Workaround AFP NAS Lion update and TimeMachine

Question

Level 1

1 points

Workaround AFP NAS Lion update and TimeMachine

Hi,

maybe you did an upgrade to Lion and encountered your NAS to be no longer accessible through AFP.

This is because this protocol has been updated by Apple because of security reasons, and there are issues with the underlying software library. Some NAS vendors (Netgear, QNAP) had updated, some did not (IOMega, Western Digital). Below some details around this for the interested.

Workaround.

If all is well, your NAS supports at least also SAMBA (Windows) and/or NFS, next to AFP. For example the IOMega StorCenter ix2 (i have that one) supports all three. I have simply enabled NFS on the NAS as well.

When done, you'll see in the Mac Finder another entry for your NAS, which you can connect to without errors, also when using Lion OS.

Now, the TimeMachine part.

TimeMachine simply creates a folder on your NAS storing its information.

Now that you can access the NAS through NFS/SAMBA, you can copy this directory to another drive that you can access with AFP.

Maybe another NAS, maybe your secondary build-in MAC drive.

After that, it's just a matter of ejecting your original TimeMachine drive (the AFP disfunctional one) and connecting to your copy.

From then one, it all should just work again.

Other tip if all else fails. If you happen to have VMWare fusion, you can use Windows to access your NAS as well and copy the data from there.

Background around the AFP issue.

It seems to be that NetATalk, an GPL licensed open source library used in AFP, has been changed regarding license. It's moderators updated the library with new AFP required behavior, and decided to require payment to release it. This seems to be at odds with the underlying GPL licensing though.

Some NAS vendors accepted and paid, some like IOMega refuse to pay and have a problem.

Some links around this:

Links:

http://www.netafp.com/open-letter-to-the-netatalk-community-501/

http://www.matthewgkeller.com/blog/2011/07/07/open-response-to-open-letter-to-th e-netatalk-community/

So it is partly Apple to blame, not to inform its users of potential issues with NAS drivers and the updated AFP; partly problem of the NAS vendors who did not upgrade despite being informed; and partly due to somebody that decided to actually make money out of an Open Source library he maintains...

Anyhow, hope this is of some use for you, and if not, then at least being informative.

iMac, Mac OS X (10.7)

Posted on Jul 24, 2011 6:33 AM

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Answer 1

Jul 24, 2011 7:55 PM in response to LudwigB

Hey mate, this is great advice. I too have an ix200..

Now I went in and turned on NFS. (set 'everyone' to have read/write access)

Went to the time machine preferences, and that share is set for NFS.. yet when I select it in Time Machine I get the same glitch.. am I missing a step?

When you say "When done, you'll see in the Mac Finder another entry for your NAS, which you can connect to without errors, also when using Lion OS."

do you mean you can access it using iomega tools? maybe that's the step I'm missing because when I browse to it it seems to still be using smb..

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Answer 2

Jul 25, 2011 4:09 PM in response to LudwigB

Hello, does that allow you to run Time Machine again? Or just access your old backups?

I'm not technical enough to understand all the implications of what you wrote. Thanks for clarifying.

LudwigB wrote:

Hi,

Now, the TimeMachine part.

TimeMachine simply creates a folder on your NAS storing its information.

Now that you can access the NAS through NFS/SAMBA, you can copy this directory to another drive that you can access with AFP.

Maybe another NAS, maybe your secondary build-in MAC drive.

After that, it's just a matter of ejecting your original TimeMachine drive (the AFP disfunctional one) and connecting to your copy.

From then one, it all should just work again.

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Answer 3

LudwigB Author

Level 1

1 points

Jul 26, 2011 1:21 PM in response to gelflingking

Hi,

NFS only enables you to access the drive using Lion OS.

For Time Machine to actually work, the NAS must support the new updated AFP protocol.

In other words, the workaround I gave above only enables you to access your data on the drive as files and folders; it does not enable you to use TimeMachine directly on that NAS.

What you can try though is to copy the TimeMachine folder from the NAS to another drive which is accessable with Lion style AFP. E.g. a secondary drive built-in into your IMac.

Then you can instruct TimeMachine to use that copied folder for its function.

Thus: NFS give file access to any file/folder on the NAS, but still does not make it accessible to TimeMachine.

For that you need to actually copy the TimeMachine folder from your NAS to another drive which is accessible for TimeMachine.

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Answer 4

ctendell

Level 1

0 points

Jul 30, 2011 7:09 PM in response to LudwigB

My work around for getting NAS connectivity to work again. Hope it helps.....http://charlestendell.com/os-x-lion-afp-nas-connection-error-fix/

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Answer 5

Governa

Level 2

206 points

Aug 1, 2011 1:55 PM in response to LudwigB

For those of you trying to access SMB shares, I found a free and easy solution.

Since a lot of people report they are able to access their NAS using apps other than the Finder itself, I decided to look for a free Lion-compatible File Manager to use instead of Finder.

I have found muCommander ( http://www.mucommander.com/ ) and indeed it works fine. All I did was click on the button highlighted bellow, go to "bonjour services" and select my NAS. It prompted me for my username and password and voilá, it works fine.

I keep Finder for everyday use and just load muCommander when I want to access the NAS. At least now I don't have to start my WinXP VM anymore just to access it.

Hope it helps you all.

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Answer 6

glenndk

Level 1

5 points

Aug 12, 2011 2:05 PM in response to LudwigB

Please follow these instructions:

Lion: Connecting to legacy (pre-Lion) AFP services - and Mac OS X (server):

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3258472

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