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How-to: Setup multi-Mac backup shares with quotas. Easy.
Over the last couple years, I've been backing up each of my Macs to the default ReadyNAS Time Machine share. It's been OK, aside from having to hack my sparse bundles to stop them from increasing in size on their own. For some reason, as of Lion, I've had trouble getting that trick to work reliably.
After a weekend of research and playing around I finally put together a good Time Machine setup for my three Macs. Rather than have all three computers backup to the default ReadyNAS Time Machine share, I've setup specific user accounts with quotas to limit the size of the Time Machine backups and I backup each computer to the respective user account home folder. Turns out with the latest 4.2.19 update (I have an x86 NAS) it's a pretty easy setup. I've now tested it with two Lion and one Leopard OS. (And as a test, I found that SSH and Unix know-how isn't necessary.) Figured I'd try to contribute something back to the forum.
These steps assume that Time Machine support is already enabled on the ReadyNAS.
1.) Go into FrontView. Under Security > User Accounts I added a user account for each computer with a quota. (I tend to allocate 1.5x my computer's hard drive space for backups.)
2.) For each user, only two files needed to be created. Repeat the following steps for each user you create:
3.) Open a Finder window and open the AFP (or CIFS) representation of your ReadyNAS in the sidebar or Network folder.
4.) You'll probably be connected as "Guest" and might see any shares that are publicly accessible. Click the "Connect As" button at the top of the window and connect using one of the user accounts you created earlier.
5.) A folder should show up with the name of the user that you logged on as. That's the user's home folder.
6.) Using your favorite plain-text editor create a new plain-text file with a single line containing:
Replace <username> with the exact spelling of the user you're connected as. (It should match the folder name in case and spelling.) Save this file as .AppleVolumes in the user's home folder.
7.) Create an empty file called .com.apple.timemachine.supported and save it in the user's home folder.
Note: both the files start with a . which won't show up in the Finder normally. Eject the ReadyNAS share when you're done creating those two files and connect as the next user if necessary. I found I didn't have to reboot the system to make the changes work for the next step. But it doesn't hurt.
8.) On your Mac, go into the Time Machine preferences. If Time Machine was already setup, go to Select Disk and choose "Do Not Backup" (this makes it forget the previous username/password that was saved). Then do Select Disk again and choose your ReadyNAS like usual. When asked for a username and password, connect using the user and password you setup for that particular computer.
That should be it. Like I said, worked on three computers without a problem. No special settings had to be made on the computers.
Sources:
http://www.readynas.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=71&t=57003
http://www.readynas.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=55738
http://www.readynas.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=71&t=55166
After a weekend of research and playing around I finally put together a good Time Machine setup for my three Macs. Rather than have all three computers backup to the default ReadyNAS Time Machine share, I've setup specific user accounts with quotas to limit the size of the Time Machine backups and I backup each computer to the respective user account home folder. Turns out with the latest 4.2.19 update (I have an x86 NAS) it's a pretty easy setup. I've now tested it with two Lion and one Leopard OS. (And as a test, I found that SSH and Unix know-how isn't necessary.) Figured I'd try to contribute something back to the forum.
These steps assume that Time Machine support is already enabled on the ReadyNAS.
1.) Go into FrontView. Under Security > User Accounts I added a user account for each computer with a quota. (I tend to allocate 1.5x my computer's hard drive space for backups.)
2.) For each user, only two files needed to be created. Repeat the following steps for each user you create:
3.) Open a Finder window and open the AFP (or CIFS) representation of your ReadyNAS in the sidebar or Network folder.
4.) You'll probably be connected as "Guest" and might see any shares that are publicly accessible. Click the "Connect As" button at the top of the window and connect using one of the user accounts you created earlier.
5.) A folder should show up with the name of the user that you logged on as. That's the user's home folder.
6.) Using your favorite plain-text editor create a new plain-text file with a single line containing:
/c/home/<username> ReadyNAS cnidscheme:dbd allow:<username> options:tm
Replace <username> with the exact spelling of the user you're connected as. (It should match the folder name in case and spelling.) Save this file as .AppleVolumes in the user's home folder.
7.) Create an empty file called .com.apple.timemachine.supported and save it in the user's home folder.
Note: both the files start with a . which won't show up in the Finder normally. Eject the ReadyNAS share when you're done creating those two files and connect as the next user if necessary. I found I didn't have to reboot the system to make the changes work for the next step. But it doesn't hurt.
8.) On your Mac, go into the Time Machine preferences. If Time Machine was already setup, go to Select Disk and choose "Do Not Backup" (this makes it forget the previous username/password that was saved). Then do Select Disk again and choose your ReadyNAS like usual. When asked for a username and password, connect using the user and password you setup for that particular computer.
That should be it. Like I said, worked on three computers without a problem. No special settings had to be made on the computers.
Sources:
http://www.readynas.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=71&t=57003
http://www.readynas.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=55738
http://www.readynas.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=71&t=55166
64 Replies
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- What version of Mac OS X?
What version of RAIDiator? - I am running as follows;
OS X 10.7.4
RAIDiator 4.3.4 and Dashboard 1.0.0.224
Thanks - FYI - Regarding my error "The operation could not be completed. (OSStatus error 2.)" I ended up deleting both users from the ReadyNAS NV+, deleted the keychain passwords for each user account on the macs, then followed the steps outlined above again. It worked correctly after that.
I'm not sure why it didn't work properly the first time... The initial time I tried it, i renamed the user accounts from all lowercase to mixed case & of course, used mixed case in the system files I put in the home folder. When I recreated everything from scratch, I left everything lowercase. I'm not sure if that is the reason it worked the second time? - OKAY, it is working, thx for the awesome howto. :)
I ended up deleting the users again, deleting my old TM drive from the Mac Pref (I think it was the problem), redoing the whole process and as I type, 2 Mac are TM'ing into the Ultra 6. Joy. ;)
Note : You can just activate Time Machine backup on the NAS and assign 1 or 0 size, it doesn't matter. Only the size for the user will matter. Cool thing is it seems you can change it on the fly. - Despite subscribing myself to this topic, I hadn't received any notifications that there were posts. Sorry I wasn't around to help answer any questions. It looks like everyone got their problems solved OK?
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I was curious if anyone is having trouble since OS X 10.8? I've hit my 100% quota that I set, and Time Machine will not clean up the old backups to make room for the next backup. This setup has worked great until now, I'm not sure what's happened. Any suggestions? I keep trying to force the backup, hoping that it will clean old backups, but each time the backup fails and the backup image has 0 bytes free. This is frustrating. - I am still on 10.7.4 but I have not been able to find out how I can set the quote.
Could someone please talk me through this?
Thanks - It's under Security > User & Group Accounts, for each user there's a Quota column.
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For some reason, my backups are working again this morning and 40GB were freed from deleting old backups. No explanation. - I guess that's my problem as I don't have a Quota column, only name, email address, UID(?), Primary Group and Password!
Dashboard 1.0.0.224 running under Firefox 15.0 - Once again -- Can anyone PLEASE explain why I don't have a quota column? Just updated to RAIDiator 5.3.6 (arm) with Dashboard 1.0.0.224?
- Might need to check my unit (running latest firmware 5.3.6) later but the quota feature for ordinary users probably isn't in the Dashboard at this time. If you are comfortable with SSH you should be able to set quotas manually though as you can set a quota for the ReadyNAS (Time Machine) user via the Dashboard.
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