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Time Machine Can't Back Up to Samba NAS

Hi,

I have a Samba NAS on my local network which I can mount manually, copy files to/from etc. quite OK. However, I can't get TM to use it! Here's the log:

06/01/2009 12:09:32 /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[687] Starting standard backup
06/01/2009 12:09:36 /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[687] Mounted network destination using URL: smb://admin@192.168.0.100/admin
06/01/2009 12:09:36 /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[687] Backup destination mounted at path: /Volumes/admin-1
06/01/2009 12:09:36 /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[687] Creating disk image /Volumes/admin-1/Oberon_002241326ac3.sparsebundle
06/01/2009 12:10:26 kernel hfs: Initializing the journal (joffset 0xe51000 sz 0x2800000)...
06/01/2009 12:11:04 /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[687] Error 45 creating backup disk image
06/01/2009 12:11:04 /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[687] Failed to create disk image
06/01/2009 12:11:09 /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[687] Backup failed with error: 20

NB - because I need to access another Samba server for work via VPN, I do have a file called nsmb containing:

[default]

minauth=none

Thoughts anyone...?

MacBook Pro 17", Mac OS X (10.5.6)

Posted on Jan 6, 2009 6:40 AM

Reply
3 replies

Jan 6, 2009 6:52 AM in response to TiredandEmotional

using TM to back up to NAS devices is not officially supported. the only exception is a Time Capsule and it also works with a disk connected to an Airport Extreme Base Station. there are hacks to use other NAS devices but you use them at your own risk. see this link
http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20080420211034137&query=time%2Bmach ine%2BNAS

Jan 7, 2009 2:53 AM in response to V.K.

Thanks - that worked - although the solution requires a little updating which was mentioned further down that post. In summary it is now this:

1. Create a sparsebundle image manually on your local system. Open a terminal window and enter:

hdiutil create -size $SIZESPEC -fs HFS+J -type SPARSEBUNDLE -volname "Backup of $MACHINENAME" $MACHINENAME_$MACADDRESS.sparsebundle

Where $SIZESPEC is the size of the backup volume (followed by the lowercase letter g if Gigabytes, e.g. 100g), and $MACHINENAME_$MAC_ADRESS is your Mac's name followed by an underscore and then your Mac's MAC Address (otherwise known as its Ethernet ID; visible in the Network System Preferences panel), but without the colons. So if your Mac is named MyMac, and the Network System Preferences panel lists your Ethernet ID as 00:18:b3:11:84:dd, then you would use MyMac_0018b31184dd for the name of the sparsebundle.

The -size parameter can probably be as large as you want, now that Apple has evidently fixed the sparsebundle issues that were causing all but the most recent backup to be dumped. However, you can also specify a smaller size if you (like me) want to create a hard limit for the amount of space your Time Machine backups will take on your network drive. hdiutil does have a -resize option if you need to utilize that later.

2. Create and set permissions on your network share. Just make sure you have read/write permissions set on whichever SMB/AFP share you're going to dump this to.

3. Copy the sparsebundle to the network share root. Easy enough. Mount your network share and copy it over. I used this Terminal command after the MyBackup share was mounted: cp -r mymachine_0017f2c8426b.sparsebundle /Volumes/MyBackup/. Or just use the regular UI to copy and paste (it worked for me).

Jan 28, 2009 11:50 AM in response to TiredandEmotional

This is all correct.
But:

hdiutil does have a -resize option if you need to utilize that later.


I have not managed to get hdiutil to resize my sparsebundle.

hdiutil create -size 10g -fs HFS+J -type SPARSEBUNDLE -volname test test
created: /Users/xxx/tmp/test.sparsebundle

hdiutil resize -size 20g test.sparsebundle
hdiutil: resize request is below minimum size allowed.
hdiutil: resize failed - Fehler -5341

GRRR!

hdiutil resize -size 20g -imageonly test.sparsebundle
Worked! Fine! And now:
diskutil resizeVolume disk2s2 15g
Resizing encountered error on disk disk2s2 test:
The chosen size is not valid for the chosen filesystem (-9962)

*Well ...*

Greetings,
muppetlab.

Time Machine Can't Back Up to Samba NAS

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