Apple Time Machine backup over AFP-share hosted on Linux
Monday, March 11. 2013
Current Linux implementation (Netatalk) of Apple Filing Protocol does support all the good stuff properly. Mainly:
- DHX2 (Diffie-Hellman Key Exchange 2) -based authentication: the old auth was plain-text, this is a huge improvement, all modern OS Xs have this as mandatory
- AFP Lock Stealing, + couple of other features: See Apple's requirements for Time Machine server
In my case, there is a HFS+ sparse file on an EXT4-partition. Setting this up with Time Machine is a breeze, however TM will "think" a while before mounting the sparse file and actually running the backup. There are a couple of user testimonials that occasionally (too often) TM will freeze and fail to do a backup. Also when the failure occurs, TM will fail to continue operation and a full backup media reset will be required.
The source of my information is QNAP wiki, which describes the process on old(ish) Mac OS X and Netatalk. I got my backup running based on that information. Also, if there are earlier reported failures to backup, I'll report back here.
Current Linux implementation (Netatalk) of Apple Filing Protocol does support all the good stuff properly. Mainly:
- DHX2 (Diffie-Hellman Key Exchange 2) -based authentication: the old auth was plain-text, this is a huge improvement, all modern OS Xs have this as mandatory
- AFP Lock Stealing, + couple of other features: See Apple's requirements for Time Machine server
In my case, there is a HFS+ sparse file on an EXT4-partition. Setting this up with Time Machine is a breeze, however TM will "think" a while before mounting the sparse file and actually running the backup. There are a couple of user testimonials that occasionally (too often) TM will freeze and fail to do a backup. Also when the failure occurs, TM will fail to continue operation and a full backup media reset will be required.
The source of my information is QNAP wiki, which describes the process on old(ish) Mac OS X and Netatalk. I got my backup running based on that information. Also, if there are earlier reported failures to backup, I'll report back here.
