I had this setup working just fine in Snow Leopard but now after upgrading to Lion it tells me it's no good because "The network backup disk does not support the required AFP features.". Anyone had any luck with working around that?
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TimeMachine to Samba NAS
- Thread starter TrickyRick
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Finally. I kept telling myself that someone apart from me must be having this problem. Now for finding a solution 
Actually, according to what I've found and my own conclusions, there won't be a fix. Basically they've redone Time Machine using the new AFP 3.3 and seemingly dropped the support for Samba. Basically the only solution to this is to make sure that your NAS supports AFP 3.3.
Personally I have a Netgear WNDR3700 with DD-WRT but annoyingly I can't install stuff on it.
Personally I have a Netgear WNDR3700 with DD-WRT but annoyingly I can't install stuff on it.
I would also love to see a solution to this since all the Mac's in my house backup to a Windows Server 2008 box through SMB. If they really aren't allowing SMB time machine connections anymore and there isn't a work around like before to enable them, I guess people running Windows could always the option of running FreeNAS or Linux in a VM although that would suck.
Someone want to try this and report back?
http://www.alexanderwilde.com/2011/04/os-x-lion-connection-error-with-afp-and-workaround/
http://www.alexanderwilde.com/2011/04/os-x-lion-connection-error-with-afp-and-workaround/
Ah, forgot about that one. Never got around to trying it. According to comments it does not work:
"Unfortunately it doesnt work for time machine. The same NAS (WD Sharespace 4TB) in my case, now lets me use afp (after this workaround) with user shares, but not with the WD_Backup share that Time Machine Uses. Very odd. It seems the NAS must support some new version of afp. Anyone any ideas?"
Personally, I have no issues accessing my disk, just issues with TM.
EDIT: Oh, now I know why I never tried it, it's for AFP disks, not SMB. But there might be something similar for SMB and TM.
"Unfortunately it doesnt work for time machine. The same NAS (WD Sharespace 4TB) in my case, now lets me use afp (after this workaround) with user shares, but not with the WD_Backup share that Time Machine Uses. Very odd. It seems the NAS must support some new version of afp. Anyone any ideas?"
Personally, I have no issues accessing my disk, just issues with TM.
EDIT: Oh, now I know why I never tried it, it's for AFP disks, not SMB. But there might be something similar for SMB and TM.
You need to get ahold of Netgear and push them to update to the newest version of Nettalk. That will solve your problem.Drobo and Symbology have already stated they will be doing so to resolve the TM problem on their NAS devices. But it should be noted for the thread that samba NAS and Windows NAS will no longer work for Time Machine. The share must be AFP 3.3 or higher.
Yeah, I was kinda hoping it wouldn't be that bad. Gonna try to get them on the line and see what they'll say.
I and my Windows Server wish you luck. But we are not holding our breath. I see a Time Capsule in my future.
Anyone know if FreeNAS supports AFP 3.3? I'm thinking about configuring a FreeNAS VM on my Windows Server 2008 box.
AH-HA! I now have a working optware package manager on my router. Just need to find an AFP package.
No...Already tried that. I spent the entire 4th of July holiday weekend trying to build a workaround for this. There is none. The ONLY things you can use TM on are:
A local Hard Drive Formatted with A Mac File System
A Time Capsule
A AFP Share on a Lion or Snow Leopard system
A Linux Server running the newest versions of nettalk.
Argh. WHY does Apple make something as simple as backing up to a network share so complicated? Right now I back up to my Linux server running Samba.
This is going to be another deal breaker issue for me which will prevent upgrading until I get an alternate device to store my TM backups on.
This is going to be another deal breaker issue for me which will prevent upgrading until I get an alternate device to store my TM backups on.
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This is what's going on: (and people need to start speaking out about it.)
These NAS devices use something called Netatalk to host AFP services, which makes Time Machine possible. NetAFP has released Netatalk 2.2 (based on GPLed and open-source code) to their paying clients which fixes Time Machine compatibility in Lion. They are refusing to release the code back to SourceForge until vendors pay them more money for development.
This is GPLed code that's being held hostage because the developer thinks he should be making more money than he is.
Links:
http://www.netafp.com/open-letter-to-the-netatalk-community-501/
Reply and reply-response:
http://www.matthewgkeller.com/blog/...nse-to-open-letter-to-the-netatalk-community/
Edit: FreeNAS works fine with 10.7, other than Time Machine if you're running the latest beta of FreeNAS. But they are unable to get this new version of netatalk into FreeNAS until Frank Lahm pushes his changes to sourceforge.
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Argh. WHY does Apple make something as simple as backing up to a network share so complicated? Right now I upgrade to my Linux server running Samba.
This is going to be another deal breaker issue for me which will prevent upgrading until I get an alternate device to store my TM backups on.
Time Machine needs these new features in AFP 3.3 to be more reliable.
What's so unreliable about Samba? I've been doing Time Machine backups using SMB since Leopard came out and I've never had a problem.
I strongly suspect this is just Apple trying to sell more Time Capsules. The TC may be an excellent product but it's a bit wasteful to buy one when I have a Linux server sitting across the house with gobs of storage in it!
File locking differences, among many other differences. This is a backup system, you want it to work as intended. It's expecting the destination to have these features, and if it doesn't then there's most likely a good reason it uses them.
Also.. if you work in any enterprise environment in the last 2 years, you know just how unreliable samba has been on the mac, and are celebrating that Apple ditched it. Most people with NAS drives are actually using netatalk for time machine support, not samba.
