How To Make A Windows Time Machine Server

[ozum]

1. zalman (Win 7) (TimeCapsule VM is hosted on this machine)
2. aspire (Win 7) (Hackintosh VM is hosted on this machine)
3. Ozum's MacBook Pro (MacBook Pro 10.7.3)
4. Lion's Mac (VM Hackintosh 10.7.3)
5. MyTimeCapsule (VM TimeCapsule)

Can you ping the VM or each other using only the machine name?

Windows machines can ping each other with names.
Apple machines can ping each other with names but only with '.local' appendix. (ping Ozums-Macbook-Pro.local).
Windows and Apple machines cannot ping each other with names.
Every machine can ping each other with IP addresses.
No machine can ping MyTimeCapsule with name.
Every machine can ping MyTimeCapsule with IP.

It looks like riddle I guess

I assume all machines are sitting on the same local network at home or something?

They are on 192.168.1.XXX IP space and same workgroup called "WORKGROUP".

The MyTimeCapsule icon appears in your Finder side bar right?

Yes, in Finder under "SHARED" there are aspire, MyTimeCapsule, ZALMAN

Does the 'other' client machine appear on each client machine. (i.e. macbook on hackintosh and hackintosh on macbook)

They are not listed in Finder under SHARED.

Have you checked in the log files for TM on either client machines? You should be able to use the Console to view them and filter on TM

I didn't see any related entry.

Strangely, while trying to generate new log entries, Time Machine on MacBook Pro connected successfully. Previously it didn't. Hackintosh still cannot.

 

[Unregistered]

Problem restarting Avahi

I seem to have problems restarting Avahi as per instructions, it comes back saying:


"Starting Avahi mDNS/DNS-SD Daemon: avahi-daemon failed!"

 

[Eric]

Backed up my Mac in 3 hours.

Kevin -- dude -- if I was that type of dude, I would kiss you.

Brilliant solution. Much better then paying 800 bills for that other crap they have advertised.

Amazing.

 

[bizzle]

How do I change the root password for this VM? I can login to root just fine, but when I try "/usr/bin/passwd" I get:

passwd: Module is unknown
passwd: password unchanged

In order to change your root password:

login as root (password tmroot)
root@mytimecapsule:~#pam-auth-update --force

uncheck "cracklib password strength checking"
click ok

root@mytimecapsule:~#passwd


now my question is:
is there any benefit/negative to setting up user accounts on the server that mirror the ones that will be using the time machine?

that is, do I create accounts for myself, my wife, and any of the kids' so we can all have read/write access to our individual time machines? or does leaving it as tmuser suffice?


also, when I just start the server the time machine does not show up in time machine's list of drives to select until I log in via Finder (connect to Time Machine as tmuser).


I'm also experiencing a technical problem. I can log in via rdp when I start the server through the gui. But when I start it with the service tip you provided I find that Windows Firewall blocks the ports even though I have it allowed on private networks. I tried public and that still didn't allow access. Is there some other setting or some other program that I should be allowing? It works fine when I disable the Private network firewall so I can at least narrow it down to that section.

 

[cedriclocqueneux]

Connecting to server "MyTimeCapsule 'failed.

Hello,

I followed the tutorial to the letter, copying, pasting the command line, everything was fine, no error message, on Vmware instead of VirtualBox, because i have already Vmware for other VM.
But i can not connect to the VM from the Mac, I have this error message:


Connecting to server "MyTimeCapsule 'failed.
Please check the name or IP address of the server and try again. If the problem persists, contact your system administrator.

The only difference is that i configure Debian in french for the keyboard.

I have this error message from Time Machine, or trying to connect to the server with its IP address.
Yet I ping the VM from the Mac, and Mac from the VM without problem, and I disabled the firewall of windows (WHS 2011).

I do not understand why it does not work.

But if I took the hard drives of your appliance VirtualBox, and I create a VM with these drives in VMware, it works. It may be missing a point in the tutorial? But i dont' find the problem, i'm a little newbie on linux

 

[mixxolydian]

As Eric stated, Kevin you are a hero!

I downloaded the appliance and time machine backup is going smoothly.

I did try to get this going by building it all myself because I wanted to be able to share my server's drives with all the content via AFP (so I can edit and save them remotely - a shortcoming of SMB). I needed to install guest additions which was no bother but I can't seem to get the same version of netatalk to install that you have on the appliance. When I query "dpkg -l |grep netatalk" on your virtual appliance it returns version 2.2~beta4-1 but I can only seem to get 2.2.2-1.

Also wanted to mention, on page 2 of part 2, there is "http:/" instead of "http://" where the code is for adding the wheezy repo to the sources list.

Sorry to be a pest but your article has gotten me from 0% to 99% where I want to be with my setup and now I can taste that last 1% any light you could shed on getting the correct version of netatalk to install will be greatly appreciated.

 

[Pete]

Brilliant Guide

First of all I want to thank your for the excellent guide you shared with us. I used your VM package which is running on my WHS and it works perfectly. In this thread we talked a lot about the setup process but what I'm interested in is the restoring process.

First of all, it is possible to create an native backup partition within my WHS configuration without using the second VM disk to store the backup? Because as the initial Backup is taking a long time I'm thinking about optimizing the restoring process. I would assume that the restoring process takes a long time as well. Therefore I was wondering if I anyhow can attach the Backup partition directly to my MBP by using USB. As the disk on my WHS is placed in an ultrabay it would be easy to plug it to my MBP. The USB restoring process should be faster than the network solution.

Do you see any chance of doing so? Or would you prefer the wired ethernet solution? I could also connect my WHS via 1gbit ethernet to my MBP, maybe that's the quickest solution for restoring?

@all: Someone had to recover already?
Thanks a lot!

 

[Knokey]

Errors

Hello,

I followed the tutorial to the letter, copying, pasting the command line, everything was fine, no error message, on Vmware instead of VirtualBox, because i have already Vmware for other VM.
But i can not connect to the VM from the Mac, I have this error message:


Connecting to server "MyTimeCapsule 'failed.
Please check the name or IP address of the server and try again. If the problem persists, contact your system administrator.

The only difference is that i configure Debian in french for the keyboard.

I have this error message from Time Machine, or trying to connect to the server with its IP address.
Yet I ping the VM from the Mac, and Mac from the VM without problem, and I disabled the firewall of windows (WHS 2011).

I do not understand why it does not work.

But if I took the hard drives of your appliance VirtualBox, and I create a VM with these drives in VMware, it works. It may be missing a point in the tutorial? But i dont' find the problem, i'm a little newbie on linux

I have the same problem. Does anyone know an answer?
I already tried to mount a bigger virtual disk in the original VM, but in this case I get a filesystem error: "Something wrong with the volume's CNID DB, using temporary CNID DB instead.Check server messages for details. Switching to read-only mode."

 

[Compound]

I have the same problem. Does anyone know an answer?
I already tried to mount a bigger virtual disk in the original VM, but in this case I get a filesystem error: "Something wrong with the volume's CNID DB, using temporary CNID DB instead.Check server messages for details. Switching to read-only mode."

Just proceed to the Mounting chapter in the section:
Be careful: You will delete the partition info of the drive:

Mount the data volume

We need to partition, format and mount the 100 GB data volume we created earlier. Commands that you must type have been italicized and bolded. System prompts have been removed to prevent line truncation.

fdisk /dev/sdb
Command (m for help): n
Command action
e extended
p primary partition (1-4)
p
Partition number (1-4): 1
First cylinder (1-13054, default 1):
Using default value 1
Last cylinder, +cylinders or +size{K,M,G} (1-13054, default 13054):
Using default value 13054

Command (m for help): w
The partition table has been altered!

Calling ioctl() to re-read partition table.
Syncing disks.
Now you need to format it.

mkfs.ext4 /dev/sdb1​

Reset the permissions:

chmod 777 /mnt/MyTimeCapsuleData/

Restart your vm or the netatalk service.

N

 

[Eric]

Things are still running great

After a number of failed backups (WHS went to sleep), the drive got filled up. So I want to start over with a fresh sparsebundle to back up my system. How would I format the drive with my data to start anew?

 

[Unregistered]

I was just about to buy a Synology NAS

but this great work expanded the life of my good old WindowsHomeServer.
Finally solved the TimeMaschineBackUpTpWHS challlenge.
Great work, TX

 

[Sparky]

Hoping someone can help out here. I've managed to successfully get a TimeCapsule working from the VM. Now I'm trying to install it on a native linux box. I've gone through the instructions installing Debian, netatalk, avahi etc. and configuring them. I can see my TimeCapsule on my MacbookPro but when I click on it in Finder I get Connection Failed and clicking on Connect As gives a pop up saying "There was a problem connecting to the server "blah". Check the server name or IP address and then try again. If you continue to have problems, contact your system administrator."

I'm running 10.8.2 and all works fine with the VM version. What I have noticed is in the VM the version of afpd is older than the one that gets downloaded when using the manual instructions. The VM is 2.2-beta4 whereas the manual download installs 2.2.2. Not sure if this is the problem or if it's something else going wrong. Any ideas?

 

[aglaser]

I've got the same problem!!

I'm also running OS X 10.8.2. I followed the directions completely. I see the "MyTimeCapsule" under the "Shared" section in my finder, but when I actually try to connect I get:
There was a problem connecting to the server “MyTimeCapsule”.
The server may not exist or it is unavailable at this time. Check the server name or IP address, check your network connection, and then try again.

Anyone know how to fix this?

Thanks.

 

[Unregistered]

Increasing the storage size from 100GB to 1TB

Hello,

I've ready all the thread messages, and I'm still having a problem with the username/password for the server after I delete/re-create the size of the volume in VirtualBox.

I mounted using the "o" option for MSDOS.

The server is found with no problem. It's just that the username tmuser/tmuser is not recognized as having the permissions/rights to access the volume.

Any ideas?

 

[Unregistered]

Increasing storage size

There is a permissions problem when increasing the storage size according to Kevin's earlier post. The answer is in Kevin's post number 5 at the beginning of this thread. Log on as root and type in ...
chmod 777 /mnt/MyTimeCapsuleData
This gives the correct permissions for Time Machine to work correctly with the enlarged virtual disk.

Thank you Kevin for a superb project. My Mac's are backing up to my virtual Time Capsule running on WHS 2011.

 

[Unregistered]

service start issues

Hello

I have been using this wonderful project for about 4 months now and I can't thank you enough Kevin. I have run into a bit of a wrinkle though, I recently updated to the latest version of virtual box and now the service won't start. I've tried restarting, reinstalling, rebooting. I can't get to the bottom of what might be the matter..

Are you able to provide assistance?

I get the following error:


01/05/2013, 16:41:37 - C:\vms\VBoxVmService64.exe
01/05/2013, 16:41:37 - C:\vms\VBoxVmService.ini
01/05/2013, 16:41:37 - C:\vms\VBoxVmService.log
01/05/2013, 16:41:37 - VBoxVmService started.
01/05/2013, 16:41:40 - Error creating VirtualBox instance! rc = 0x80004002

01/05/2013, 16:41:40 - VBoxVmService stopped.

 

[OneWill]

Thanks! I'm running a backup right now.

After I rebooted the server, I had to re-enter the "chmod" command in order for the Mac Time Machine to recognize the login. Is there any way to make that change permanent?

 

[broosth]

Newbie questions

I just installed the appliance on Windows Home Server 2011 (a version of Server 2008 R2). It seems to be running OK, but my daughter's MacBookPro is having a problem actually backing up. TimeMachine 'sees' the drive, but fails.

I'd like to know what the Linux commands are for verifying that the data drive has the correct permissions, that AVAH is running, and that NETATALK is running correctly.

I know a lot about Windows and virtually nothing about Linux commands.

 

[Namtaro]

I would just like to thank the author of this guide, it has helped me a **** TON!

Before, I was using
sudo tmutil setdestination /Volumes/{mounted-disk-image}
with a sparsebundle in a Samba share on my server to run backups, but it would get corrupt easily. I then realized that if my Macbook were to ever die and I need to restore it, I wouldn't be able to use the Samba share when restoring! So I searched for weeks on a solution. Another annoying thing is that I had to mount the smb share along with the sparsebundle. I created a script for one click mounting, but it was still annoying having to mount them everytime I opened my mac and even worse was that if I didn't mount it, timemachine would give an error of not being able to connect every hour when it tries to backup to the sparsebundle.

I didn't want to buy a TimeCapsule since it seemed like a waste when I have my RT-N66U running on Tomato. Looked for solutions with maybe attaching an external drive to the router, but nothing showed up. Even considered the WD MyBook Live. Then I found this guide... spent a few hours configuring it and adding my own drive to it and it works PERFECTLY! Starts up with my server every single time and the best part is that it's seemless with my Macbook! No more error codes, no need to mount the drive and totally automatic, just like the real thing... and best of all - FREE!

I can't thank you enough!

 

[Laurian]

I'm also running OS X 10.8.2. I followed the directions completely. I see the "MyTimeCapsule" under the "Shared" section in my finder, but when I actually try to connect I get:
There was a problem connecting to the server “MyTimeCapsule”.
The server may not exist or it is unavailable at this time. Check the server name or IP address, check your network connection, and then try again.

Anyone know how to fix this?

Thanks.

I'm having the same problem. Followed the instruction to the letter, but exactly the same problem as stated above. Got the appliance running though, without any problems. So it's not in OS X 10.8.2, but somewhere in the latest Debian/netatalk/avahi packages combined with the configuration files.