For all of you Mac Users; Here is a written out guide on how to set up a Time Machine share on your Unraid Server:

https://wiki.unraid.net/UnRAID_6/Configuring_Apple_Time_Machine#Guide:_Setting_up_a_Time_Machine_Share_on_your_Unraid_Server

 

Note: This guide works for MacOS High Sierra

Is this still good for 6.8.3 ?

Even though I've been using Macs since '92 I've never been a huge fan of Time Machine, preferring apps like Super Duper and more recently Carbon Copy Cloner.

Is CCC a viable option with unRAID? And do most of the guidelines for Time Machine in the link above apply to working with CCC?

cheers

10 minutes ago, awediohead said:

Is this still good for 6.8.3 ?

Even though I've been using Macs since '92 I've never been a huge fan of Time Machine, preferring apps like Super Duper and more recently Carbon Copy Cloner.

Is CCC a viable option with unRAID? And do most of the guidelines for Time Machine in the link above apply to working with CCC?

cheers

Unsure on CCC. Should still work fine for Time Machine in 6.8.3...

This seems to be the most recently topic.

 

I've followed the guide at https://wiki.unraid.net/UnRAID_6/Configuring_Apple_Time_Machine

 

Regardless of whether I make it Time Machine (private) or just regular, I can mount the share but Time Machine itself refuses to let me add is as a backup target.

 

I've read loads of threads on here but haven't found anything that works...

Same as that. I have followed the guide, and I can mount the smb share but TM doesn't see it as a drive. I'm on Catalina.

On 4/26/2020 at 10:20 PM, Howboys said:

Same as that. I have followed the guide, and I can mount the smb share but TM doesn't see it as a drive. I'm on Catalina.

I still haven't got any further unfortunately

 

Does Time Machine just not work at all?

@SpencerJ 

40 minutes ago, Howboys said:

@SpencerJ 

I will need to steal my wife's laptop and go through this again, as it's been some time since I've been using a Mac! 

 

In the meantime, have you tried following SpaceinvaderOne's video by chance?

 

On 4/26/2020 at 5:20 PM, Howboys said:

Same as that. I have followed the guide, and I can mount the smb share but TM doesn't see it as a drive. I'm on Catalina.

So my computer is running high sierra and I got it to run and work.  My wifes is running catalina and it won't show up at all.  Maybe I got lucky I am uploading High Sierra now on hers to see if thats the problem.  I will report back.    

 

Just an FYI I did have to remove my existing disk for the new one to show up from Unraid

38 minutes ago, lycokayaker said:

So my computer is running high sierra and I got it to run and work.  My wifes is running catalina and it won't show up at all.  Maybe I got lucky I am uploading High Sierra now on hers to see if thats the problem.  I will report back.    

Just an FYI I did have to remove my existing disk for the new one to show up from Unraid

Thanks. Iirc, this guide was made using high sierra. Please let me know and I will have to update the guide if catalina is the issue.

On 4/28/2020 at 3:07 PM, cinereus said:

I still haven't got any further unfortunately

 

Does Time Machine just not work at all?

Hey you need to have High Sierra up and running I took my wife's laptop and wanted to get her stuff backed up and couldn't with catalina.   When I did the update to High Sierra and followed the video it works perfectly.

 

1 hour ago, SpencerJ said:

Thanks. Iirc, this guide was made using high sierra. Please let me know and I will have to update the guide if catalina is the issue.

Yeah Man no problem.  I think you need to have High Sierra for sure.  Got it working when I updated my wife from catalina 

1 minute ago, lycokayaker said:

Hey you need to have High Sierra up and running I took my wife's laptop and wanted to get her stuff backed up and couldn't with catalina.   When I did the update to High Sierra and followed the video it works perfectly.

 

Yeah Man no problem.  I think you need to have High Sierra for sure.  Got it working when I updated my wife from catalina 

Thanks! I will update the wiki and try to figure out what broke with Catalina....

FWIW the version I'm having issues with is 10.11 El Capitan.

 

Presumably Time Machine functionality is meant to support more than one macos release.

Edited April 30, 20206 yr by cinereus
macos

Yeah I got Catalina 10.15.4 and no luck with TM over SMB.

FWIW the version I'm having issues with is 10.11 El Capitan.
 
Presumably Time Machine functionality is meant to support more than one macos release.

It does, but time machine over SMB is only supported from Sierra and up.

For what it’s worth, I’m having no problems with time machine to smb unRAID shares from multiple macs running either High Sierra or Catalina.
But the original time machine jobs was actually created on High Sierra and the Mac later upgraded to Catalina. Don’t know if that makes a difference.


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13 minutes ago, Jorgen said:

It does, but time machine over SMB is only supported from Sierra and up.

For what it’s worth, I’m having no problems with time machine to smb unRAID shares from multiple macs running either High Sierra or Catalina.
But the original time machine jobs was actually created on High Sierra and the Mac later upgraded to Catalina. Don’t know if that makes a difference.


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Before I bought unRAID I thought this was a trivial feature as I've been using Time Machine over SMB for years with 10.11?

 

So is there no way to get it working?

Before I bought unRAID I thought this was a trivial feature as I've been using Time Machine over SMB for years with 10.11?
 
So is there no way to get it working?

You couldn’t have, smb support was introduced in 11.12.
You probably used AFP to backup to a network share? That works for all Mac OS versions, but is deprecated and shouldn’t be used.

Sounds like the best way for you to get this working is to update to High Sierra.
I understand you probably want the backups working before upgrading so I’m not sure what to suggest. Maybe set up time machine to an external HDD temporarily?


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23 minutes ago, Jorgen said:

You couldn’t have, smb support was introduced in 11.12.
You probably used AFP to backup to a network share? That works for all Mac OS versions, but is deprecated and shouldn’t be used.

Sounds like the best way for you to get this working is to update to High Sierra.
I understand you probably want the backups working before upgrading so I’m not sure what to suggest. Maybe set up time machine to an external HDD temporarily?


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You're probably right. Just with my old NAS Time Machine was click and forget.

 

What's stopping SMB working with 10.11? There's so many incompatibilities with software which have prevented me upgrading from 10.11.

I also started having issues after upgrading to Catalina. In a few cases, I've managed to get it to build a backup in earlier versions, but now, I can't even get that. Even in the earlier versions, I could back-up but not ever restore.

Hey, y'all. The issue with creating a Time Machine share with Catalina is due to a misconfigured setting in the share's .cfg file. For an SMB .cfg, Apple expects a setting to be passed called 'shareFruit'. For whatever reason, even when following @SpaceInvaderOne's video setup, the .cfg file passes a 'no' for that setting. Once you change the setting to yes, you'll be able to see it in Time Machine. The file is located at /boot/config/shares/***.cfg (*** being the name of your Time Machine share). 

 

I've reported the issue last week. It may be helpful for some people to comment on the bug report stating whether the change worked:
https://forums.unraid.net/bug-reports/stable-releases/683-time-machine-share-r930/

 

15 hours ago, coffeeroasted said:

Hey, y'all. The issue with creating a Time Machine share with Catalina is due to a misconfigured setting in the share's .cfg file. For an SMB .cfg, Apple expects a setting to be passed called 'shareFruit'. For whatever reason, even when following @SpaceInvaderOne's video setup, the .cfg file passes a 'no' for that setting. Once you change the setting to yes, you'll be able to see it in Time Machine. The file is located at /boot/config/shares/***.cfg (*** being the name of your Time Machine share). 

 

I've reported the issue last week. It may be helpful for some people to comment on the bug report stating whether the change worked:
https://forums.unraid.net/bug-reports/stable-releases/683-time-machine-share-r930/

 

thanks! Will share this in another thread having similar issues. Hope this works.

4 hours ago, SpencerJ said:

thanks! Will share this in another thread having similar issues. Hope this works.

This is the link I used to debug my share: Using Linux or Windows as a Time Machine network server. 

 

The things he points out that are required to enable Time Machine support were:

 

• The fruit module, which provides Apple’s proprietary extensions to SMB,
• The catia module, which maps the encoding of filenames that macOS expects to a form most native Linux filesystems can support,
• The streams_xattr module, which maps macOS’s extended attributes to a separate AppleDouble file,
• Optionally, the spotlight module, which builds a Spotlight search index on the server to speed up discovery of files in the backup, and
• Avahi, a multicast (aka Bonjour) daemon for Linux, used here to allow Macs on the network to discover the Time Machine share.

 

I assume unRaid enables Avahi when macOS interoperability is enabled and I don't see anything in the config files supporting catia, streams_xattr, or spotlight, but it seems to work great between Avahi and the fruit module.

On 5/6/2020 at 1:19 AM, coffeeroasted said:

Hey, y'all. The issue with creating a Time Machine share with Catalina is due to a misconfigured setting in the share's .cfg file.

Just curious — why do you say this is specific to Catalina? Do you know anything about earlier versions of macOS? 

 

I read the link you provided and it's not clear why that doesn't work either.

3 hours ago, cinereus said:

Just curious — why do you say this is specific to Catalina? Do you know anything about earlier versions of macOS? 

 

I read the link you provided and it's not clear why that doesn't work either.

I was just referring to the issues people were mentioning re: Catalina. I don't know if it's specific to it or if the issue is in an unRaid update. I thought people were having able to get it to work on earlier OSs, but looking back in this thread, I don't think that's the case. I think it may just be an issue with unRaid's setup. All I know is that changing 'shareFruit' to yes fixes my issue, at least with backup. I haven't tried restoring at all.

On 5/6/2020 at 1:19 AM, coffeeroasted said:

Hey, y'all. The issue with creating a Time Machine share with Catalina is due to a misconfigured setting in the share's .cfg file. For an SMB .cfg, Apple expects a setting to be passed called 'shareFruit'. For whatever reason, even when following @SpaceInvaderOne's video setup, the .cfg file passes a 'no' for that setting. Once you change the setting to yes, you'll be able to see it in Time Machine. The file is located at /boot/config/shares/***.cfg (*** being the name of your Time Machine share). 

 

I've reported the issue last week. It may be helpful for some people to comment on the bug report stating whether the change worked:
https://forums.unraid.net/bug-reports/stable-releases/683-time-machine-share-r930/

 

I changed it and rebooted and it was changed back to no again.

 

How do you get it to survive a reboot?