TimeMachine Big Sur to Synology NAS

Good article covering this topic at https://eclecticlight.co/2020/06/29/apfs-changes-in-big-sur-how-time-machine-backs-up-to-apfs-and-more/ ... I have the same problem as I upgraded one of my MBPs to Big Sur today :-(

This was my experience as well: an install of big sur from within catalina was able to connect to and back up to my DS416 using a user's credentials. however after a fresh install from bootable media including a wipe of the drive in a MacBook Air circa 2015 followed by a migration from an older machine, and the machine has the symptoms reported here being what looks like instant pairs of connection requests in the logs every time it tries to back up. and a failure every time as well. I'll assume some kext or bit or bauble contained in Catalina stayed in the install-over, and once I did the clean install that magical little nub of driver or code or whatever was wiped out. 🤷‍♂️

I have to update my own post: out of nowhere and with no changes to the NAS settings or the fresh install of Big Sur (I've never installed Sophos, but the machine does have a corp. copy of anyconnect installed that's complaining mightily about not being enabled...I don't think it relates to this), overnight a fresh "first backup" of the Big Sur install in question completed over the network to my Synology NAS.

...But here's the weird part: I was expecting that new backup to be "xxx.backupbundle", but it's still "xxx.sparsebundle". I'm not sure what that means as I was under the impression that we would stop seeing .sparsebundle backups from here on out and .backupbundle would be the thing going forward from Big Sur. To make it more confusing, I have another machine that came with Catalina installed and was system-migrated from it's previous machine and it's backups on the NAS are "xxx.backupbundle" format, and it's PREVIOUS machine (the source of the data for the system migration to the new machine) that started it's life here backing up long about early 2019, are also "xxx.backupbundle"?

I would think that the format of the backup archive, being sparsebundle or backupbundle, isn't determinative of this problem.

Unfortunately I have no solution for you; just a commentary on what I and others have experienced in the transitions from Mojave-Catalina-Big Sur regarding Time Machine .sparsebundle and .backupbundle backup files.

Up to Mojave, TM backups were saved as <xxx.sparsebundle>. With the advent of Catalina, TM backups were saved as <xxx.backupbundle>. There followed many complaints that TM backups saved prior to Catalina as .sparsebundle files were not recoverable in Catalina. Some folks claimed that changing the file name extension of pre-Catalina TM backups from .sparsebundle to .backupbundle allowed recovery of pre-Catalina, TM .sparsebundle backups, in Catalina. You may try this approach but this did not work in my case. Fortunately I have a reserve 2015 MBP (Mojave), from which I can recover pre-Catalina TM .sparsebundle files from my Synology NAS.

Now, by Big Sur decree, the TM file name extension reverts to .sparsebundle. One might reasonably expect that by so doing access to pre-Catalina TM .sparsebundle backup files would be possible. I have yet to find a way and I don't know why it does not work. Maybe it's the T2 chip (currently 2019 MBP-Big Sur 11.1) or recent Catalina and Big Sur modifications to APFS and SIP. At their convenience, not ours, Apple may provide a solution.

Your situation is fairly common and another example of how from time to time Apple, apparently without a second thought, cuckolds its clients.

Regards,

Jan.

BurshHillMiller: I removed Sophos Home, and it got a bit farther, but it's still failing.

Here's another option. Tried a few times over the past three or four days using Intego Internet Security trial version. It works fine for TM backup and restore.

Hi,

I have the same issue. Only upgraded one Mac Mini, backing up to DS218J worked fine on Catalina but now does not work under Big Sur. I can mount all my shares manually from Finder and all work fine. Must be a issue with TimeMachine. My other Macs under Catalina are backing up fine to their respective shares.

I am using the current release and updates of DSM.

Regards

Phil

Hi

I have a DS415play(latest DSM), with a TM using AFP and its all working ok for me, doesn't help you but after my upgrade this was the only thing that I didn't have to worry about, printing and weird colour inversions everywhere yes but Time Machine ...no

It has nothing to do with previous backups in Catalina as I have started with an empty NAS share and Big Sur won’t even start the new backup sequence. A directory is created on the share and then immediately gets deleted when the backup stalls after 10s of seconds.

Here's what I did overall to get it working and it is now working on all my Big Sur implementations (4):

1. In DSM>Control Panel>File Services>SMB/AFP/NFS select SMB Advanced Settings and set maximum SMB Protocol to SMB3 and minimum to SMB1. I kept AFP enabled even though it has been deprecated in Big Sur. In DSM>Control Panel>File Services>Advanced I ensured that Bonjour discovery was enabled for both SMB & AFP.
2. In DSM I deleted the existing shared folder that I designated for Time Machine and created a new one. I went back to DSM>Control Panel>File Services>Advanced Settings>Set Time Machine Folders and picked the new one I just created.
3. In DSM>Shared Folder>Permissions I ensured that only one (1) of the users I created had privileges to the newly created Time Machine folder.
4. In DSM>Control Panel>Users I went through each user to ensure none other than the one (1) I had selected for Time Machine backups had permissions to that shared folder, and I ensured that user had an unlimited quota.
5. On my Big Sur Macs I totally stopped the Spotlight Indexing Service altogether (in Terminal: sudo mdutil -i off).
6. On my Macs I also uninstalled the Sophos AV as well.
7. On my Macs I removed the existing Time Machine destination and unchecked automatic backup.
8. I then shutdown each Mac and did an SMC reset (not NVRAM).
9. After rebooting a Mac I then selected the new destination on on my Synology device using the credentials of the sole user with those permissions.

But before doing any of that take a look at the Connections log on your DSM (DSM>Main Menu>Log Center, and select Connections from the drop down menu. Check if when a Time Machine backup initiates whether you have more than one user attempting the connection. For example, I noted that when my backups failed I would have two (2) users that had privileges to that shared folder attempt to connect nearly simultaneously from the same Mac even though I had only supplied one user credentials when selecting the share in Time Machine setup. I have no explanation or even speculation as to why that was happening.

I suspect there is a bug lurking in Big Sur regarding Apple's choice of APFS Time Machine backups that causes it to not play well with NAS devices, or in particular Synology NAS devices. It won't surprise me in the least if this is addressed in an 11.1 release. Everyone knows the 11.0.1 release was rushed to coincide with the M1 Macs show, and may not still be ready for primetime. I have a Mac I use as an Apple Music/TV/Plex server that relies on a 24tb SoftRAID RAID5 array that I cannot transition to Big Sur until SoftRAID is able to release an update (they claim their updated driver is built into the Big Sur release, but users are reporting issues and the client is beta and will be for some time). I'm just not going to risk that machine to some fatal bug that totally borks a 24tb array.

There are exploits to Mac OS if you're not careful enough to avoid opening links in phishing emails or download files from unknown sources. This article is of the opinion that you don't need to pay a third party vendor for added security if you take normal precautions.

https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-8841

Apple is serious about security. This page states that anti-virus is "built in" to macOS Big Sur:

https://www.apple.com/uk/macos/security/

Apple is serious about security. This page states that anti-virus is "built in" to macOS Big Sur:

Too early to tell regarding Big Sur but historically, Apple is not infallible:

https://www.macworld.co.uk/feature/mac-viruses-list-3668354/