Michael
By: a guest | Feb 15th, 2008 | Syntax:
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The 10.5.2 update breaks the
<code>defaults write com.apple.systempreferences TMShowUnsupportedNetworkVolumes -bool YES
</code> hack, which allowed users to use an (unsupported) AFP or SMB server for Time Machine backups.
<br><br>
After applying the 10.5.2 update, you can only back up to an AFP/SMB share if you've set up Time Machine before updating, or (obviously) a Leopard AFP server or a separate hard drive. If you haven't used Time Machine before, the initial backup will fail with something like this in the system.log:
<br><code>backupd[2262]: Starting standard backup
<br>backupd[2262]: Creating disk image /Volumes/Backup/Macintosh_001122334455.sparsebundle
<br>backupd[2262]: Error 45 creating backup disk image
<br>backupd[2262]: Failed to create disk image
<br>backupd[2262]: Backup failed with error: 20
</code>
To set up Time Machine to use an unsupported network volume in 10.5.2, the following procedure is required:
<br><br>
><li>A server (Linux, Unix, Mac OS X before 10.5) with an unsupported AFP share (SMB will probably also work, I didn't try it)
</li ><li>A second Mac running Leopard, with an empty AFP share with write privileges.
</li ><li>Small, blank disk image - can be created in Disk Utility (
<i>File
</i> -
<i>New
</i> -
<i>Blank Image
</i>: Size:
<i>10MB
</i>, Format:
<i>Mac OS Extended (Journaled)
</i>)
</li ><li>Run
<code>defaults write com.apple.systempreferences TMShowUnsupportedNetworkVolumes -bool YES
</code> in Terminal, if you haven't already done so.
</li
><li>Mount the small disk image (from the prerequisites).
</li ><li>Mount the other Mac's AFP share; then go into the Time Machine preference pane and select the mounted network share.
</li ><li>Go into
<i>Options
</i> and exclude all your hard drives. Then remove the mounted disk image from step 1 from the exclusions list.
</li ><li>Let Time Machine do the inital backup. This will take a couple minutes.
</li ><li>Disable Time Machine (slide the slider to the "Off" position).
</li ><li>On the other Mac, open Terminal. If the AFP share is e.g.
<i>/Users/Shared/backup-folder
</i>, type
<code>tar cf ~/Desktop/tm.tar *
</code> and hit return.
</li ><li>Copy the resulting file tm.tar from your Desktop to the shared folder on the server you want to use.
</li ><li>On the server, open Terminal and run
<code>cd /path/to/share; tar xf tm.tar
</code> .
</li>
<li>Now, go back to the first Mac and mount the share on the server.
</li ><li>Go into Time Machine and select that share as destination.
</li ><li>Remove your hard drives from the exclusions list (under
<i>Options
</i>). You can also delete the small disk image you created earlier in the process.
</li ><li>Time Machine will perform the initial backup (depending on the size of your files, this will take several hours).
</li
Not all of these steps may be necessary, this is just what worked for me.
<br>The small disk image is not really required, you could theoretically just perform the inital backup to the second Mac - I decided to use it because the second Mac's hard drive didn't have enough space to accomodate a full backup of my main Mac.
<br><br>
As usual, this procedure is performed at your own risk!
<br><br>Apple probably has a reason why they don't allow you to backup to unsupported network shares by default. (Hopefully that reason isn't just Apple wanting to sell Time Capsule.)
<br><br>
However, I've been running Time Machine like that for a couple days now, and haven't run into any problems so far. Subsequent backups work just fine and are pretty fast; restoring individual files also worked fine in my tests. However, I doubt it would be so easy to do a bare-metal restore while booted from the Leopard Installer DVD.
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