AFP - TIME MACHINE - CATALINA

[Jocko]

Patch is available,here: https://plugout.net/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=3149

[patmol12]

Hello,
After the first backup, which complete successfully, the next one doesn't find the remote disk, which force me to delete the share, delete the username, delete the TM Job, and then re-run everything from scratch...... Which is highly problematic. :hammerhead

I also ran the patch without any improvement to my situation ..

I'm on macOS Big Sur.

Any idea ?

Thanks ! :)

[Greentrousers]

hi, i've been messing around a bit trying about every combination user-side, but Time Machine, with the lastest fvdw (and relative Size patches) refuses to work (at least for sure with Big Sur).
Seemed to work about fine with OSes before Catalina (from what i read). Since Catalina with the AFP drop and radical changes many NAS system had troubles and this is no exception.

For beta-testing report purposes that's my situation.
With many struggles after reboots, create fileshare, delete recreate, i get to create a first backup. but then the TimeMachine window won't find again the .sparsebundle file.

The file, after completition, checking the size had the correct 90gb size, but after a while, unmounting and mounting back the disk trying to get the TM to see the file showed a "Zero Kilobite" size again.

I'm really sad about, i spent a lot of time on this little machine (nwsp2max classic)... i found it abandoned and with a completely detached sata port from the mainboard, soldered it back and spent A LOT of time to get a working OS.
it's old but still has a gigabit ethernet and i love the design but i mostly has no use for it rather than TimeMachine automatic backups

As suggested from Jocko the answer should be configurating the Samba configuration file for the refererring Mac OS trough a .ini file.
I tried messing around direclty with the samba configuration file, changing values with onestly not a full undestanding of what i was doing (but following some pitch from the net) but as it was said the file would be rewritten by the system even before for it to takes effect. and regarding the .ini file i didn't understood how to do it but it's all things a bit beyond my capabilities

[Jocko]

Hi


Indeed on Bigsur, TM works differently. Next WE I go to migrate my virtual Catalina version to bigsur and deepen again this issue

[Jocko]

Can you tell me is it a similar issue you have with your Bigsur:https://community.synology.com/enu/forum/1/post/138467

please to note this :

Just hit this problem & I have found a possible cause (I think!). If AFP is enabled on an "empty" time machine share, the initial sparsebundle is created & the mac then reports 0Kb available (hence the failure). The workaround that seems to work for me is to disable AFP, select the Synology time machine share on the Mac (you will notice that it now shows smb://<host> Note that I also enabled time machine broadcast via smb in the file services / advanced tab.

Doing this seems to allow time machine to work correctly. I'd guess that re-enabling AFP _after_ doing this will leave the access method as smb but I've not bothered to try this. There seems to be no other way of forcing the Mac to use SMB for time machine backups.

[Jocko]

So if you use samba4 on the nas, try to disable afp server (which is no longer supported by Apple) and keep only avahi (ZeroConf)

[patmol12]

Hello,
I tried this approach (deactivate AFP) and after the first initial backup, Time Machine still cannot find the backup again..

Sorry!

[Greentrousers]

Yes i tested it again after disabling AFP. i managed to get the first, complete backup but then the FileShare dedicated to TimeMachine gets unaccessible, either for the TimeMachine app but also just trying to access it from finder.

It's possible to access again the file share only by making it public, because using the username and password would give error

(username and password for the fileshare is necessary for the backup to get it started, because trying to backup in the first place with public file share would fail and the program would say that wasn't possible to create the backup disk)

By making it public it's possible to see the .sparseboundle file created, but as size "--" and no content if checking with "show content".

It's worth noting that if checked from the administration panel of the nas the space gets occupied, but either TimeMachine program or finder cant access the fileshare again after backup completition. or if you access it like making it public the backup has no size in finder, and in TM window also its not seen, indeed would show 895GB of free space when should see 90gigs less.

after the first backup, wich teoretically completes up correctly (was weird because it was showing 10 minutes and then skipped to completed), can be also seen from TM windows the day and hours when done and even "enter time machine" window works. The problem is when you try to get another backup it would say that the nas is not available right now, and also finder would fail to access it (also after a reboot, of both mac and nas)

Edit:

I forgot to mention that in previous testing if the TM fileshare is being accessed while the backup is created everything is ok, the disk file is there, HAS the right size, wich increses while the backup progresses, and has content.

[Jocko]

Thank you for your testing.

Maybe there is an issue on the owner and permissions (BigSur would be more restrictive). So Need to deepen this point as on nas rebooting, the firmware restores some permissions on the parent folder (so on the sharename folder)

[Greentrousers]

any news?