Do we have an Official Apple Time Machine Mt. Lion thread?

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howarddavidp

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Hello,

I have searched the forums here, and I have seen a few posts about the new Mac OSX 10.7 and 10.8 breaking the AFP protocol on many devices, including the latest builds of FreeNAS.

What I was wondering was, can a mod consolidate the threads, and make ONE sticky for this issue/incident/problem?

I have yet to get it working, but I plan to try again this weekend. I have read many sites about making changes on the MAC to allow/show non-standard AFP devices to be used in time machine, as well as making changes to the text files for Time Machine config files. So far, no joy. I have a dated 2008 MBP, as well as a older Mac Pro. None of these work, even if I can see the device in Finder(on the network). I also tried making a local .sparsebundle file, then copying it to the share on the device, and try it that way. NaDa!

If I am asking too much, then I don't mind if a mod deletes my post. But I feel like I am not alone, and while a few have lucked out, the solution is not clear and concise for all. I like FreeNAS and would love to see an official, consolidate, graphical solution (I mean screen shots) that all could use to get through this.

Thanks for looking,

David
 

seggerman

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David,

I'm running FreeNAS 8.3.1 and macs with 10.8 (10.7, 10.6 in the past) with a Timemaschine and "normal" AFP share. Everything standard OOTB no mods etc. and everything works fine (running 24x7). Three macs (white macbook 10.8, current macbook 10.8, Mac mini (2010) 10.7 ) use FreeNAS as a TM backup and I never had any problems.
The TM share is setup as "Time Machine" and the AFP share is set up as "default". I use guest authorization since I don't need any user specific authentication.

In a nutshell, everything works OOTB.

Alexander
 

cyberjock

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The reason why Time Machine(and Apple issues in general) are such a pain is that:

1. It's an Apple product. Because its an Apple product a lot of it works by PFM (Pure F*cking Magic). Nobody knows what the logic tree is for it, just that it works or it doesn't.
2. Most Apple users typically are very basic computer users(think "Safari is the Internet") or extremely advanced users. Those "middle of the road" that will have a problem and manage to eventually figure it out and post the solution are almost non-existent. The advanced guys will plow through the problem and laugh the whole time because its so elementary to them. They won't think to post that there was a problem or the solution because it was pretty easy for them. I don't post everything I do with FreeNAS either. Most of the solutions to problems in a forum setting are by those middle-of-the-road users that can get stuff done with enough determination but won't know the answer right off the bat.
3. There just aren't that many Mac users on the forum. It's probably <5%. Of those, how many have problems? Maybe 5% of those. So there might be 10 users that are Apple users on the whole forum.
4. I could be wrong, but I believe that the AFP protocol is not open source. So support for AFP is by reverse engineering. Not exactly the most ideal situation. Don't like it? Blame Apple.. See #1.
5. Time Machine is not open source. So how do you troubleshoot the program? Error logs. But only to a certain extent are they useful. Then it's just "guessing" how the software works. Don't like it? Blame Apple.. See #1.

Anyway, to get back on topic. Look at the thread. The OP had a complaint about Time Machine not working. Someone else replied that it works out of the box for him. So what can we take away from that? More than likely the OP has something special with his configuration that makes it not work. So where do you begin? There's like 1 whole handful of users in the forum to bounce support off of. Not enough to really expect amazing support. But ask about Windows or Linux help and there's probably 100s of people around here that can help.

You bought a product that is used by the minority. You need to seek out that minority and try to solve it. If you put together a guide for finding and fixing issues with Time Machine I'd be happy to sticky it. But sticky-ing a thread that has no useful guide, instructions, or troubleshooting/repair is not something that generally happens or that many mods would support. If you look at our stickies they're all packed full of knowledge, wisdom, lessons learned, links to other amazing sources of info, etc. There's nothing like that from anyone with a Mac. :(
 

cyberjock

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When I read that thread I knew you'd comment about it. :P

No way to know unfortunately. Neither thread really points a finger at a specific hardware or software setting that may be out of place or not functioning correctly.

That thread provides an error message, which is very bland and simply shows that afp "had a problem". No real clues besides that.

This thread has no errors but simply provides information that its broke on some systems.

If there's one certainty with networking its that troubleshooting problems with networking is far from easy without lots of information pointing to the proverbial smoking gun. The issue could be with the desktop OS, the server OS, the hardware on the desktop or server and both of their settings, or the cabling/network switches and their associated settings. Very hard to narrow down. If you had 10 machines on a home LAN I could make one of them randomly work and not work and I bet you'd spend hours trying to find out what I did.

Then, to make things even "more fun" most people aren't deep level techs(discussed above) so they may not know FreeNAS too well. Doesn't help trying to troubleshoot one bit when the server and its hardware could always be the culprit because you(as the end user) aren't familiar with the inner workings.

Don't take offense to that last statement, when it comes to AFP I know even less than you do. I know its for apple devices, and that's it! LOL
 

dennison

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Yes , I am a bit worried about this being something I can't solve, which is unfortunately because I really had been counting on freenas to solve my server needs. :-( The part that is so strange for me is it working on my older laptop and not my new one which is still essentially stock (nothing been changed about the system). I have extra parts and I'm going to set up a Freenas 9 installation to see what the experience is with that. I would hate to have to build a windows server!!
 

cyberjock

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Any reason why you can't use CIFS or NFS? Even if I had Apple devices I think I'd rather stick with CIFS and NFS since that's not locked down reverse engineered to make it work.
 

dennison

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Well in regards to my problem, I did try CIFS but I still had the same problem. I don't have the logs from when I did it, but it dropped all the same. Which leads me to suspect something about osx 10.8 or the thunderbolt ethernet bridge/adaptor thingy.
 

cyberjock

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Yeah.. I don't have a Mac, so I can't even begin to help. But if someone wants to buy me one I'd be happy to spend some time trying to find the problem. :P
 

pirateghost

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I have a Mac book air. When I create an afp share and configure it for time machine it works great for a few days. Then the MBA just loses it and can't seem to reconnect properly. I don't think it's a FreeNAS issue though. I think osx just sucks

Sent from my Galaxy Nexus
 

jgreco

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Time Machine is a PITA. It generally stops working correctly after a random amount of time. Does not appear to be a FreeNAS issue, as I've seen other devices do it too. Think Apple just really wants you to buy their stuff...
 

papageorgi

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Jul 16, 2013
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have some macs at my location i avoid AFP for all the reasons previously mentioned as downsides. of note, apple will as of mac os x 10.9 "mavericks" no longer use their standard sharing protocol afp but will switch to cifs (as seen here on an apple propaganda site http://appleinsider.com/articles/13...fp-file-sharing-to-smb2-in-os-x-109-mavericks). as mentioned previously previously i would use nfs (time machine will not work well or at all with cifs at least until 10.9 is available or later, who knows really). if you would like a simple way to use nfs on a mac you can use "nfs manager" and it's free....of course you could use "terminal" to do this as well and see a plethora of documentation on that subject online.
 
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