Making Time Machine work with the ReadyNAS

sphardy wrote:

RE: Backup Volume Could not be Mounted Not being able to mount the volume usually (not always) refers to the sparseimage not being mountable rather than the NAS share. Please can you try the following: Mount the share that you've configured to be used by timemachine Open a finder window showing the share & the created sparsebundle Force TM to start and watch to see if another sparsebundle is created then deleted on the share (will appear & disappear in finder) If you do see the creation & deletion of a sparsebundle, then it means you have somehow got the name of your original manually create sparsebundle incorrect. ///P

thanks, before your post, i unmounted the shares and remounted. Seems to be working now but I'll know for sure in a few hours of copying. Perhaps I mounted the wrong disk (1 is labelled AFP on NAS-02-... and the other NAS-02-..? On my desktop I now see a "backup of xxx" being created. I am backing up to NAS-02... ) or they just needed to be reset somehow.

Hi -- I have also followed the excellent recipe for making Time Machine work with ReadyNAS. The mounted sparsebundle is recognized by Time Machine, but Time Machine quits immediately with the following in the log file:

Sep 30 20:36:59 PoorBook /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[8283]: Backup requested by user
Sep 30 20:36:59 PoorBook /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[8283]: Starting standard backup
Sep 30 20:36:59 PoorBook /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[8283]: Network mountpoint /Volumes/TMPoorBook not owned by backupd... remounting
Sep 30 20:37:00 PoorBook /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[8283]: Failed to remount network volume.
Sep 30 20:37:05 PoorBook /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[8283]: Backup failed with error: 19

I'm 90% sure this is a permissions problem, so I started a new thread here with more details rather than add to this already long thread.

Any guidance is appreciated. Thanks in advance.

wwalkersd wrote:

Add me to the list of those who've been successfully using Time Machine to back up to the NAS for quite some time, but have recently had it fail. I now get the error "Time Machine Error - the backup directory could not be created". I don't think size is the issue, because I've got 200 GB used on my hard drive and the sparseimage was 320 GB. My NAS is currently showing 63% of 1.5 TB used, so there's plenty of room there, too. I've tried deleting the existing sparseimage and creating a new one from the directions here, but I get the same error on the initial backup. I wonder whether some Apple software update has broken this? I was running 10.5.3 when the problem first occurred. I'm now on 10.5.4, which hasn't changed anything. I don't actually recall any updates around the time the error started.

this has happened to me for the 4th time now ;-(

I recently wiped the macbook pro just to make sure, all backups were running smoothly, has the settings locked so they could not be changed, worked again for another month (200gb sparsebundle) then - "Time Machine Error - the backup directory could not be created" I have given up at this stage and am backing up to a fire wire drive during office hours.

Well, I also got to try out restoring from backups! I pretty much did the same as 'billin' to restore. Have to say I think I'll be looking into something else other than Time Machine for backups; problems I've had:

- Last month, for some unknown reason, Time Machine simply started stalling forever when starting backups. After much searching, deleting Spotlight indices on the backup volume seemed to be the recommended remedy, which I did, and something else I think, plus some voodoo thrown in too to get TM working again.
- Restoring from a TM backup is a rather long ordeal. Install Mac OS, which took almost an hour; searching user accounts to restore, which took a while too and a lot longer than you'd expect; then the final restore took about 8 hours (about 70 GB of data).
- Restore didn't copy anything from /Applications, so I had to find the latest backup folder that had that then copy everything over manually.
- I suspect some other things may not have gotten restored either (some of my system settings are now different).

CCC doesn't work with ReadyNAS, but it appears SuperDuper or Chronosync may. Or maybe I'll just try 'ol rsync. Last drive that went out before this one I just had a CCC clone on a spare HDD in a USB enclosure--restoring was a simple, speedy (well, fairly, since Macs are a bit tedious to take apart) affair.

This thread is already too long....but I just couldn't help myself...

I love Time Machine on the ReadyNas. I am surprised with the number of people having problems, because while I've had a few myself (like not have the exact same case-sensitive structures), once figured out it works like a charm.

As a developer, I am constantly installing stuff on my Mac, but some programs like MySQL are sensitive as to what's been installed and often fail. What I've found in these cases is a complete virgin install of operating software on my mac. With TimeMachine its a breeze. I don't follow the full restore root. I start from a clean install and selectively reload apps, my personal files, and preferences with Time Machine. Takes longer than a Restore, but it allows me to not install apps I no longer want.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I haven't seen any other software that can do what Time Machine does in such a simplistic non-mind-bending fashion.

Now, I just wish someone would create a NAS that is a file server, has RAID, and can also provide Time Machine-like use. That would be great.

yachtman wrote:

This thread is already too long....but I just couldn't help myself... I love Time Machine on the ReadyNas. I am surprised with the number of people having problems, because while I've had a few myself (like not have the exact same case-sensitive structures), once figured out it works like a charm. As a developer, I am constantly installing stuff on my Mac, but some programs like MySQL are sensitive as to what's been installed and often fail. What I've found in these cases is a complete virgin install of operating software on my mac. With TimeMachine its a breeze. I don't follow the full restore root. I start from a clean install and selectively reload apps, my personal files, and preferences with Time Machine. Takes longer than a Restore, but it allows me to not install apps I no longer want. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I haven't seen any other software that can do what Time Machine does in such a simplistic non-mind-bending fashion. Now, I just wish someone would create a NAS that is a file server, has RAID, and can also provide Time Machine-like use. That would be great.

I agree, the last time I setup my time machine (4th time!) I did exactly as described above.

wiped the Mac, setup time machine - locked settings and it worked like a charm.

for reasons unknown after about 3 weeks, backups failed and I could no longer backup, and it staged it was a read-only volume, when opened in time machine all previous backups (days) were gone.

no idea why, my network is static for months, no changes there, the specific share on the pro as well as nv+ were only used for TM backup so I have no idea what changed.... ah well! back to my exthd.... ;-( seems such a waste as I have a PRO!

I followed the steps and managed to get my MacBook to do the Time Machine dance with my new ReadyNAS Duo. I had created a new user for myself on the Duo and made it different than the short name on my MacBook.

When I changed the username on the Duo to the same shortname of my MacBook account (thought it was a good idea), Time Machine stopped working. I didn't know what was going on, and then I saw an earlier post about making sure the shortname is different than the Duo backup username if you want to restore, so I changed it back, and voila, it started working again.

Not sure why that's the case -- I made my TM backup share to be publicly available and open for read/write. Very strange, but maybe someone can put the pieces together to understand what Time Machine is doing....

I just got a ReadyNAS NV+ and I'm trying to get it to work with Time Machine. I'm following the "golden" instructions (http://www.readynas.com/?p=253) , and I almost have it working in that Time Machine recognizes the sparsebundle I created. It seems to work until it calculates the size of the backup and decides that my sparsebundle doesn't have enough space. The problem seems to be with hdiutil, but I was wondering if anyone could help me out.

I did some experiments creating sparse bundles. If I create a sparsebundle on my local disk, mount it, and then get info on the mounted volume, I find that the capacity is what I set it to, but only 14GB is available and the rest of the space is "Used". Used for what, I have no idea. Both the Finder and df report that only 14GB is available. Is there some trick to this? Here's my latest shot at it:

hdiutil create -size 500g -fs HFS+J -volname "Backup of G5" g5desktop_001451634a5f.sparsebundle
... mount with finder ...

df -h /Volumes/Backup\ of\ G5/
Filesystem Size Used Avail Capacity Mounted on
/dev/disk2s2 500Gi 486Gi 14Gi 98% /Volumes/Backup of G5

I scouted around on various threads for a few more options but got the same result:

diutil create -megabytes 500000 -fs HFS+J -verbose -nospotlight -volname "Test1" -type SPARSEBUNDLE -layout SPUD -imagekey sparse-band-size=131072 foo.sparsebundle
Initializing…
Creating…
DIDiskImageCreatorProbe: interface 4, score -1000, CWOUDIFDiskImage
DIDiskImageCreatorProbe: interface 5, score -1000, CRawDiskImage
DIDiskImageCreatorProbe: interface 7, score -1000, CSparseDiskImage
DIDiskImageCreatorProbe: interface 8, score 1000, CSparseBundleDiskImage
DIDiskImageCreatorProbe: interface 9, score -1000, CCFPlugInDiskImage
DIDiskImageCreatorProbe: selecting CSparseBundleDiskImage
DIDiskImageCreateWithCFURL: CSparseBundleDiskImage
DIBackingStoreCreatorProbe: interface 0, score 100, CBSDBackingStore
DIBackingStoreCreatorProbe: interface 1, score 1000, CBundleBackingStore
DIBackingStoreCreatorProbe: interface 2, score 0, CRAMBackingStore
DIBackingStoreCreatorProbe: interface 3, score 100, CCarbonBackingStore
DIBackingStoreCreatorProbe: interface 5, score -100, CCURLBackingStore
DIBackingStoreCreatorProbe: selecting CBundleBackingStore
DIBackingStoreCreateWithCFURL: CBundleBackingStore
DIFileEncodingCreatorProbe: interface 2, score -1000, CEncryptedEncoding
DIFileEncodingCreatorProbe: nothing to select.
DIBackingStoreCreatorProbe: interface 0, score 100, CBSDBackingStore
DIBackingStoreCreatorProbe: interface 1, score -1000, CBundleBackingStore
DIBackingStoreCreatorProbe: interface 2, score 0, CRAMBackingStore
DIBackingStoreCreatorProbe: interface 3, score 100, CCarbonBackingStore
DIBackingStoreCreatorProbe: interface 5, score -100, CCURLBackingStore
DIBackingStoreCreatorProbe: selecting CBSDBackingStore
DIBackingStoreCreateWithCFURL: CBSDBackingStore
DIBackingStoreCreateWithCFURL: creator returned 0
DIBackingStoreCreateWithCFURL: creator returned 0
DIDiskImageCreateWithCFURL: creator returned 0
DI_kextWaitQuiet: about to call IOServiceWaitQuiet...
DI_kextWaitQuiet: IOServiceWaitQuiet took 0.000013 seconds
Formatting…
Initialized /dev/rdisk4s2 as a 488 GB HFS Plus volume with a 40960k journal
Finishing…
created: /Users/jeff/foo.sparsebundle
hdiutil: create: returning 0

df -h /Volumes/Test1\ 1/
Filesystem Size Used Avail Capacity Mounted on
/dev/disk4s2 488Gi 474Gi 14Gi 98% /Volumes/Test1 1

Any help would be much appreciated. I'm running 10.5.5 on a G5. Thanks!

I've been using my duo (2x1TB) for some time now with TM with 2 macs... and I have not been impressed. Yes, I've had a lot of problems. At the moment both sparse images are corrupted. I can't mount either of them read/write (though 1 is readable). Disk warrior is no help since it can't handle catalog trees that don't fit in physical memory-- and it only uses up to 3GB anyway (I have 4GB). FWIW, this is not the first time I've had problems with TM & the NAS; 1 machine is connected using wifi, the other is wired. Suffice it so say, I am looking for other backup solutions. Any ideas...?

Advice: backup your TM disk images. The NAS raid is not a substitute for a backup copy.

I have 4 Macs backing up with TM to one of my 2 NV+'s... works great. Sorry to hear that you have issues. I followed this thread and it worked perfectly...