When you access a share via AFP, the AFP service running on the NAS (called netatalk) creates a number of hidden directories in the root of the share beginning ".Apple". These directories are used to store Mac specific info. In reality, for the TM share that info is not actually needed - but it is created anyway as part of how the service works - and if it gets corrupted, or for example not upgraded properly when the NAS firmware is updated, then it can create issues accessing the share via AFP.
I have seen this happen before, but not specifically resulting in the error you report - but there are posts on other forums that show a similar error to yours and suggest a similar diagnosis. As the info will get recreated when you access the share again via AFP, and that there is no TM specific data stored there anyway, deleting those directories and allowing the AFP service to recreate them would seem a reasonable debugging step
The specific directories to remove (or just move) are:
Thanks for the information, but I'm afraid it did not make much of a difference. I've submitted a ticket with NetGear and when this problem is resolved, I'll post the result.
Alas .. no such luck. Let's see what the NetGear tell me. Just to help me understand, you mentioned netatalk before - where does this run? In the Linux kernel, or is it a user-level service? [don't want to be mucking with the kernel on my backup device, but if it is a user-level service, we may want to start debugging this]
netatalk is a service - not part of the kernel - and pretty much the defacto standard for providing AFP access to a *nix server. So if you are having AFP access issues, you can be almost certain the issue is with netatalk.
Something else you could try: Via cmd+k connect to afp://ReadyNAS@nas.ip.address and use your TM password to authenticate
Normally, this should allow you to mount the TM share directly and then gain access to the diskimages stored there. Might help to see if that is actually possible and so determine if this really is an AFP access issue as I suspect, or perhaps something more specific to TM
You shoudl then also download your logs and look for the netatalk.log file to see if there is any useful debug info
This is an ongoing problem. I'm running the latest Ultra6 firmware and Mac Os. Time machine starts and gets a few hundred mb, maybe even a gig or two and fails. Time machine says there was and error that might be temporary. I have deleted the backup on the Ultra6, run disk repair on the backup volume and read every posting on the forum.
