Guide: Setting up a Time Machine Share on your Unraid 6.7 Server


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6 hours ago, cinereus said:

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

 

How do you get it to survive a reboot?

That's strange. Mine have survived reboots and I didn't change anything from what I posted. I was under the impression that anything listed under /boot should survive reboots unless something changes it once it loads into RAM. Do you have any scripts running that may change your share .cfg files after boot? The only other thing that I could see affect it is if you make changes in the share GUI, as most changes made to the file are overwritten if an update is done in the GUI.

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40 minutes ago, coffeeroasted said:

That's strange. Mine have survived reboots and I didn't change anything from what I posted. I was under the impression that anything listed under /boot should survive reboots unless something changes it once it loads into RAM. Do you have any scripts running that may change your share .cfg files after boot? The only other thing that I could see affect it is if you make changes in the share GUI, as most changes made to the file are overwritten if an update is done in the GUI.

Should it be active immediately after editing the file or do you need to reboot to reload the cfg? 

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28 minutes ago, cinereus said:

Should it be active immediately after editing the file or do you need to reboot to reload the cfg? 

It should be active immediately. You have to make sure the share is loaded in macOS. It can't just be the server loaded, the individual folder has to be mapped.

 

Actually, now that I'm testing a couple things to answer your questions, I realize that's all that needs to be done. The .cfg file doesn't need to be modified. What has to be done is the folder HAS to be mounted, not just the server. I tested this by creating a new time machine share, mounted it, and was able to see it in Time Machine. I didn't have to change the .cfg file at all.

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13 hours ago, coffeeroasted said:

It should be active immediately. You have to make sure the share is loaded in macOS. It can't just be the server loaded, the individual folder has to be mapped.

 

Actually, now that I'm testing a couple things to answer your questions, I realize that's all that needs to be done. The .cfg file doesn't need to be modified. What has to be done is the folder HAS to be mounted, not just the server. I tested this by creating a new time machine share, mounted it, and was able to see it in Time Machine. I didn't have to change the .cfg file at all.

Dang, still can't get it to be seen by any of my macOS systems :(

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Hi guys, new to Unraid and have just set my time-machine up according to Spaceinvader one's video. It worked perfectly fine, no cfg file change needed. I did connect the share in Finder using the IP address as the hostname tends to be finicky and disconnect sometimes. 

 

I'm on Catalina 10.15.4 and Unraid 6.8.3 if that helps. Currently doing my initial backup. I will test the restore once it's completed. 

 

 

Screen Shot 2020-05-14 at 3.25.31 pm.png

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11 hours ago, partyhat said:

I did connect the share in Finder using the IP address as the hostname tends to be finicky and disconnect sometimes. 

 

I'm on Catalina 10.15.4 and Unraid 6.8.3 if that helps. Currently doing my initial backup. I will test the restore once it's completed. 

 

 

Screen Shot 2020-05-14 at 3.25.31 pm.png

Thanks @partyhat and welcome! I hope we can all get this working.

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5 hours ago, SpencerJ said:

Thank you @dandus. So this method is working for you?

Yes.  It works perfectly.  

Yet, I have not digged into how to allow more than one one TimeMachine share.  That is, if I want to allow more than one Mac backing up to my UnRAID, I need another share.  How would the Avahi configuration file be like for more than one share.

Screenshot 2020-05-16 at 8.13.54 AM.png

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On 5/15/2020 at 7:42 AM, dandus said:

I have some finding.  I tested it with Catalina.

 

 

Thanks for this.

I edited my smb.service in /etc/avahi/services to be as follows:

<?xml version='1.0' standalone='no'?><!--*-nxml-*-->
<!DOCTYPE service-group SYSTEM 'avahi-service.dtd'>
<!-- Generated settings: -->
<service-group>
 <name replace-wildcards='yes'>%h</name>
 <service>
  <type>_smb._tcp</type>
  <port>445</port>
 </service>
 <service>
  <type>_device-info._tcp</type>
  <port>0</port>
  <txt-record>model=Xserve</txt-record>
 </service>
 <service>
  <type>_adisk._tcp</type>
  <port>0</port>
  <txt-record>dk0=adVN=timemachine,adVF=0x82</txt-record>
 </service>
</service-group>

(my Time Machine share is called "timemachine").

 

I then mounted the share on my Mac and still can't see it from Time Machine :(

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On 5/19/2020 at 12:09 AM, cinereus said:

Thanks for this.

I edited my smb.service in /etc/avahi/services to be as follows:


<?xml version='1.0' standalone='no'?><!--*-nxml-*-->
<!DOCTYPE service-group SYSTEM 'avahi-service.dtd'>
<!-- Generated settings: -->
<service-group>
 <name replace-wildcards='yes'>%h</name>
 <service>
  <type>_smb._tcp</type>
  <port>445</port>
 </service>
 <service>
  <type>_device-info._tcp</type>
  <port>0</port>
  <txt-record>model=Xserve</txt-record>
 </service>
 <service>
  <type>_adisk._tcp</type>
  <port>0</port>
  <txt-record>dk0=adVN=timemachine,adVF=0x82</txt-record>
 </service>
</service-group>

(my Time Machine share is called "timemachine").

 

I then mounted the share on my Mac and still can't see it from Time Machine :(

I dont think you have to the share.  It pops up in Mac's Time Machine by itself.  I think once Avahi has listed the share, Time Machine will pick it up.

Have you checked from the log that if Avahi reload after you have changed the config file?

Edited by dandus
supplementary info that might help.
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Just an update. My initial TimeMachine backup completed successfully, which was in-progress on my last post here, but nothing has worked since. It says 'Preparing backup' in the TM app panel, then will just stop. No errors or anything. Not sure what is the issue. I will read the above posts carefully and try this. 

 

edit: In the last few hours it has taken two successful hourly backups, then 1 failed with Error 112. Will continue investigating. 

Edited by partyhat
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On 5/24/2020 at 3:48 AM, dandus said:

I dont think you have to the share.  It pops up in Mac's Time Machine by itself.  I think once Avahi has listed the share, Time Machine will pick it up.

Have you checked from the log that if Avahi reload after you have changed the config file?

There's nothing in the log after changing the smb.service file.

 

How do you make avahi reload and what should it look like in the log?

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Just wanted to add a data point to this discussion. I have Time Machine working in Catalina, backing up to the current version of UnRAID. I don't remember doing anything outside the norm to get it working, but if someone needs me to check a setting, just mention me here and I'd be happy to. I used SpaceInvaderOne's guide, primarily.

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  • 3 weeks later...
On 5/15/2020 at 1:18 PM, SpencerJ said:

Thank you @dandus. So this method is working for you?

I have also encounted this issue, but more recently, I can't remember if it was after an Catalina 10.15.5 update or just random. I can confirm in the TM cfg file, "shareFruit" is set to no, as well as the method above, creating the service manually, will allow for TM to see the service, but I'm receiving an error message once enter the login credentials. I placed the service file into /etc/avahi/services, Unraid is current / up-to-date 6.8.3.

Screen Shot 2020-06-17 at 11.57.31 AM.png

Edited by klekampcd
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1 hour ago, klekampcd said:

I have also encounted this issue, but more recently, I can't remember if it was after an Catalina 10.15.5 update or just random. I can confirm in the TM cfg file, "shareFruit" is set to no, as well as the method above, creating the service manually, will allow for TM to see the service, but I'm receiving an error message once enter the login credentials. I placed the service file into /etc/avahi/services, Unraid is current / up-to-date 6.8.3.

Screen Shot 2020-06-17 at 11.57.31 AM.png

 

check and make sure you didn't over provision the disk that the backup is located on (as in, make sure the physical disk has space available.) I ran into this issue by telling TM I wanted it that I wanted the backup to be XXX in size. And as it wrote to the disk (along with other shares) it filled the disk to the point where TM had no more space to write even though the share/setup said otherwise. 

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2 hours ago, 1812 said:

 

check and make sure you didn't over provision the disk that the backup is located on (as in, make sure the physical disk has space available.) I ran into this issue by telling TM I wanted it that I wanted the backup to be XXX in size. And as it wrote to the disk (along with other shares) it filled the disk to the point where TM had no more space to write even though the share/setup said otherwise. 

My HDD is 500gb, while the available space on the drive is 2.4 TB. I also have the "Time Machine volume size limit" set at 510000. There is currently a bundle in there prior to functionality dropping off. I'm considering deleting the share and just redoing it, and adding in the service again, should it not generate correctly, unless someone else has an idea.

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3 hours ago, spants said:

Has anyone tried a restore to "bare metal" yet?. When I last tried some time ago, I couldn't restore because the recovery procedure on the Mac couldn't find the network share.

I'm still completely unable to get even the backup working (which is frustrating as other NAS software seems to work as expected with Time Machine).

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  • 1 month later...

Doesn’t work for me as well. High Sierra, the share doesn’t show up in timemachine disk select settings. Also tried the fruit option, didn’t work. Editing the avahi services smf file made the share show up in timemachine, but after selecting it, the message showed up that the drive was not capable... this whole timemachine stuff on apple is broken on so many levels, it's not even funny anymore.

Edited by jowi
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On 7/26/2020 at 11:11 AM, jowi said:

Doesn’t work for me as well. High Sierra, the share doesn’t show up in timemachine disk select settings. Also tried the fruit option, didn’t work. Editing the avahi services smf file made the share show up in timemachine, but after selecting it, the message showed up that the drive was not capable... this whole timemachine stuff on apple is broken on so many levels, it's not even funny anymore.

Agreed. How do we get official unraid support on this? It's simply not fit for purpose at the moment.

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  • 2 months later...
On 6/18/2020 at 5:39 AM, spants said:

Has anyone tried a restore to "bare metal" yet?. When I last tried some time ago, I couldn't restore because the recovery procedure on the Mac couldn't find the network share.

I'm able to do backups to the Unraid Time Machine share, but now that I want to migrate over to a new system, I can connect to the server in Migration Assistant from a fresh install and that's about it. None of the time machine backups show up in the next screen after connecting to the server via SMB. It's been hit or miss as I remember a couple of months ago when doing a restore, I was able to see the Time Machine backups in the Migration Assistant, but I wasn't able to restore; I had to use the secondary backup drive. I know that this doesn't not really help anyone, but at least it goes to show that Time Machine backups over SMB needs some TLC from the Unraid team. 

Edited by Zer0Nin3r
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On 4/23/2020 at 5:30 AM, cinereus said:

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...

And I have the opposite problem. 😆

I can back up, but cannot restore from the SMB Unraid Time Machine share. 

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