pastebin - collaborative debugging

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>

<hr>

To set up Time Machine to use an unsupported network volume in 10.5.2, the following procedure is required:<br><br>

<b>Prerequisites:</b>
<ul
><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
></ul>

<b>Procedure</b>
<ol
><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
></ol>

<hr>

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.