TimeMachine backups fail or get wedged


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Currently running 5.0-rc15a and while things have been going pretty well, TimeMachine access continues to be a problem.  I'm able to establish the AFP session and mount the filesystem most of the time.  Other times it just gets stuck and won't respond.  At the same time other AFP sessions are working.  The only way I can get things moving along again is to kill AFP and restart it.  Things start working again, but eventually the backups slow to a crawl. 

 

Any ideas what's going on here?  No errors getting logged to syslog.

 

As I understand from the other forums TimeMachine must use AFP, right?

 

So far with my testing, NFS seems superior for speed a reliability so far.

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Just booted to rc16c.  My AFP mount for TimeMachine is completely inaccessible now.  This is on two different Macs.  Just reports the following when I try to access them:

 

"The operation can't be completed because the original item for 'TimeMachine' can't be found."

 

Syslog records nothing.  Tried to restart afpd and no luck...., oh, wait something just happened as I was typing this up...

 

Jul 18 20:42:30 laffy afpd[6283]: dsi_stream_send: Broken pipe

Jul 18 20:42:30 laffy afpd[6283]: dsi_cmdreply(6): Broken pipe

Jul 18 20:42:30 laffy afpd[6332]: dsi_stream_send: Broken pipe

Jul 18 20:42:30 laffy afpd[6332]: dsi_cmdreply(7): Broken pipe

 

And I can see my share now...

 

ziti:etc morris$ ls -l /unraid/TimeMachine

total 0

drwxrwxrwx@ 1 morris  wheel  264 Jul  6 17:36 Network Trash Folder

drwxrwxrwx@ 1 morris  wheel  264 Jul  6 17:36 Temporary Items

drwxrwxrwx@ 1 morris  wheel  264 Jul  9 00:55 jmorrseaosxl1.sparsebundle

drwxrwxrwx@ 1 morris  wheel  264 Jul 17 17:19 ziti.sparsebundle

 

However, TM still can't access the share.  It keeps throwing up the same error when I try to browse to it.  Even though I have the AFP share setup in automounter and I can access it there, that is apparently not good enough for TM.  :(

 

Any other ideas on what the root cause may be here?

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Advise Point 1: Go directly to a disk. DO NOT use a share over multiple disks and avoid the use of tm shares for performance reasons.

 

Advise point 2: Don't use TM to UnRaid. I had no end of problems so I've ditched it and now CCC+ Archive to UnRaid.

 

TM to network disks is flakey at best and performance is atrocious.

 

 

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I have had good luck with TM to unRAID using a User share that is limited to a single disk. I'd recommend using a disk share though because there's not much point to a one disk user share. I've just never had a reason to change mine.

 

Would I just browse to the disk share via SMB and then tell TM to use that?  I was under the impression that would not work because it must be AFP.  Or, maybe I'm missing something here.  I do have the existing share tied to a single disk.

 

I will definitely try a few other things when I get home.

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I have had good luck with TM to unRAID using a User share that is limited to a single disk. I'd recommend using a disk share though because there's not much point to a one disk user share. I've just never had a reason to change mine.

 

Would I just browse to the disk share via SMB and then tell TM to use that?  I was under the impression that would not work because it must be AFP.  Or, maybe I'm missing something here.  I do have the existing share tied to a single disk.

 

I will definitely try a few other things when I get home.

 

TM will only use AFP. AFP Export must be configured as "Yes (TimeMachine)". Set SMB Export to "No".

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So, I setup a new TM share and it worked great and has been for the past 24 hours.

 

I tried another system to back up to that same TM share and it's dead.  So my theory is you can only have one TM share per TM client?  I'll test that theory out tomorrow evening. 

 

I assumed since it created a separate directory for each system that the share could be..., well..., shared. 

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So, I setup a new TM share and it worked great and has been for the past 24 hours.

 

I tried another system to back up to that same TM share and it's dead.  So my theory is you can only have one TM share per TM client?  I'll test that theory out tomorrow evening. 

 

I assumed since it created a separate directory for each system that the share could be..., well..., shared.

 

In theory, multiple clients per share shouldn't be a problem. I've never tried a single share for multiple clients. The advantage of one share per client is that you can set an individual limit for each share. With multiple clients per share there is no control of how much space any single client can consume.

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I tried sharing some alternate version of TM shares, but ran into trouble every single time.  I guess it's something to do with the sharing of TM shares and multiple clients accessing it.  Not sure who's getting upset (unRAID or the clients), but I gave up trying to get that to work.

 

I created a separate TM share for each system and all of my problems have vanished.  I have a little more testing to do, but looking good now.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Just as a final note, the problem came back again.  AFP just seems to be very unstable after awhile on multiple Mac's.  I'm done tracking down this issue.  I don't know who's at fault, but with AFP exiting stage right anyway I'm not going to beat myself up anymore.  Seems TM is best suited for AirPort or local attachment only.

 

Another motivating factor for moving on?  I have CrashPlan plugin up and running on unRAID and working great.  :)

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