Contributing Pre and Post Scrub hooks for avoiding time machine issues

[ser_rhaegar]

I've had my laptop TM backup become corrupted once so far on FreeNAS. I don't remember exactly what caused it, but it was related to my laptop and disconnecting from the network/sleep or something. Anyways, I restored the last good backup copy from a snapshot and continued along without issue, no data loss. This was when I started with FreeNAS 3-4 weeks ago. Hasn't happened since.

EDIT: Also the backup originated from a Time Capsule and was migrated to FreeNAS. Did not corrupt for a while after that. So the corruption wasn't related to moving it off the TC.

 

[fracai]

I totally agree. And when someone buys me a Mac, even an older Mac, I'll try to reproduce the problem. I've already got a series of experiments I'd want to do just to prove what the problem is, or at least what the problem isn't. ;)

Care to share what those experiments are? I can't say that I'll be able to run them immediately, but I'd be interested to see your take and would indeed run them when I get the time.

On my own network I've had two laptops backing up via TM for quite a while without major issues. Occassionally, someone will close the laptop while it's backing up, which sometimes corrupts the image, but I can fix that by rolling back to the last snapshot before the corrupt one started.
Under 9.2.1.2 I've also seen TM refuse to backup because the volume is "already in use". This has always been fixed by restarting the AFP service, and sometimes also resetting TM on the client (this doesn't lose any backup data).

Overall, it's been pretty solid.

 

[cyberjock]

For starters, I'd be doing AFP, CIFS, and maybe NFS, changing permissions, scheduling scrubs before, during, and after backups...

It wouldn't be a "run these 3 tests" and the results of the tests would determine what test I run next.