Netatalk 2.2 for FreeNAS 8.0.1 Beta 4 - Lion AFP & Time Machine

[garth]

That's the bit somebody else noticed. Make the filesystem read/write again and

nas#: mkdir /usr/local/etc/netatalk

 

[Alexgdb]

Excellent, working perfectly now. Thank you to all of you for your help!

 

[tungsten2k]

You are not creating a directory named with a wildcard, you are changing to that directory. This was done to make the instructions work for both the I386 and AMD386 platforms.

[edit: I have changed the instructions to explicitly rename the original gz file in case the behavior is different on I386, as I tested this only on AMD64]

[edit2: The last line of my script was copied incorrectly, it has been fixed]

[edit3: Scan believes the afp signatures need to be copied as well, so I am incorporating that change shortly (in order to survive a reboot of freenas)]

 

[Scrat]

You are not creating a directory named with a wildcard, you are changing to that directory. This was done to make the instructions work for both the I386 and AMD386 platforms. My instructions work on a vanilla system if followed explicitly.

As my script includes the command "mkdir /usr/local/etc/netatalk" I can see the instructions weren't followed, but at least you have it working now.

[edit: I have changed the instructions to explicitly rename the original gz file in case the behavior is different on I386, as I tested this only on AMD64]

I think there's a little bug in your script. You start avahi-demon twice instead of starting netatalk:

Code:

mkdir /usr/local/etc/netatalk/
/usr/local/etc/rc.d/avahi-daemon start
/usr/local/etc/rc.d/avahi-daemon start

should be:

Code:

mkdir /usr/local/etc/netatalk/
/usr/local/etc/rc.d/netatalk start
/usr/local/etc/rc.d/avahi-daemon start

Greets, Peter

 

[Scrat]

That's the bit somebody else noticed. Make the filesystem read/write again and

nas#: mkdir /usr/local/etc/netatalk

... and restart netatalk:

# /usr/local/etc/rc.d/netatalk restart

This will create the formerly missing files. To survive a reboot you have to copy the folder /usr/local/etc/netatalk/ with the contents afp_signature.conf and afp_voluuid.conf to /conf/base/etc/local/

# cp -pR /usr/local/etc/netatalk /conf/base/etc/local

Greets, Peter

 

[tungsten2k]

... and restart netatalk:

# /usr/local/etc/rc.d/netatalk restart

This will create the formerly missing files. To survive a reboot you have to copy the folder /usr/local/etc/netatalk/ with the contents afp_signature.conf and afp_voluuid.conf to /conf/base/etc/local/

# cp -pR /usr/local/etc/netatalk /conf/base/etc/local

Greets, Peter

Thanks for catching my copy/paste error. I will add this new info due to the need to copy the signature as well, although my system is working without the change. Is this needed in order to survive a reboot and then browse/mount the freenas share to setup a system not already backing up to it ?

 

[Scrat]

Thanks for catching my copy/paste error. I will add this new info due to the need to copy the signature as well, although my system is working without the change. Is this needed in order to survive a reboot and then browse/mount the freenas share to setup a system not already backing up to it ?

For me, after the reboot, the folder /usr/local/etc/netatalk was gone and I got the same error as before:

Aug 4 04:01:25 FreeNAS afpd[1969]: ERROR: Cannot create /usr/local/etc/netatalk/afp_signature.conf (No such file or directory). Using one-time signature.
Aug 4 04:01:25 FreeNAS afpd[1969]: AFP/TCP started, advertising 192.168.10.5:548 (2.2.1dev)
Aug 4 04:01:26 FreeNAS afpd[1969]: ERROR: Cannot create /usr/local/etc/netatalk/afp_voluuid.conf (No such file or directory).
Aug 4 04:01:26 FreeNAS afpd[1969]: Volume 'Timemachine_Backup': couldn't get UUID

/usr/local/etc is a link to /etc/local and /etc is recreated on boot. If you put your files in /conf/base/etc they are also recreated under /etc at reboot. Of course, when you update your FreeNAS, these changes are gone. For me it works without these two files, too. But I don't like errors in my logfiles. ;)

Greets, Peter

 

[garth]

Another Update:

I've now figured out how the adisk.service file works in conjunction with the afp_voluuid.conf file that Netatalk generates. I've updated my instructions on the first page, so head there for the details. This second part might be a little confusing so read it over a couple times to understand what is going on.

The end result is that your Time Machine will show up in the System Preferences->Time Machine->Select Disk dialog box on both 10.6 and 10.7. I believe they will also show up when restoring from Time Machine via 10.6 install disc or 10.7 recovery partition.

Have fun.

PS - I am working on the FreeBSD port update process to see if I can get the official FreeBSD Netatalk 2.2 port compiled, but my hopes are not high on this front as it looks like there will be a lot of library dependencies that will need to be updated if I proceed down this road - but more on this later.

 

[Alexgdb]

How would I get the 'TimeMachine' Drive to mount on boot of the mac, and always be discoverable by Time Machine?

 

[garth]

How would I get the 'TimeMachine' Drive to mount on boot of the mac, and always be discoverable by Time Machine?

If the goal of your question is only for Time Machine, then that shouldn't be necessary. Once Time Machine knows where your backup volume is, it will always reconnect. Unless you are changing your FreeNAS hostname and IP address and rebooting the FreeNAS box a lot, then Time Machine should not be 'losing' the location of your backup volume.

For better Time Machine integration, be sure to read Update 4 in the original post in this thread.

If you just want to automatically mount a network drive on login in OS X, then Google is your friend.

http://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=os+x+mount+drive+login&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8
http://www.maciverse.com/mount-a-network-drive-in-os-x-on-startup.html

 

[cpts]

Looks like Netatalk 2.2 has been added:

http://support.freenas.org/changeset/7083/freenas

Hope to grab a nightly build soon.

 

[garth]

That's cool - but I'm not seeing Avahi also updated. I don't think Avahi 2.6.28 (current install on Beta 4) will do what's needed for Time Machine drives to be automagically discovered in Lion/SL. I might have missed an Avahi update in the change logs.

 

[BobCochran]

FreeNAS-8.0.1-BETA4 With Changes Quits During Time Machine Backup

Hi, I applied all the changes described on the first page of this thread to FreeNAS-8.0.1-BETA4 (amd64 full install) and the backup began working...but the server quits and locks up unexpectedly and that stops the backup after transferring, at most, 6.4 Gb from my MacBook Pro running OS X Lion. The backup is wireless. I have the backup being done to a 1 Tb Western Digital green hard drive.

When I did the very first backup attempt, the FreeNAS / partition was still mounted read/write (mount -uw /). Then the server froze up and when I rebooted my thumb drive, I got warning messages that / had not been dismounted normally.

When I was trying to get a user account set up that I can log into, and which actually offers disk space, I decided to use an 80 Gb refurbished IDE hard drive that I bought for $25. This has gotten some GEOM and "SMART" errors. The refurbished drive is not SMART capable. But it does seem to mount.

Each time the backups stop, I find the FreeNAS server is unresponsive and locked up. I have to reboot the server without a normal shutdown (e.g. press the 'restart' hardware button.)

My question is, how do I deal with the backups abruptly terminating. How do I find the cause of the server locking up and crashing?

Thanks for all your help!

Bob Cochran

 

[ProtoSD]

Bob, I'm not sure about your backups, but I feel comfortable knowing I don't need any glasses to read your post! ;)

I can say I think it's bad practice to buy/use *any* disk that has been refurbished, I barely trust the new ones with my data.

 

[BobCochran]

Bob, I'm not sure about your backups, but I feel comfortable knowing I don't need any glasses to read your post! ;)

I can say I think it's bad practice to buy/use *any* disk that has been refurbished, I barely trust the new ones with my data.

I try to use larger font sizes so that low vision forum members can read the content easily.

I think you are right. The refurbished IDE drive I was trying to use as a home partition for my FreeNAS user no longer mounts. I thought perhaps the original, non-cable select IDE cable I was using was the culprit so I switched to a new cable select cable. That was when the drive quit mounting (as /mnt/myhome).

Backup attempts continue to fail also. They always stop dead after just a few gigabytes of data transfer. Time Machine issues an error that the backup disk may have ejected unexpectedly. What I will do is go out and get a small SATA drive to use as a home partition.

 

[cpts]

Hi Bob,

While I've no doubt your refurbished drive might be causing some problems for you, you may also want to give the latest nightly builds a try as they include a working Netatalk 2.2 installation and other bug fixes.

Worth a shot.

Tony

 

[BobCochran]

Hi Bob,

While I've no doubt your refurbished drive might be causing some problems for you, you may also want to give the latest nightly builds a try as they include a working Netatalk 2.2 installation and other bug fixes.

Worth a shot.

Tony

Hi Tony, Where can I find the nightly builds? I'm quite willing to use them.

Thanks a lot!

Bob

 

[BobCochran]

I followed Tony's advice and got a nightly FreeNAS 8 build from here

http://sourceforge.net/projects/freenas/files/FreeNAS-8-nightly/

On the new build I set up a user named 'bobc' who is a member of group 'staff' and the uid of bobc on the FreeNAS server is the same as that of the user 'bobc' on my MacBook.

I have disconnected the IDE hard drive and am now using only a 1 Tb ZFS volume on ada1. I configured this with world-writable permissions and set it up as an AFP share named timemachine1. When I started the AFP service, Time machine asked me to connect to the share right away as registered user 'bobc'.

Then Time Machine on my Mac put together a 68 Gb backup and began doing this wirelessly. It was a lot more automated. However Time Machine abruptly terminated after transferring about 6.53 Gb of data to the FreeNAS backup volume.

I hope the attachment shows the error message Time Machine is giving me.

Any ideas what I am doing wrong?

Thanks

Bob Cochran

 

[Brand]

I try to use larger font sizes so that low vision forum members can read the content easily.

I work in IT as a systems administrator and it is my experience that when users have poor eyesight they just lower their screen resolution or make the the font size larger to accommodate. I don't think that you need to use larger font sizes for them since they already have it taken care of. Using a larger font also creates more of a nuisance for the members of the forum that have normal eyesight. If it is really you that has poor vision I would suggest trying one of the solutions I mentioned earlier. Please don't take this the wrong way as I don't intend it that way.

 

[Willem Hulshof]

iSCSI is also a good alternative to backup your Apple with Time Machine.

After a lot of trial and error I finally got successful in getting Time Machine to work again via iSCSI and GlobalSAN initiator (free).
iSCSI is a very lightweight protocol with considerable speed. In each case comparable with afp. If the Netatalk port in Freens will be Lion compatible again you'll have two alternatives. For the time being it is the least complex way of backup to Freenas with Time Machine.