171 replies to this topic

[tyyim]

Thanks so much for the guide! The script works perfectly! I am now backing up...

[justin2007]

Thanks, the plist file worked for me. All I had to do in addition to adding the file to my existing sparse bundle was delete existing backups within it and reboot.

[ElectroLund]

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]

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.

[bozilla]

This is great!

Thanks for the guide. Looks like they're checking the UUID now to make things a little harder for us osxers. I'll cross link this guide to my install guide.

[shoko]

sunkid

thank you so much. my MBP started being backuped again.

2009midMBP, 10.6.2, Baffalo LS-CH1.0TL

A Japanese at the UK

[mfilimonov]

Thank you very much!
After my second external drive backup crashed i thought that Time Machine is not for me , but with your script i make the dream of backup to NAS possible. Great work!

[static416]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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

[modche]

I love u! It works now with the skript you atteched. Perfect job! Thank you very much. Next step: Time Machine over Internet

[bm28]

Some bittersweet news folks.
After all this effort WD have released a new firmware that fixes this problem. Good job since i still could not get it to work.

Thanks to everyone who responded to me queries.

Cheers.

[sunkid]

Some bittersweet news folks.
After all this effort WD have released a new firmware that fixes this problem. Good job since i still could not get it to work.

That's good news! Can you post a link the the new firmware and a description of what exactly it fixed?

[bm28]

That's good news! Can you post a link the the new firmware and a description of what exactly it fixed?

Don't have the link but it's on the Western Digital website.
It fixes everything not being able to find the hardrive connecting the lot.
They must have Apple permission.

Cheers for the help Sunkid.

[RUok0101]

I am having the exact same issue hdavie listed above. I followed all the instructions to the letter and I do not see the backup drive in the Time Machine select disk window. It does however list all my SMB drives and the afp share in which the sparsebundle is on, but not the actual backup image.

Anyone else figured this out? I have been doing unix stuff for many years and re-executed every step 3 times and it still doesn't show up in the list.

I recently had a hard drive crash so I am anxious to get this set up. Its interesting to note that I had this all working on 10.5.x and it was working fine, and I even upgraded to Snow Leopard and my backups continued to work fine. Its just now that I am setting it up fresh (since drive crash) and its not working.

[redrum24]

Just want to add that the following configuration does NOT work:

iMac 10.4.11 with WD usb drive
MacBook 10.6.2

Usb drive is shared on the imac. Drive mounted on MacBook using AFP and the IP address of the iMac. The disk image was created using the requirements of the script provided. I also added in the .plist file with the MacBook UUID.

Time machine has stopped trying to make the sparsebundle image on the share. It mounts the Time Machine disk on the desktop of the MacBook then unmounts it quickly and says cleaning up.