Can't delete sparsebundle or enter time machine

[almonde]

I backup 3 macs to my ReadyNas Duo, all running Lion. 2 seem to have no issues, but the third (an iMac) seems to backup fine but i can never 'enter time machine'. It just sits there after mounting the time machine volume. I tried verifying the volume, turning time machine on and off, deleting the finder plist. All to no avail, the other macs can backup and enter time machine fine, however the iMac cannot.

Its driving me nuts, I've decided that I'm juts going to have to wipe the iMac's sparse bundle, but i can't even do that!

I login to the NAS via SSH, navigate to the /c/.timemachine folder.

After the ls command, i can see the 3 sparsebundles and a 'Temporary Items' folder as well as a 'Network trash Folder'

I type

rm -rf Alex's iMac.sparsebundle

and hit enter, however the cursor starts a new line with the '>' and a flashing cursor, but it looks like nothing is happening, I've left it for over an hour. I tried restarting the NAS and performing the deletion with the iMac switched off incase it had the file open somehow, no difference. It doesn't look like the disk on the NAS is thrashing around or anything like that, it's just sat there.

Any ideas how i can get rig of this damn sparse bundle before i give in and turn Timemachine off and buy a Time Capsule.

[almonde]

I seem to be able to delete the file using windows explorer on my work PC, explorer seems to think it will take 20 minutes, it seems to be making progress. Its weird that the file couldn't be deleted by SSH though.

I bought a new Airport Extreme Base station the other day, am considering taking it back to exchange for a Time Capsule, i would guess there is less messing about with them, although i maybe wrong. Is it Time Machine over AFP that is flakey in general, or is it Time Machine over Netatalk's AFP that seems less reliable than it should be?

[mdgm-ntgr]

It would work using SSH. Assuming that the only sparsebundle beginning with "Alex" is that one you could do

# rm -rf Alex*.sparsebundle

Sounds like the ' might be need to be escaped and/or the spaces if you want to specify the full filename. Not sure which.

[almonde]

Thanks for the reply mdgm, explorer eventually deleted the sparesebundle and after i backed up the iMac again i am able to 'enter time machine' and see the star field GUI.

With regards to escaping funny characters like spaces and apostrophes, what is the syntax for that? I suspect that was the issue as when i tried to delete the file via SSH or by mounting the CIFS volume and deleting through terminal, both had the same outcome. Unfortunately i was unable to use the wild card, as i also had a spare bundle named Alex's MacbookPro.sparsebundle.

[mdgm-ntgr]

You could have done

# rm -rf Alex*iMac.sparsebundle

[almonde]

Thanks for the tip, i'll remember to try that one next time.