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Re: How-to: Setup multi-Mac backup shares with quotas. Easy.

bct
Tutor
Tutor

Re: How-to: Setup multi-Mac backup shares with quotas. Easy.

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?

---

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.
Message 26 of 65
Martin4x4
Aspirant

Re: How-to: Setup multi-Mac backup shares with quotas. Easy.

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
Message 27 of 65
bct
Tutor
Tutor

Re: How-to: Setup multi-Mac backup shares with quotas. Easy.

It's under Security > User & Group Accounts, for each user there's a Quota column.


---

For some reason, my backups are working again this morning and 40GB were freed from deleting old backups. No explanation.
Message 28 of 65
Martin4x4
Aspirant

Re: How-to: Setup multi-Mac backup shares with quotas. Easy.

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
Message 29 of 65
Martin4x4
Aspirant

Re: How-to: Setup multi-Mac backup shares with quotas. Easy.

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?
Message 30 of 65
mdgm-ntgr
NETGEAR Employee Retired

Re: How-to: Setup multi-Mac backup shares with quotas. Easy.

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.
Message 31 of 65
AndersBK
Aspirant

Re: How-to: Setup multi-Mac backup shares with quotas. Easy.

A question regarding:

5.) A folder should show up with the name of the user that you logged on as. That's the user's home folder.


I see no such folder. I log in with my backup user, but the only folders available are the public "backup" and "media" folders. Is this because of updated firmware, or am I doing something wrong? Help would appreciated!
Message 32 of 65
StephenB
Guru

Re: How-to: Setup multi-Mac backup shares with quotas. Easy.

AndersBK wrote:
A question regarding:

5.) A folder should show up with the name of the user that you logged on as. That's the user's home folder.


I see no such folder. I log in with my backup user, but the only folders available are the public "backup" and "media" folders. Is this because of updated firmware, or am I doing something wrong? Help would appreciated!
Well, if the user name is "backup", then you obviously have a problem, since the NAS can't advertise two shares with the same name. So you should probably create a new "backup" user with a different name.

Also, log into frontview, click on "security" then "user and group accounts". Choose "Preferences" from the pulldown in the upper right. Double check that "Private home shares for users" is enabled.
Message 33 of 65
AndersBK
Aspirant

Re: How-to: Setup multi-Mac backup shares with quotas. Easy.

I needed to turn on private home shares. And I needed to turn off time machine in frontview. It seems to work now. Thanks!

Now my problem is that backing up is REALLY slow. Can anyone link me in the right direction?
Message 34 of 65
mdgm-ntgr
NETGEAR Employee Retired

Re: How-to: Setup multi-Mac backup shares with quotas. Easy.

What version of RAIDiator are you running?

How many Macs are you backing up simultaneously?

Are your Macs connected to your network via ethernet or wireless?

Do also remember that full backups take quite some time. After that the hourly backups should be relatively quick.
Message 35 of 65
Alligator69
Aspirant

Re: How-to: Setup multi-Mac backup shares with quotas. Easy.

Did it, worked perfectly! I just got an error on one of the macs, I believe because the system can only backup one system at a time, will check otherwise if there's something wrong in the config.

Just to understand better: where's the old backup gone? Is it still somewhere or has it been deleted?

Thank you !
Message 36 of 65
Alligator69
Aspirant

Re: How-to: Setup multi-Mac backup shares with quotas. Easy.

The error went away alone and I could verify the backup can run simultaneous with no hiccup from the readynas. Great!

Still have the doubt if and where the old backup is and if still there, how to get rid of it.

Thank you!
Message 37 of 65
mdgm-ntgr
NETGEAR Employee Retired

Re: How-to: Setup multi-Mac backup shares with quotas. Easy.

Look for the hidden ".timemachine" folder on the C volume accessible when you login to CIFS as the "admin" user.
Message 38 of 65
Alligator69
Aspirant

Re: How-to: Setup multi-Mac backup shares with quotas. Easy.

Thank you again, am I supposed to remove the xxxxx.sparsebundle to get rid of the old backup without causing trouble?

:wink:
Message 39 of 65
mdgm-ntgr
NETGEAR Employee Retired

Re: How-to: Setup multi-Mac backup shares with quotas. Easy.

If you want to free that space then yes. If you have disabled the Time Machine service in Frontview then I can't see having that file still there causing issues.
Message 40 of 65
Singularity
Tutor

Re: How-to: Setup multi-Mac backup shares with quotas. Easy.

This worked like a dream for me. I'm using this method to back up 3 Mac's all running Mountain Lion.

Just one thing....

Can I change the quota values at any time or are they set in stone at the initial stage.
I have set one of my quota values at 750Gb and I want to reduce this to 500Gb.
Message 41 of 65
mdgm-ntgr
NETGEAR Employee Retired

Re: How-to: Setup multi-Mac backup shares with quotas. Easy.

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.
Message 42 of 65
ChunkySocks
Guide

Re: How-to: Setup multi-Mac backup shares with quotas. Easy.

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.
Message 43 of 65
bct
Tutor
Tutor

Weird disk-space issue

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.
Message 44 of 65
bct
Tutor
Tutor

Re: How-to: Setup multi-Mac backup shares with quotas. Easy.

Verified that my backup sparsebundle disk image is only using 161GB on disk. So not sure why the ReadyNAS thinks it's using 800GB.
Message 45 of 65
Singularity
Tutor

Re: How-to: Setup multi-Mac backup shares with quotas. Easy.

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.
Message 46 of 65
bct
Tutor
Tutor

Re: How-to: Setup multi-Mac backup shares with quotas. Easy.

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.
Message 47 of 65
ehansin
Aspirant

Re: How-to: Setup multi-Mac backup shares with quotas. Easy.

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
Message 48 of 65
Grif1
Aspirant

Re: How-to: Setup multi-Mac backup shares with quotas. Easy.

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!
Message 49 of 65
ehansin
Aspirant

Re: How-to: Setup multi-Mac backup shares with quotas. Easy.

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
Message 50 of 65
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