minutes on Buffalo Linkstation Mini.

 

Best regards from Berlin, Germany!

[Tolida]

Thanks so much. I had no hope to find a solution for that. I spent months ...

It works with your the script. Backup up since 5 minutes on Buffalo Linkstation Mini.

 

Best regards from Berlin, Germany!

 

Is this remote or the same network????

[dbringold]

Bonjour,

Apres de longues heures de recherches grace à ce forum cela m'a pris 3 minutes de faire fonctionner

Time machine avec un Maxtor Shared Storage II

 

Thanks again for this excellent word.

From Paris

David

[Tolida]

Bonjour,

Apres de longues heures de recherches grace à ce forum cela m'a pris 3 minutes de faire fonctionner

Time machine avec un Maxtor Shared Storage II

 

Thanks again for this excellent word.

From Paris

David

ON a local network? or remote over internet???

[aikidoka25]

thank you sunkid,

 

this works like a charm, both on my GigaMacPro and MacBookMini (Snow Leopard 10.6.4) setups.

 

I used the "Manual Procedure" on DNS-323 with AFP protocol, the device is recognized after issuing the command

defaults write com.apple.systempreferences TMShowUnsupportedNetworkVolumes 1

[dbringold]

ON a local network? or remote over internet???

 

Local Network

Don't hesitate if you have questions

[Tolida]

Local Network

Don't hesitate if you have questions

 

Yes that's what I already thought, my problem is that it don't work on a different network....

[Hannes72]

Is this remote or the same network????

 

Local WLAN

[Tolida]

Local WLAN

No one has it working to a remote network until now???

[allan916]

Hi,

 

Can anyone help? I have followed the steps that have been outlined, but can't get this to work.

 

I am running a MBP from mid 2009, running 10.6.4. attached through a local LAN to a GigabitNAS box. I have created the files are root.

 

In the log files I see (first time run):

 

Sep 30 22:05:02 com.apple.backupd[4023]: Running backup verification

Sep 30 22:05:04 com.apple.backupd[4023]: QUICKCHECK ONLY; FILESYSTEM CLEAN

Sep 30 22:09:19 com.apple.backupd[4023]: Backup verification passed!

Sep 30 22:09:19 com.apple.backupd[4023]: Resizing backup disk image from 500.0 GB to 2750.1 GB

Sep 30 22:12:16 com.apple.backupd[4023]: Mount failed... waiting 60 seconds and trying again.

Sep 30 22:12:39 com.apple.backupd[4023]: Failed to eject volume /Volumes/backup-1 (FSVolumeRefNum: -150; status: -47; dissenting pid: 0)

Sep 30 22:13:39 com.apple.backupd[4023]: Attempting to mount network destination using URL: smb://admin@192.168.0.7/backup

Sep 30 22:13:42 com.apple.backupd[4023]: Mounted network destination using URL: smb://admin@192.168.0.7/backup

Sep 30 22:13:46 com.apple.backupd[4023]: Mount failed... waiting 60 seconds and trying again.

Sep 30 22:14:09 com.apple.backupd[4023]: Failed to eject volume /Volumes/backup-2 (FSVolumeRefNum: -151; status: -47; dissenting pid: 0)

Sep 30 22:15:09 com.apple.backupd[4023]: Attempting to mount network destination using URL: smb://admin@192.168.0.7/backup

Sep 30 22:15:12 allan-lindsays-macbook-pro com.apple.backupd[4023]: Mounted network destination using URL: smb://admin@192.168.0.7/backup

Sep 30 22:15:16 com.apple.backupd[4023]: Giving up after 3 retries.

Sep 30 22:15:21 com.apple.backupd[4023]: Backup failed with error: 21

Sep 30 22:15:45 com.apple.backupd[4023]: Failed to eject volume /Volumes/backup-3 (FSVolumeRefNum: -152; status: -47; dissenting pid: 0)

 

A popup comes with:

The backup disk image “/Volumes/backup-3/macbook-pro.sparsebundle” could not be accessed (error -1).

 

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

Thanks in advance!

 

Allan.

[168088]

wow thanks.

[kth]

Thank you! Finally after hours of messing around I got this working by following the manual guide. One thing I would add is that I had to make sure I was in the desktop folder when doing all the commands, apart from that, perfect!

 

Thanks!

[allan916]

Hi,

 

Can anyone help? I have followed the steps that have been outlined, but can't get this to work.

 

I am running a MBP from mid 2009, running 10.6.4. attached through a local LAN to a GigabitNAS box. I have created the files are root.

 

...

 

Sep 30 22:15:45 com.apple.backupd[4023]: Failed to eject volume /Volumes/backup-3 (FSVolumeRefNum: -152; status: -47; dissenting pid: 0)

 

A popup comes with:

The backup disk image “/Volumes/backup-3/macbook-pro.sparsebundle” could not be accessed (error -1).

 

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

Thanks in advance!

 

Allan.

 

 

Finally managed to get it to work. My additional bits (apologies if they are included already elsewhere) were to create a separate share with a backup user having a quota attached to it. This seems to stop TM trying to resize the image to the size of the whole NAS box. It works, but I find the sparsebundle a little fragile - at the merest hint of something not right, it corrupts the whole thing and I need to start from scratch again.

 

It works - I just need to take care when the backups are taken. Many thanks to the OP. I feel a bit better that I now have an image of my MBP.

 

Thanks again.

 

Allan.

[fallout123]

Finally managed to get it to work. My additional bits (apologies if they are included already elsewhere) were to create a separate share with a backup user having a quota attached to it. This seems to stop TM trying to resize the image to the size of the whole NAS box. It works, but I find the sparsebundle a little fragile - at the merest hint of something not right, it corrupts the whole thing and I need to start from scratch again.

 

It works - I just need to take care when the backups are taken. Many thanks to the OP. I feel a bit better that I now have an image of my MBP.

 

Thanks again.

 

Allan.

 

 

Hey allan916,

 

Can you provide a list of the steps you did to get it working? I'm trying to fix this for days and I have the problem you had...

 

Thanks a lot.

[bubbarob]

Thanks a million for this help. My external usb drive died but it was never my intention to use that as my regular backup. I purchased a raid for my back ups and could never get it to work until now.

[osxuser1985]

ep 30 22:05:02 com.apple.backupd[4023]: Running backup verification

Sep 30 22:05:04 com.apple.backupd[4023]: QUICKCHECK ONLY; FILESYSTEM CLEAN

Sep 30 22:09:19 com.apple.backupd[4023]: Backup verification passed!

Sep 30 22:09:19 com.apple.backupd[4023]: Resizing backup disk image from 500.0 GB to 2750.1 GB

 

The point of custom making the sparseimage for me is to limit the use of space on the NAS disk. But TM changes the image at first use. How can I prevent this??