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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
Replies have been turned off for this discussion
- Not sure if quotas can be reduced or not but they definitely could be increased. I don't know if Time Machine is designed to handle backing up to a disk that gets smaller in size or not. That would need some testing.
- I previously used these instructions to set up Time Machine for my girlfriend's macbook successfully, then she updated the OS on her macbook from Lion to Mountain Lion and now when you open up the Time Machine preferences and Select Disk, the NAS doesn't appear as an option. I re-checked that I followed the steps correctly from the initial post and that the necessary files were correctly configured on the NAS for it to work and they were, just to be sure, I deleted and re-created her share and went through the steps again but the NAS was still not visible as a disk to backup to.
In the meantime, I need to start using the ReadyNAS Ultra 2 to backup from my macbook using Time Machine as well as I'm selling the external hard drive I am currently using. On my macbook I am running Lion 10.7.5; again, in Time Machine preferences, the NAS does not appear as a disk option to back up to.
In both cases, we are connecting using an ethernet cable to connect to the NAS as opposed to using the wireless.
Using RAIDiator 4.2.22.
Any suggestions on how to troubleshoot this as I really need to get the NAS operating as Time Machine backups for both our macs as soon as possible.
Thanks in advance.
**UPDATE**
I re-booted the NAS and re-started the router.
Not sure if it's related to doing either but the NAS began to show up in the Select Disk option in Time Machine preferences... great! However before selecting it to start my backup, I wanted to start backing my g/f's macbook first but it didn't show up in her Time Machine prefs. Now it has disappeared from my TM prefs...
Not sure what is causing it to visible/not visible - the NAS is visible and am able to connect via Finder the whole time on both macbooks. - I recently had to do a factory reset on my ReadyNAS because of a corrupted volume. I set up my Time Machine using my own instructions (in the original post), which I had previously been using for four computers.
My backups have been working successfully for the last couple days, but today it said I exceeded my quota. I checked in FrontView under User Accounts and it says that I'm using 846540 MB out of the 384000 MB quota that I set. My hard drive only contains 200GB of data, so I'm not even using the quota. And now I can't even open the sparse bundle that holds my backups.
Note: This is the second time this has happened since the factory reset. The first time it happened I thought I screwed up a setting, so I did another factory reset.
Any ideas what could be causing this?
Mac OS X 10.8.2. ReadyNAS Ultra 4 with RAIDiator 4.2.22. - Verified that my backup sparsebundle disk image is only using 161GB on disk. So not sure why the ReadyNAS thinks it's using 800GB.
- Unfortunately the Time Machine backup procedure for the ReadyNAS is unreliable. I used it to backup 3 Mac's and after a short time started to have error messages. I then reinstalled the application and set up the backup procedures again only to run into the same problem a short time afterwards.
A great solution but needs a bit of tweaking. - It used to work great. But I have periodic problems ever since 10.8 (or perhaps the last NAS firmware update). The new thing I run into in my info.plist in the backup getting corrupted. It's just too bad that Apple won't put an easy option for max backup size in the GUI.
- I have also been getting the "OSStatus error 2." errors and also noticed that once we try and set up Time Machine the first time, after that I cannot even mount that share again.
I cannot say long term if this will hold, but I deleted the ".AppleVolumes" file and just went ahead with using the empty ".com.apple.timemachine.supported" file and now things seem to be working. This was on OSX 10.6.8 so has not been tested on 10.7+.
If others give this a try, please post feedback on successes or failures, and also what version of OSX you are running. It would be cool if all that needed to be done was to add this empty file.
*** I wanted to add that I just tested on 10.8 and this does NOT seem to work. I am going to try different things, and if anything works I will add to this thread. ***
Eric - Hi Folks, pulling hair out!
MacOSX 10.8.3
ReadyNAS NV+
Firmware 4.1.10
Raidar 4.3.4
Standard TM setup worked fine but I needed to add ability to TM to a user or share so followed above instructions.
Couple of points to note: I had ReadyNAS set to 'Share' in Security Mode (and I added shares there previously) so I switched it to 'User' mode.
It won't let me add same user as I added as a share so I added another user... fine.
I then created the two txt files
.AppleVolumes with "/c/home/Mark ReadyNAS cnidscheme:dbd allow:Mark options:tm"
and .com.apple.timemachine.supported as a blank
I left 'Enable Time Machine Support' in the Backup menu set to on (or TM wont see the ReadyNAS at all.)
I select "ReadyNAS" in TM list and log in a the user i set able. It gives me an Error 2.
Any help appreciated! - Okay, I'm back. Might have a solution ( working so far, so good on 10.6 and 10.8 ). FYI, I am running 4.2.22 on a ReadyNAS Pro 6.
First off, some background. The 4.2.22 firmware is running version 2.2.3 of Netatalk which is the open source implementation that is used to provide the AFP functionality/protocol. In regards to the "AppleVolumes" files, here is some info from the Netatalk 2.2 manual:
http://netatalk.sourceforge.net/2.2/htmldocs/AppleVolumes.default.5.html
What I did was take a look at the entries in the "/etc/netatalk/AppleVolume.default" file. This is where the ReadyNAS stores the Netatalk values for any Shares that are created (not user shares) if AFP is enabled for that share. For a public share, an entry looks like this:"/<share>" "<share>" cnidscheme:dbd
( BTW, a symbolic link is create at / (root) that points to /c, so /<share> points to /c/<share> )
So here is what I came up with:
1) Create a new user/share combo if you have not already under Security | User & Group Accounts. Set a space quota if you'd like. Then mount this share under Finder.
2) Don't bother with the empty ".com.apple.timemachine.supported" file. As far as I can tell, it is not needed, at least not for 10.6 or 10.8. I may find out later I am wrong, but right now I am trying to keep it as simple as possible, going with the lowest common denominator that works.
3) Either via the CLI in /c/home/<share> (you need SSH installed), or just mount the share and in the root of that share open up a text editor (and TextEdit must be in Text mode not RTF mode!) and enter the following:"/c/home/<share>" "<share>" cnidscheme:dbd allow:<share> options:tm
I use <share> here, but really it is the <user> that you created, which then gets a home directory ( which you can apply the quota ) that is the share. Point is, user and share are the same name. So the first part is the path to the share, the users home directory ( which is where ".AppleVolumes" will reside ), the second part is the share name ( which may be where people are getting the errors from the original instructions because it states to use ReadyNAS, not the actual share name which is the user name... hope you get this; I am also using quotes as this is how Netatalk is doing it on the ReadyNAS - not sure if this matters ), the cnidscheme: says I think where to store some data, but not worried about it, allow: says only the user should access, and the options: with tm for TimeMachine!!
4) Save this file as ".AppleVolumes". Make sure to uncheck on TextEdit where it states it will add .txt to file names without an extension. Also, agree that you want to save as a hidden files ( that is what "dot" files are. )
5) Go into TimeMachine preferences. Under Select Disk, this share should be visible (it must be mounted first as it does not show up via Bonjour/Avahi.) Select to use it. It will probably ask for a user name and password, same that was used to mount the share. Let it run and see what a happens.
I am going to keep tabs on this and see how things work. If I have any updates I will post them. Share any luck you might have or things you have discovered. Right now, if this holds, it is a simple solutions. Nothing more that a single hidden file that tells AFP/Netatalk to allow TimeMachine on this share.
If anyone has any questions, let me know as I'll monitor this thread for a bit.
Eric - Hi Eric,
Tired this but alas won't work and still get the Error. Here's what I chucked into the .AppleVolumes file:
"/c/home/Mark" "Mark" cnidscheme:dbd allow:Mark options:tm
Where the name of user is "Mark"
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