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Catalina, Time Machine, and my ReadyNAS
I thought I'd share my recent experience with Time Machine and my ReadyNAS 314.
I finally took the plunge, and upgraded my Mac from Mojave to Catalina. Suprisingly, the upgrade went off without incident, except that Time Machine stopped working. I was getting various errors, such as "Remote disk not available", etc. I noticed that the upgrade changed the name of the backup on the ReadyNAS from <mybackup>.sparsebundle to <mybackup>.backupbundle.
After reviewing some online disucssions of other users, I tried de-selecting ReadyNAS as the destination for my TM backup, then selecting it again. This appeared at first to fix the problem. The backups started running again, but then would fail. I gave up after several attempts to salvage the existing backup. Fortunately, Time Machine is not my only backup strategy.
My first thought was to force TM to create a new backup. So I used a trick that has worked in the past. I edited the file com.apple.TimeMachine.MachineID.plist, changing the key VerifcationState from "1" to "2". (I made a backup copy of this file before I edited it!) A value of 2 tells TM that a verification has failed. At first, this appeared to work. TM reported that it needed to begin a new backup. However, it ran for about twenty minutes, then died.
Here's what I finally did:
- Used SSH to access the directory on the NAS (default /data/.timemachine/ReadyNAS
- Used the command rm -rf *.sparsebundle which forced the recursive deletion of all files/folders without any warnings or prompts
- Deselected/reselected the ReadyNAS (on my system, the volume is called timemachine)
- Let Time Machine begin a new backup.
The initial backup, as expected, took several hours. However, subsequent backups have run very quickly, and without errors.
I hope this information might be useful to other users who have (or are planning to) upgrade(d) from an earlier version of Mac OS-X to Catalina.
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Hi,
I am consistently getting the "verification...recommend new backup" message after every time machine (TM) backup finishes. I have entered TM to confirm there is a valid backup on the server, so they do exist. All of my computers are running Mac OS Mojave (10.14.6). Both of our ReadyNAS servers are 6.10.3 and both servers are connected to a Orbi WiFi router by wired ethernet.
I would like to use the SSH method to clean off the files on the servers, but am an SSH novice. Under Settings the ReadyNAS SSH options are Enable SSH and Enable Password Authentication. There is an option to Download SSH Key File. I have Enabled SSH and tried to login with the command:
ssh root@url, where url is the address of the ReadNAS
and
ssh myusername@url, where url is the address of the ReadNAS
Both return permission denied messages.
I have downloaded the key file but not sure what to do with it. It seems I have to log into the ReadyNAS to add some text to one or more files on the ReadyNAS, but I cannot login due to permission issues.
Help would be appreciated!
John
FIRST OF ALL, be very VERY careful with your use of SSH. You can break a lot of things, and Netgear won't support you.
If you don't have any experience wih Unix/Linux, then i strongly suggest that you not attempt anything through SSH.
That said, I've never gotten the SSH key login method to work. You should be able to login from Mac Terminal by typing:
ssh <name-or-IP-of-ReadyNAS> -l root
(of course, substitue the network name or IP of your ReadyNAS for the <> brackets above)
You will be prompted for root's password. This should be the same password you use to login to ReadyNAS web management page (FrontView).
Once logged in, you would navigate to the .timemachine directory. On a standard install, this is usually /data/.timemachine/ReadyNAS
You should see your sparsebundles there.
Again, I cannot emphasize strongly enough how risky this can be if you don't know what you're doing. The Linux shell can be very unforgiving. It usually won't prompt you with "Are you sure?" or any of the other fail-safe prompts you'll get on your Mac. This means that you could blow away a lot of important files without realizing it.
In my opinion, it would be worth purchasing a paid support ticket from Netgear to get help with this.P.S. in the login command I posted in my previous message, the "-l" is the letter "L" (lower case), not the number 1.
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