Making Time Machine work with the ReadyNAS

[yachtman]

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.

[Meob1]

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!

[bigboy1]

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....

[jsg72]

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!

[jcbloch]

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.

[cdaiger]

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...

[jcbloch]

Nice.
But, I would still be quite careful. I had no problems for months, too.
You ought to back up those images or have alternative restore options. I am describing well known issues with these sparsebundles and not shortcoming of the NAS or the method used to setup this method of backup-- except of course for one issue: if an image does get corrupted, you will have 2 copies of it if you use raid. Great.

The fact that a single bad-bit will kill the image, and that there is no commercial recovery software that can handle the large catalogues in these images should be enough to give folks heed; keep other backups. I do, so these issues are not a huge deal for me, but rather just a big time waste. Letting people know that "it worked for me, so its a good solution" is like me saying "I've never had a hard drive fail on any of my more the a dozen macs (true), so why do I need backup". There is nothing wrong with the simple recipes posted here that describe how to use the NAS with TM; the problem is with the brittleness of the sparseimage technology and the uselessness of raid here... and the fact that you (likely) don't know an image has been corrupted until the next time a backup is attempted

[BobRoss1]

Do we still need to do this with the Pro and also this utility? http://www.xiotios.com/itimemachine.html

We can't get time machine backups to work using a pro share and this utility. We'd like to avoid all that sparsebundle junk if we have to...

Thanks!!

[bollar]

BobRoss wrote:
Do we still need to do this with the Pro and also this utility? http://www.xiotios.com/itimemachine.html We can't get time machine backups to work using a pro share and this utility. We'd like to avoid all that sparsebundle junk if we have to... Thanks!!

It looks like this utility just puts a GUI on the instructions here. It changes the Mac to allow network backups and helps locate the sparsebundle on the network share.

[Han_Solo]

Here is a link that that shows the basic usage of the Time Machine option on the Pro.

http://www.readynas.com/?page_id=756

Currently this is only available on the Pro but will be made available for the NV+, 1100, Duo, etc soon.

[BobRoss1]

Is that multi or single user? We have 4 Macs we'd like to use for this...

Thanks!!!

[Han_Solo]

BobRoss wrote:
Is that multi or single user? We have 4 Macs we'd like to use for this... Thanks!!!

It should work for multiple users. The one thing you need to think about however is the space you are going to start out with because if you want to change it latter or the amount of clients you will have connected. When you try it out please let me know how it goes for you. This way we can get in important changes before final, thanks.

[GregBeaver]

HUGELY important note that needs to be added to the Time Machine instructions - disable any antivirus scanner. I have Sophos Antivirus installed, and was seeing throughput of .1 MB every 10 minutes (no exaggeration) after only a few minutes of backup, such that after 5 hours of backup, I had only 173.1 MB backed up of 35 GB. I disabled Sophos, and right now am averaging 100 MB every few seconds, so the difference could be an order of magnitude. I got the idea from this link:

http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=379066

For those wondering why I am running antivirus, this is a machine owned by my employer, a state university, and they require it. I do understand that the idea of "Mac virus" is somewhat laughable right now :).

Please add this ASAP, it would have saved me lots on medical bills for the ulcer I developed trying to figure this out.

Thanks,
Greg

P.S. in the time it took me to write this, I went from about about 200 MB to 3.3 GB backed up. This is more like it.

[Han_Solo]

GregBeaver wrote:

HUGELY important note that needs to be added to the Time Machine instructions - disable any antivirus scanner. I have Sophos Antivirus installed, and was seeing throughput of .1 MB every 10 minutes (no exaggeration) after only a few minutes of backup, such that after 5 hours of backup, I had only 173.1 MB backed up of 35 GB. I disabled Sophos, and right now am averaging 100 MB every few seconds, so the difference could be an order of magnitude. I got the idea from this link: http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=379066 For those wondering why I am running antivirus, this is a machine owned by my employer, a state university, and they require it. I do understand that the idea of "Mac virus" is somewhat laughable right now :). Please add this ASAP, it would have saved me lots on medical bills for the ulcer I developed trying to figure this out. Thanks, Greg P.S. in the time it took me to write this, I went from about about 200 MB to 3.3 GB backed up. This is more like it.

Thanks for the info Greg! I will pass on this info for you.

[sirozha]

Updated to Mac OS X 10.5.6 last night. When Time Machine started, it took a looooooong time in the "Preparing for the backup" state. I thought I lost my TM sparsebundle access again and almost cancelled the backup. However, I decided to let it do its thing. It was at least 30-45 minutes before Time Machine started showing progress in actually backing up. The backup size was 1.5 GB right after the upgrade to 10.5.6. So, the good news is that the update to 10.5.6 did not break the sparsebundle on the ReadyNAS.

I had downloaded the 10.5.6 updatefrom the Apple web site -- I used the 668 MB Combo Update instead of letting the Software Update uitility pull the update from Apple automatically. Last night a lot of people posted problems with updating to 10.5.6 via the Software Update utility, but downloading the Combo update from the Apple web site seemed to have worked flawlessly for most everyone. Also, if you have more than one Mac in the household, you can download the Combo update to a ReadyNAS share and launch it from there. I did exactly that from two of my Macs (aluminum Macbook and 1st-generation Macbook Air), and it worked fine. However, I did not do this in parallel, so I would suggest doing this on one Mac at a time.

[francois_75015]

Hello all,

I use a ReadyNAS (RAIDiator 4.1.4 [1.00a042]) and my Macs are runnig Leopard 10.5.6. I would like to run Time Machine using the NAS... Following, the tricks given on TimeMachine page, I succeded in creating a sparsebundle on a dedicated partition on the ReadyNAS... all was fine.

The problem occured when starting TimeMachine : I experienced a strange error message : Time Machine gave me an error window saying : "Unable to create the file "/var/db/.TimeMachine.cookie" ! ! :?

The name of my Machine is "Hutte" and my account name is "Panoramix". You can see here the details on the screenshot I took to show you the problem . Any help would be appreciated 😉

Francois

[hknas1]

I'm not a mac guru so someone else may provide better advice.
you probably aren't granting the proper write permissions.

from a terminal window if you go to

cd /var
and type
ls -ltr

look at the permissions for db

mine is:
drwxr-xr-x@ 42 root wheel 1428 Dec 18 18:53 db/

if the same you may need to open up the permissions. If you need help with that ask.

fyi if you then go cd db
ls -a .T*

you can see the Time machine files.
-rwx------ 1 root wheel 16 May 1 2008 .TimeMachine.Cookie*
-rw-r--r-- 1 root wheel 1099 Dec 18 18:53 .TimeMachine.Results.plist

no clue if this will help but if you show your permissions that would help towards figuring it out.

[francois_75015]

On my machine, i read :

drwxr-xr-x@ 41 root      wheel     1394 18 déc 12:01 db

and

rwx------  1 root  wheel   16 19 fév  2008 .TimeMachine.Cookie
-rw-r--r--  1 root  wheel    0  8 nov 01:38 .TimeMachine.NeedsFullScan
-rw-r--r--  1 root  wheel  230 18 déc 12:01 .TimeMachine.Results.plist

[hknas1]

taking a stab here but try chmod 777 .TimeMachine.Cookie from the db directory

if it says permission denied then do sudo chmod 777 .TimeMachine.Cookie

[francois_75015]

I just tried a sudo chmod 777 chmod: .TimeMachine.Cookie

The answer was : chmod: .TimeMachine.Cookie: Operation not permitted

arrrghh !

F

[hknas1]

Try typing:

sudo chmod 777 etc etc

you'll be prompted for the admin password

[francois_75015]

I had this answer after having typed the admin password

[pboulo_gmail_co]

cd on the mac to /var/db

sudo rm .TimeMachine.*

then return to TM perefences and you should be able to set this up.

Also to remove a previous setup I removed /Library/Prefernces/com.apple.TimeMachine.plist This did not fix the fail to create /var/db/.TimeMachine.Cookie but removing the orignal cookie files did...

[francois_75015]

OK, I did it... but i faced a new error !

The backup disk image could not be created.

arrrghhh !

F

[francois_75015]

I just did another try using my brand-new MacBook and I got the same problem :

- I follow the trick given on ReadyNas page,
- I can access the volume in the TimeMachine Control Panel,
- TM asks for a password to connect to the Nas. I enter the admin password of my ReadyNas
- TImeMachine starts

- but I got the following error :

The backup disk image could not be created

Even when using the command :

defaults write com.apple.systempreferences TMShowUnsupportedNetworkVolumes 1

The error continues ! !

Well, my ReadyNAS is configured very simply :
- Security mode : Share (I have no groups or users configured on the Nas)
- The volume I created for TimeMachine is accessible in R/W via all protocols

I do not understand where the problem can be... :evil: :evil: :evil:

Francois