Leopard 10.5.2, Airport EXTREME and Time Machine

Jan 23, 2008 | Comment | Tags:

[edit] D’oh! I meant Extreme, not Express. Old habits die hard…

For the past few days I’ve been tinkering with making Time Machine backup to a hard drive connected to an Airport Extreme, based on questions posed by some features found in Leopard 10.5.2.

The Airport Extreme attached drive consistently mounts and is easily written to and read from, but after choosing it as the backup location in Time Machine, it simply won’t work no matter how loud I curse at it.
:(

Below are a few lines from the Console detailing the actions of the system when the backup begins and as it fails.

Jan 23 20:47:27 sm /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[547]: Backup requested by user
Jan 23 20:47:27 sm /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[547]: Starting standard backup
Jan 23 20:47:28 sm /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[547]: Creating disk image /Volumes/wd/sm_001b63b0891d.sparsebundle
Jan 23 20:48:11 sm kernel[0]: hfs: Initializing the journal (joffset 0×747000 sz 0×1800000)…
Jan 23 20:48:47 sm /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[547]: Backup requested due to disk attach
Jan 23 20:48:50 sm /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[547]: Error 22 creating backup disk image
Jan 23 20:48:50 sm /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[547]: Failed to create disk image
Jan 23 20:48:50 sm /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[547]: Backup failed with error: 20

For testing purposes, I had done the following:

  • tested using both fat32 and journaled partitions on a 250gb drive
  • partitioned and formatted the drive as journaled, guid, single partition
  • tested the backup locally using Time Machine - this worked
  • reset the Airport, rebooted the computer
  • attempted to use Time Machine on the mounted Airport partition

A few notes:

  • when using the drive locally, Time Machine creates a ‘Backups.backupdb’ folder and starts writing the files
  • when using the drive via Airport, it attempts to create (as seen above), a sparse disk image, as if it were a normal network drive
  • testing was performed on a Western Digital 250gb Passport and an Iomega 1tb disk
  • testing Time Machine to a Windows based share also failed with the same error as the Airport

So, sadly, this leaves us in the same boat we were a few days ago. Hopefully it’s just a switch that needs to be flipped when the update is released, or perhaps we’ll see the ability to use Time Machine with network/Airport disks available as a paid upgrade (a la Touch apps).

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Viewing 15 Comments

    • ^
    • v
    Just hold down the option key when you click on 'Change Disk...' and you should be able to select all NAS volumes.
    • ^
    • v
    I had the same problem but in the end I made Time Machine backup properly to a hard drive attached to an Airport Extreme by using Disk Utility to create a sparsebundle image with exactly the same name as the one Time Machine *tries* to create on the drive. Simply create it using Disk Utility and copy it to your time machine volume - it works!
    • ^
    • v
    I found an easy way to make this all work. A very small utility called iTime Machine which you can download for free from http://www.creationrobot.com/2008/01/itimemachi...
    • ^
    • v
    I had the same problem, and got it working by creating a sparsebundle with the same filename, as suggested above. However, I wasn't able to create the image on the remote volume - I got the same errors that backupd reported when I tried. Instead I created it on the local disk, then copied it to the AFP share. I'm backing up now, will report success once it completes (or doesn't...)
    • ^
    • v
    To those that have used the terminal hack: Do your Time Machine backups continue to run INCREDIBLY slowly?

    I had no problems getting TM to recognize my AEBS as an Airport Disk, but the initial backup (100 GB) took 80 HOURS, and I saw no improvement with the speed on subsequent backups.

    Maybe it's something in my setup...but regardless, this isn't a solution for me. Not to mention the fact that hacking backup software doesn't strike me as the best of ideas in the first place...

    Would love to hear from those who are actively backing up to an AEBS...
    • ^
    • v
    I bought an Apple AirPort Extreme 802.11n some time ago and I find it useless as a file server.

    I plugged a 1TB Iomega hard drive to it and, while read performance over the GigE port is mostly OK, write performance sucks. I was never able to get more than 2-5 MB/s when doing random writes, no matter I used AFP or SMB. Now I have the same drive plugged to a Linux box over FireWire 400 and I get 20 MB/s while doing random writes over NFS.

    What I find annoying is that I think AirPort Extreme mounts the USB disk in write-through mode instead of write-back, mostly because you can unplug the hard disk without having to tell the base station. Additionally, even with the latest firmware, the base station has crashed while doing heavy I/O.

    So, I'm done with Apple attempts at making cheap file servers. I'm now happily using an NFS-based Linux file server which support Kerberos and single sign-on and has much better reliability and stability than the AirPort Extreme.
    • ^
    • v
    On accident I got mine to work. Here is what I did . First off I hooked up my External drive to another mac opened up enable sharing in System Preferences. Did a Time Machine backup on that machine to the the external drive then gained access to my share drive through my MBP made sure I can connect and made sure to save password in keychain. Opened up Time Machine and set it up on the shared drive and it worked . I have been doing this since 10.5.1

    I replaced my D link router with a airport extreme (one week before I found out about Time Capsule I was kicking my self ) So I plugged the drive into Airport and set up the Ext Disk with password etc. Went back to MBP and repeated what I did with the networked drive and worked just as before. Now with my other mac well i had to do a fresh time machine back up but now both are working off the AIRPORT disk.

    My guess is once time machine activates and identifies a disk it puts a hidden file on the disk that allows it to be used .

    When last thing I forgot need to do one terminal command on each machine you want :
    defaults write com.apple.systempreferences TMShowUnsupportedNetworkVolumes 1


    I hope all this helps
    • ^
    • v
    I’ve been using Time Machine with my AirDisk via the Terminal hack smoothly for a few months now. Like on your machine it began by creating a sparse disk image in the root directory of the AirDisk (named by my computer’s shared name and its AirPort address). Yours seems to be failing at creating the disk image. Try fixing it by using Disk Utility to manually create a sparse disk image named sm_001b63b0891d.sparsebundle on the drive before selecting it as your backup volume.

    Hmm. Interesting, I’ll give that a shot and report back.

    I would love to see if you have any luck with this. I've hacked my setup and I still have absolutely no luck getting Time Machine to work with an AirDisk at all.
    • ^
    • v
    I had a similar problem, but it was because I did the original backup with the disk attached to my MacBook's USB port, and then attached the drive to my desktop and tried to do a remote backup. Got the whole "not enough room" thing. So I wiped the drive, attached it to the desktop(it's a SATA drive, so I just wired it straight to the board), and started fresh with a completely new Time Machine backup of the MacBook, and it worked just fine. I get the same spdi on my remote drive itself, but when I do backups/restores(I haven't hammered on it, but I did throw a few things in the trash & bring them back and also it appears to be updating regularly), a disk image mounts on my local machine that shows up with the ‘Backups.backupdb’ folder.

    It is godawful slow(~5 hrs to do the initial 80GB of backup), but the fact that it will regularly update without having a dangling USB anchor on it works great.
    • ^
    • v

    Both?

    Okay, well then you are saying that Apple has broken network backups from 10.5.1 to 10.5.2, which I don’t believe.
    10.5.1 currently supports using another Leopard machine with an AFP sharepoint as a Time Machine backup location. Without any hacks, you can setup a share on any Leopard machine and mount that share with another Leopard machine and use that to backup to.
    There is this big confusion that network Time Machine backup is broken in 10.5.1. It isn’t.



    I don't think anyone is saying that network backups are broken in 10.5.1 as they are not, there is a document on the apple site about it detailing what is required for it to work.

    What is broken that was in the Leopard GM is backup to NAS (AFP/FAT/SMB/HFS, whatever) and none Leopard hosted network drives, like windows servers at the office mounted over SMB. If you want to do network backups in 10.5.1, it has to be to another Mac running Leopard or Leopard Server.

    This is where the confusion lies, in the definition of network drives.
    • ^
    • v
    Have you tried an AFP partition map instead of GUID? That's how I formatted my drives (Iomega eGo, attached to the AirPort, Iomega StorCenter via Ethernet as both an AFP and a SMB mount). Works great to both.
    • ^
    • v
    Hi Mattyohe.
    I’ll have to check on another machine tonight, but I seem to recall that the only way to backup to a shared drive is with a hack (either this line: defaults write com.apple.systempreferences TMShowUnsupportedNetworkVolumes 1 or a method like this one: http://uneasysilence.com/archive/2007/10/12595/ ).
    Again, not positive and can’t test right now, but it almost certainly doesn’t work ‘out of the box’. Are you sure you didn’t use an app like iTimeMachine at some point?



    100% sure no hacks took place.

    In 10.5.0, if the volume you were backing up to wasn't as large or larger than the volume, Time Machine would complain that there wasn't enough space. Now in 10.5.1, you can use Time Machine to backup the current data to a drive if the data currently on the volume you want to backup, is less than the volume you are backing up to.

    What's more, is that Time Machine also respects quotas. I have setup a 10.5.1 client with a couple sharepoints, and multiple users with quotas on that volume, then if a machine wants to use a sharepoint as their backup, it will do so, up to the quota that I defined.
    • ^
    • v
    I've current got TimeMachine backing up to a 500GB MyBook hanging off the back of a G4 PowerMac running 10.5 Server. I shared the drive and marked it as a TimeMachine destination and it just showed up as an available disk to all m other Macs. I'm running 10.5.1 on all machines.
    • ^
    • v
    Hi Mattyohe.

    I'll have to check on another machine tonight, but I seem to recall that the only way to backup to a shared drive is with a hack (either this line: defaults write com.apple.systempreferences TMShowUnsupportedNetworkVolumes 1 or a method like this one: http://uneasysilence.com/archive/2007/10/12595/ ).

    Again, not positive and can't test right now, but it almost certainly doesn't work 'out of the box'. Are you sure you didn't use an app like iTimeMachine at some point?
    • ^
    • v

    Both?


    Okay, well then you are saying that Apple has broken network backups from 10.5.1 to 10.5.2, which I don't believe.

    10.5.1 currently supports using another Leopard machine with an AFP sharepoint as a Time Machine backup location. Without any hacks, you can setup a share on any Leopard machine and mount that share with another Leopard machine and use that to backup to.

    There is this big confusion that network Time Machine backup is broken in 10.5.1. It isn't.

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