Comments on: Setup Time Machine on FreeNAS

By: harryd71

harryd71 — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 17:09:28 +0000

Yes, look here -> http://harryd71.blogspot.com/2010/05/mac-os-x-s...

By: Lawrence Gosset

Lawrence Gosset — Wed, 12 May 2010 06:06:05 +0000

Jonathan - I was wondering if you could help me out.

I've mounted up my FreeNAS drive, linked Time Machine to it, the whole initial test backup ran flawlessly with no error but I just get one huge image file, is this correct?

You talk about creating a custom sparsebundle file with MAC address and then using that. I tried this method but the sparsebundle did not link and it just created another one, but I'd quite like to get this method working so I can limit the backup size.

Also when I run a backup another volume mounts called "Time Machine Backups" but once the backup is done this disappears. This means I cannot access the files unless the backup is running or if I mount the huge sparsebundle image.

Have I done anything wrong/right - I'm mainly concerned with limiting my sparsebundle size to be honest!

Appreciate any help,
Lawrence

By: mattjuna

mattjuna — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 17:27:38 +0000

We had to attempt a restore of a Leopard OSX server which proved to be a little tricky, see my post http://www.junasoftware.com/blog/system-restore..., we were backing up a server so the sparse image was about 1.5GB. We ended up copying a few directories off another functional OSX server to get the server functioning again. We did need to add all the users again though.

It is a hard thing to test unless you have a spare mac lying round. I now use a combination of Time Machine for a on site versioned backup and use rsync to mirror our file directory off site to a data centre. Seems to work well and we have our bases covered.

By: Tony

Tony — Fri, 01 Jan 2010 02:06:27 +0000

Have you tried to do a full recovery this way (using your freenas share as the source)?

By: Vadim

Vadim — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 23:10:14 +0000

Thank you for your guide, I got Time Machine up running on my freenas but not without some hickups.

My problems started with TM saying how it's unable to write due to permissions. I enabled local user authentication and used a user login with admin privileges.

I checked the permissions for the sparsebundle and it only had r/w permissions for the ftp user, which I think is guest by default. My approach was to enable permissions for all by logging in as superuser and modifying permissions for the sparsebundle to include everyone. That fixed the issue, however, I'm not comfortable with this approach.

I made sure that the subdirectories of my afp share had proper permissions, it's only the sparsebundle that had the limitation. Did I go wrong somewhere in my setup, configuration of users maybe?

Thanks again for your guide.

By: Vadim

Vadim — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 18:10:14 +0000

By: Jonathan Brown

Jonathan Brown — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 02:14:54 +0000

Sorry about the confusion on the command. I've updated the post to note that it is one line. How you connect to your network is irrelevant to the name of the sparsebundle. You can delete the sparsebundle file from your mac once you've copied it to your NAS.

By: Jonathan Brown

Jonathan Brown — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 02:13:20 +0000

Thanks for that. I've updated the post with a link to your post. This feature was not available in the 0.7RC I was running, but good to see it.

By: harryd71

harryd71 — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 23:10:00 +0000

Hey great post and I've run a similar for several months without any problems. But with FreeNAS 0.7 this way is a little bit outdated, check my latest howto -> http://harryd71.blogspot.com/2009/11/mac-osx-ti...

By: jeffismac

jeffismac — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 16:41:00 +0000

Hi found out that your 2 line instruction to create the sparse is actually a one line command. I have created the sparsebundle (with finder minimised it shows in the folders without the sp at the beginning which is unfortunate!0 Anyway thanks for the help.

2 questions

can I use the lan mac not the airport mac in the filename? Even though I will be more likely to be wifi rather than wired.

and can i delete the sparse from the mac once it's been copied over?