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.
Model: RN31400|ReadyNAS 300 Series 4- Bay (Diskless)
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
Model: RN424|ReadyNAS 424 – High-performance Business Data Storage - 4-Bay
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.
Thanks Rupert! I worked in the oil industry for almost 40 years in seismic processing so am not a Unix/Linux novice. Just a novice setting up system wide stuff. The ssh <url> -l root returned a permission denied message with SSH turned on and Enable password off. Is it possible one must be at root level on the mac to make this work?
John
Model: RN424|ReadyNAS 424 – High-performance Business Data Storage - 4-Bay
Sorry for all the disclaimers. Netgear makes a big deal about SSH.
I don't think you should need to be logged in as root user on your Mac. In my situation, my account is an admin-level account, but it shouldn't make a difference when you ssh to another device.
Since I've never gotten the key login to work, I'd turn password ON in the ssh settings on the ReadyNAS, and forget the key login.
You refer to ssh -l to a "URL". You should be going to something like this:
ssh 192.168.1.100 -l root
where 192.168.1.100 would be replaced with the actual IP of your ReadyNAS on your LAN
or
ssh nasname -l root
where "nasname" is the network name of your ReadyNAS on your LAN.
You should be prompted for the password, which would be the same password you use for FrontView when you access the device through your web browser.
Rebooting the ReadyNAS after turning on SSH with password authentication got me a bit further. Here is what happens now:
MacBook-Pro:~ JOHN$ ssh 10.0.0.2 -l JOHN
JOHN@10.0.0.2's password:
Welcome to ReadyNASOS 6.10.3
Connection to 10.0.0.2 closed.
MacBook-Pro:~ JOHN$
So now it connects but only long enough to close the session. This happens with both my user account and administration account on the ReadyNAS. I sort of remember this issue happening at the office but not the cause or solution.
John
Model: RN424|ReadyNAS 424 – High-performance Business Data Storage - 4-Bay
Wow...sounds like a permissions issue that I don't know how to solve. Were I to guess, "Root" doesn't have permission on the ReadyNAS side to login from a remote shell. Poking around the web, there are references to a setting for the account in the /etc/passwd file. Of course, you can't get to that, because you can't login.
For what it's worth, here's how mine looks: root:x:0:0:root:/root:/bin/bash
Logged in as root I can find nothing in the file system like /data/.timemachine/ReadyNAS and for that matter I can not find anything that remotely looks like timemachine stuff, e.g., .sparsebundle.
I know there is a time machine backup on the NAS because under backup it shows the space it occupies.
John
Model: RN424|ReadyNAS 424 – High-performance Business Data Storage - 4-Bay
After logging in, try (if you haven't already) type:
cd /data/.timemachine
Here, you should see either a single entry for ReadyNAS or an entry for each user/machine that you're backing up. If you don't have a /data/.timemachine directory entry, then I'd be at a loss to tell you where to look. Perhaps ReadyNAS configures multiple machines differently than just a single machine like mine.
Yes I am using ls -al. There is no /data directory. I have looked through all the others, most of which appear to be standard linux directories. There is one directory that contains our shared files but there are no time machine directoried or files in that one. Thus I have not been able to locat anything that looks like time machine.
John
Model: RN424|ReadyNAS 424 – High-performance Business Data Storage - 4-Bay
data is the default volume name. If you don't see that, then you must be using flexraid, and chose a different volume name when you created the volume.
So the server has a dual function: shared file storage and TM backups. The shared files are stored in a directory that I set up before starting the TM backups. At the time the shared directory was created I did not understand that ReadyNAS supported TM. So much later when TM was initiated the ReadyNAS created a .timemachine directory within the top most shared directory. Then each ReadyNAS user has a TM subdirectory under .timemachine. The path looks like this:
/<MYSHARE>/.timemachine/<username>/
Where MYSHARE is the name of the ReadyNAS shared directory/folder and username is a user name associated with a "Private Time Machine" as defined on the ReadyNAS web interface.
It just took me a while to find the right directory.
Thanks for all everyone's help!
John (aka. twolcrazy)
Model: RN424|ReadyNAS 424 – High-performance Business Data Storage - 4-Bay
