Time Machine Remote Backup: How do I do this?

[timswim78]

I have a Mac at home. I would like to use Time Machine to backup my files to a linux server at a relative's house.

For the sake of bandwidth, there are a few things that I would like to do:
1. Do the initial backup at my house. Since the initial backup would be 200+GB (I shoot photos in RAW), I would like to not surpass my bandwidth cap. Also, it would take a long, long time to transfer that much stuff over standard broadband connections. Supplemental backups should be no more than 1GB or so per week.
2. Be able to connect and disconnect the network drive/share on command. This will keep Time Machine from eating up time and bandwidth with hourly backups. (Although I guess that turning Time Machine on and off would have the same effect).

What do I need to do, to set this up?

I am guessing that I will need to:
1. Setup a share on the linux server. (Not sure how to do this, but I am sure that I can figure it out with some research).
2. Connect my Mac to that share, mapped as a network drive. (How do I do this securely)?
3. Point Time Machine to the network drive, using a method like this. http://www.somelifeblog.com/2009/02/fixed-time-machine-backup-to-network.html

Any other thoughts? Is there a better solution for doing incremental backups over the Internet?

Thanks!

 

[south8212]

Never heard of it being done but if I were to try it, here is what I would do.

The best choice would be to get an external hard drive and set that up as the share. I say that because the backup drive needs to be formatted in "MAC OS Extended" to be used for time machine backups (not sure if those are rw compatible with the linux box or not). You should also be able to do the initial backup locally, set it up the share and change the location when you are connected remotely.

To access this remotely, make sure you have the correct permissions for accessing the server and the particular share. Setup a vpn connection and connect, then select the disk as your backup drive in time machine preferences.

You should be all set after that and should be able to select when the backups occur by either being connected or disconnected from the vpn.

Like I said, I have never tried it....

 

[south8212]

Interested in hearing if you tried this or found another solution.

 

[jimerman]

Works over VPN?

This is a really old thread, I know I am bringing back the dead. However, I have Lion server hosting L2TP VPN, and am able to mount the server's backup volume in Finder no problem over VPN. However, Time Machine can't find the backup volume, and when I try to select the volume, it doesn't show up in the dialog. So I can't get the backup to occur remotely, but it works great on my home network.

Anyone have a clue where to look?