Leopard Server - Time Machine Backup - Full

IHi, I have Leopard Server (10.5.2) running on a Mac Pro. Its is setup with 1 Boot Drive and a pair Mirrored Data Drives. It also has a large External Drive that the Data from the Mirrored Drives is backed up onto via Time Machine. The Boot Drive is excluded from the Time Machine Backup. After a couple of weeks Time Machine reported that the External Drive was full and Time Machine stopped working. I was under the impression Time Machine would delete older files and replace them with new files. To get around this I have replaced the External with an even larger drive, but guess this will report the same problem soon. Has anyone got any ideas why Time Machine isn't doing what its meant to? Cheers.

No - Leopard Server acting as a File Sharer and Retrospect Backup Server. No false volume/data sizes are listed. Its just filled the external Lacie RAID Drive and is refusing to discard old TM data to create enough room for newer TM data.
I've tried reformatting external since first posted and all works great until the disk is full and the problem reoccurs.
The reason TM filling drive up fast is because the server is accessed my a group of designers storing a lot of data. It would just be great to give designers ability to recover files at various stages through a job process.

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Best Setup for Lion Server Time Machine Backup with Drobo?

I've been thinking about this a lot, yet I don't feel I have a good solution for this, so I'm going to throw it out to the community.
I have a home server setup using a Mac Mini running Lion Server 10.7.2 with a Firewire 800 Drobo attached. The Drobo is used for both Time Machine backups and files. I also have a Powerbook G4 running Leopard and a MacBook 2.4 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo with Lion 10.7.2 which connect to the Server and the Drobo wirelessly thorugh an Airport Extreme.
I want to use Time Machine to have all of my computers back up to the server & Drobo, but realize there are several ways to go, each with their pluses and minuses:
Server Time Machine Backup:
+ Centralizes backup process, rules, and other elements
+ Currently Mac Mini is backing up to the Drobo correctly using this process
+ Have setup size limit on Server backup so that it does not eat up file space
- Would combine laptop backups with server backup into one sparse image: this would lead to the computer with the largest backup needs taking up too much space
Client-Driven Time Machine Backup:
+ Allows for customization of backup processes by computer
+ Can setup specific space requirements for each computer
+ Backups are separate from each other
- Wireless backup from laptops to Drobo is not functioning currently
Any thoughts or experiences on how best to set this up? I tend to do most of my work on the MacBook, hence I am concerned about it having it's backup space eaten up by the server, but that may be more of a theoretical issue than a real one.
Thanks in advance for your help!

Well I'm not sure if I am following you but I will explain how I set mine up. When I got the Drobo I inserted 2 drives and selected the highest available volume I could (16TB). My drives are 4 TB each and I knew I would soon add 2 more. Then Drobo did its thing and prepared these drives. The Drobo shows up on my mini desktop as an external drive. When I log into my server from my other computer I can see the mini server volume and the Drobo volume. I can access each no problem. They act as regular volumes. Soon after I added the second two drives and everything stayed the same meaning I could still see and access the Drobo on the desktop of my mini. So it sounds like you used the Drobo dashboard to partition yours for two volumes? Are they both showing on the desktop?
"Maybe the Drobo needs to be mounted on the desktop to be considered AFP feature enabled." I could be wrong and hopefully someone will correct me but I think the Drobo (or volumes) have to be mounted on the desktop to work with AFP.

How to reinstall on client from Lion Server Time Machine backup?

I have a Mac Mini running Lion Server and a black MacBook running Lion. I recently needed to to perform a format and reinstall of the MacBook, so I used the MacBook's Recovery HD partition and reinstalled Lion. I then went back to Recovery HD to reinstall apps from my Time Machine backup' which is managed by the Lion Server Mac Mini. On first attempt, I saw the right files, but in the process it hung. I recently tried to do it again, and now it claims that there are no backups found.
My suspicion is that as this is a Lion Server managed backup, it bundles the server backup and the MacBook backup in the same bundle. Revovery HD looks for the latest compete bundle, then finds the matching backup for the MacBook. However, if the Mini is continuing backups of its own, the more recent bundle backups only have mini info, not the MackBook, hence they "disappeared".
I can see older backups when I look at the backup drive, so I suspect that my MacBook files are still there.
Any suggestions on how to recover and get my MacBook files reinstalled? I'm new to this home server thing, so any help would be greatly appreciated!
Jason

One partition 2.5TB will be my new Time Machine Backups and the other 2.5TB for iTunes Library so I never have to worry about this again.
Your worry now is what will you do when the single hard drive containing both your library and its backup makes a screeching sound one day and is toast, or get stolen?
from a YouTube video
Uh-oh, those unspecific and sometimes incorrect YouTube videos. I dislike those things. I watched one once and some kid droned on in a barely audible monotone for about 5 minutes to show how to do something to which I could have typed instructions in two sentences.
Downloading (using iOS or computer) past purchases from the App Store, iBookstore, and iTunes Store - http://support.apple.com/kb/ht2519

Are files in "Latest" folder in Time Machine backup full versions

I need to transfer several gigabytes of files from a Time Machine Backup of an older iMac to a new Mac Mini. Can I just connect the external drive with the Time Machine backup on it to the Mac Mini, open the Backups.backupdb folder and copy all of the files in the "Latest" backup? Will these be full versions of the files? I spoke with a couple of Apple Support techs and one said that all of the backups were "threaded" together, thus my concern about getting full versions when I just drag and drop from the Backups.backupdb folder rather than going through Time Machine or Migration Assistant. The other tech said yes, the files in the "Latest" folder in the Backups.backupdb would be full versions, but I'm still not convinced.
Would prefer not to go the Migration Assistant or "restoring" through Time Machine. In some of my tests I wasn't comfortable with the way it worked.
Has anybody done this before - copying files directly from the Backups.backupdb folder rather than "restoring" through Time Machine?
--Newsads

I need to transfer several gigabytes of files from a Time Machine Backup of an older iMac to a new Mac Mini. Can I just connect the external drive with the Time Machine backup on it to the Mac Mini, open the Backups.backupdb folder and copy all of the files in the "Latest" backup? Will these be full versions of the files? I spoke with a couple of Apple Support techs and one said that all of the backups were "threaded" together, thus my concern about getting full versions when I just drag and drop from the Backups.backupdb folder rather than going through Time Machine or Migration Assistant. The other tech said yes, the files in the "Latest" folder in the Backups.backupdb would be full versions, but I'm still not convinced.
Would prefer not to go the Migration Assistant or "restoring" through Time Machine. In some of my tests I wasn't comfortable with the way it worked.
Has anybody done this before - copying files directly from the Backups.backupdb folder rather than "restoring" through Time Machine?
--Newsads

Leopard Server Time Machine Questions

We've been running Time Machine to backup client data for about 20 users for a number of months. We've set this up with Time Machine saving to a 750GB RAID 1 external drive mounted as a share point. Each user has a maximum disk quota on the share point (set up using 'edquota'). We now have some questions about how Time Machine is supposed to work:
1) We're starting to get errors that Time Machine has run out of space for individual users. We understood that Time Machine would simply delete the oldest backups and then continue (as it does with standard Time Machine on an individual Mac) but this doesn't seem to happen. Instead we get a warning that there isn't enough space. Is this correct for Server-based Time Machine or is there something we can/should do to make Time Machine behave 'normally' and auto-delete oldest backups to make space for new backups?
2) We've used 'edquota', 'quotacheck' and 'repquota' commands to create our user quotas on a share point. However we can't find any way of removing an individual user's quota completely - it seems we can change their quota but we can't remove them and start again without removing the user completely from the server. Is there any way of resetting and/or removing a user's disk quota on a share point, including clearing down all their data? For example, we have one user that has 3GB of 10GB quota 'in use' even when all their data has been removed manually. There are no hidden folders/files etc. but 'quotacheck says they are still using 3GB!
3) We have an HP Ultrium 960 LTO-3 SCSI tape drive. Does anyone know how we can backup our Time Machine data onto these tapes for off-site archives? We've looked at EMC Retrospect 8.1 but this doesn't seem to work properly with Time Machine data (and seems to be generally flakey!). Does anyone know of general OS X/Unix drivers for this type of device that would allow us to use Unix commands ('tar' etc.). Alternatively can anyone recommend a backup software solution that actually works with Time Machine data?
4) Can anyone recommend a known working solution to keeping long term archives of Time Machine data?
Thanks for any help!

Thanks for a quick response!
We only backup selected client data, excluding system, apps, music, photos etc. i.e. only company data not personal data or general system data (our client systems are built from a common standard build brick). So 10GB-25GB is fine for many months of Time Machine backups for our user population.
We like Time Machine because the user doesn't have to do anything for backing up, it works automatically and the user can recover their 'oops' files without tech support help. So we're keen to get the benefits of Time Machine for several months of immediate backups that users can deal with themselves, but also we'd like some kind of longer term off-site archive capability - this is why we'd like to tape the Time Machine data.
We don't have a working tape solution at present. We have an old Retrospect 6 licence which explicitly does nothing (but complain!) with Time Machine data. We tried a trial licence of Retrospect 8.1 but it seems flakey in general and did not cope reliably with Time Machine data. We wondered about Bru but we'd have to remove Retrospect 6 (which we're keeping in case we need to recover from old archive tapes).
Currently our server is backed up using a combination of techniques:
1) Time Machine of the server itself (system and data)
2) Time Machine of the company data share point onto an external 750GB RAID 1 drive (2 active disks mirrored + 1 spare disk)
3) Weekly 'breaking' of RAID 1 mirror using a spare drive (i.e. weekly rotation of mirror drive)
4) Weekly clones of server system material (but not data) onto FireWire external drive
5) Monthly clone of RAID 1 onto another external FireWire drive (we intend to rotate this with another identical drive)
Can you confirm the situation regarding Time Machine when it runs out of space - how do we get it to 'roll over' old backup data?
Thanks again

Migration Assistant not seeing OS X Server time machine backups

Hello,
I use my OS X Server box as a time machine server, to which my other computers back up, just like you would to a time capsule. However, I now want to use one of those backups to restore to a new computer. When I try to use migration assistant to do this, it sees my server machine, but it says there are no backups on it. I noticed on the hard drive the server uses to back up the clients, the sparse bundles are saved under a "Shared Items" folder, unlike what happens if you do time machine backups connected directly to an external disc with USB, where the backups directory is at the top level directory.
Any ideas what could be going on here? As it is it looks like no time machine backups managed by my server machine are usable by migration assistant.

In the sidebar of a Finder window on the client, select the icon representing the startup volume ("Macintosh HD," unless you gave it a different name.) At the top level of the volume are folders with these names, among others:
Applications
Library
System
Enter Time Machine and select the most recent snapshot, which is behind the frontmost window. Are those folders present in the snapshot?

"Latest Backup" time/date is incorrect for OS X Server Time Machine backups

I administer a OS X Server that provides Time Machine backups for clients across our small business network. I'm running Server on a Mac Mini (2.3 GHz i7 with 8GB RAM), and after going from Mavericks to Yosemite (and from Server 3 to Server 4) the other day, the TM backups are still running hourly, but the "Latest Backup" times are incorrect. Has anyone noticed this behavior? In case it matters, none of the clients currently being backed up are Yosemite clients. I mentioned this because for our older clients (10.6), the "Latest Backup" times/dates were always listed as "Unknown" in Server 3, and continue to be in Server 4. Thanks!

I also had to restart the server and client after applying the "fix" I described above. Basically, no user should have multiple, simultaneous file sharing sessions on the server. But even clearing the user sessions does not resolve the problem beyond the next Time Machine backup, so I also tried disabling and enabling file sharing, but the problem also returns after doing this. Only restarting both the client and server after clearing the sessions has worked for me when I have this problem. The problem may return much later, but this work aroudn definitely works as a temporary solution.
Next time I encounter this problem I will try restarting just the server or just the client, because it is unlikely that the problem exists due to something on both systems. Server 3.x is definitely not as stable as it should be, but for my use, it is getting the job done.

Restore Lion OS from Lion Server Time Machine Backup?

I am running a Intel Imac 2008 clean install SL then Lion upgrade, followed by Lion Server install. I have multiple home macs, and intnded the server as a way to monitor and restrict kids internet use. In short, it has changes/screwed up multiple programs, and complicated home sharing issues considerably. Mail on the server machine has permission problems (cannot send mail, unable to sign), Spotlight in mail is non-functioning, finder spotlight searches are inconsistent, etc. I want to revert to plain old Lion.
I have done disk utility/verify disk and verified/repaired permissions, and have 'fiddled' (i'm not an expert) in the keychain/certificates areas, but I think the best solution is a clean install of Lion. QUESTION: When I backup to TIme Machine, is there a way to pull a 'Lion' version of my disk image back, and just not upgrade to Server? I understand I can disable Server and turn off applications in Server, but it doesn't fix my buggy machine. My options are to back up my 250GB of music, 100GB of photos, 100GB of movies, etc on to external drives, and clean install and then reimport everything, but even that will probably mean I cant reinstall my single user licesnse of MS office, VMware fusion, etc that I didn't buy on the App store. I'd really love to be able to do this with Time machine. Any chance? or do I need to do the dark deed of 2 days of backup?

Sorry, I don't mean to be stupid, but I want to be sure. My impresion of Time machine disk images (I'm not a computer genius, but I'm , lets say, an expert novice) is that disk images (my term for the 'total view' of a computers main disk), differ depending on the OS. I assume that applications and preferences referenced under SL could not be seamlessly imported into a Lion environment. I'm assumng that the upgrade to Lion server has irrevocaby altered my startup/main volume into a "Lion Server" volume, and that if I try to pull my applications/data/preferences/mailboxes back onto a fresh Lion interface, it won't work. Are you saying I'm wrong, and that I can simply erase my disc, clean install Lion via an internet connection, and re-import my "lion Server- altered' stuff back from aLion-server Time Machine disk image, seamlessly, into a Lion OS environment? Sorry to be so concrete, but my wife will kill me if I %$@ the bed on this. I appreciatre your help.

Leopard Server Time Machine restore permissions

I am using 10.5 server as an OD master. It is also the primary user home directory location. I am using time machine to backup all of the user directories. While using the time machine interface I can browse to any folder and any file. However, as soon as I go 'back in time' all of the user folders become unaccessible and have a red circle with a white line in it (the 'do not enter' sign). I am logged in as an admin that has full posix permissions on all folders. Any thoughts how to solve this?

Munroe Sollog wrote:
Do you know how it is kept separate?
The same way it's kept separate on their Macs. Each user account has a password and files have permissions; the structure of TM backups is the same (the permissions are stored differently, but the effect is the same).
. . . I don't see how having them give me their password and then having them reset once I am done having full access to their account is any more secure/private.
That wouldn't be my first choice either, but since you've already said you don't want them doing their own restores, that's about the only other choice.

I am confused with Mac OS X Server Time machine backup plan

I just purchased a Mac mini with Snow Leopard server. I just start use this Mac mini for home file sharing server, iTune musics, photo processing (under my user/Picture directory) and iPhone coding (under my user/Document directory).
Since there are some critical personal file in this Mac mini, I am looking for a backup plan.
Original, I setup Time Machine as my iMac and I though Time Machine will backup everything, especially my photos. So, I enable my Mac mini Time Machine and assign backup to my 1TB external hard drive, it seems works correct.
But I happen browse this document today the "Apple Documentation for setting up Snow Leopard Server".
http://images.apple.com/server/macosx/docs/AdvancedServer_Adminv10.6.pdf
And it seems said Time Machine will not backup everything and it also not mentioned if photos and musics will be backup or not.
Then I look into my external 1TB hard drive via terminal, it's free space decreased and looks like my data are already backup in this 1TB hard drive.
So, should I choice another backup plan, like purchase another external RAID and use Carbon Copy Cloner to backup?
Any suggestion is welcome. TIA.

Sorry to hear you've had so much trouble with backups
On the contrary. I have no issues with my backups. What gave you that idea?
From your post, I guess you know something that CA or Tivoli doesn't.
If you're referring to my umm... disdain for Retrospect I would have to assume they're aware of the problems running their product on production Mac OS X Servers. It's not hard to find references to people running into problems with it. If they're not aware then their support escalation process needs work.
Your method may work, but not if you have a site power or fire failure
OK, you lost me there. Which method are you referring to? replication? That's entirely viable as a protection against power or fire - locate the replica in a different datacenter/office/whatever.
want to have a cost effective solution (requires complete servers)
How valuable is your data? How much does downtime cost you?
How much does a second server cost?
or have off-site backups (to take one off-site for storage you will have to buy another server)
See my point above.
not to mention various compliancy issues
If you're dealing with any of the major compliancy issues (e.g. SOX, HIPPA, PCI, etc.) then the cost of a replication server is trivial compared to the cost of even thinking about compliance (most consultants charge thousands of dollars just to walk in the door and say 'hi').
Not to mention that any of the above compliance rules pretty much require replication, and you taking a weekly (or even daily) copy of your disk home with you is just not going to cut it.
I have been using BRU for some time now
I have a lot of respect for BRU. One of the better options out there (assuming they fixed the awful UI issues they had in early versions).
save for having to shut off the sql engine before one short backup
Thank you for validating my statement - you cannot backup an active server without terminating services that are writing to the disk.
Of course, in the replication model, you could temporarily stop replication, shut down the service, perform your backups, then restart services/replication (which will automatically catch up with the intermediate changes), while allowing clients to continue talking to the primary server.
THAT is the definition of performing backups of live data/servers without impacting users.

How to find backup on Lion Server time machine backup?

I have a MacBook laptop running Lion that has gotten automated Time Machine network backups by my Mac Mini running Lion Server. Had to do a reformat of the laptop and when I used Recovery HD from the laptop to find the laptop backup files on the server, I can't find them. I can find the server backup file, and the network version of time machine may bundle the laptop backup and mini backup in that file, but Recovery HD claims there are no valid backups.
Am I doing this the wrong way? Any help?

Just found it here:
https://discussions.apple.com/message/19152432#19152432
And it worked.
zeke

Will upgrading to Mountain Lion from Lion make my Lion Time Machine Backups unusable?

I had a situation where when I upraded to Lion from Snow Leopard, my Time Machine Backups became unusable. It says that the Backups were not compatible and it was really frustrating because I had to delete my backups from Snow Leopard and re-backup from my Mac with the newly installed Lion.
Will this happen if I upgrade to Mountain Lion from Lion? Has anyone had trouble from this upgrade to Mountain Lion. Has your Time Machine backups been working fine with the new operating system?
Thanks!!

Will upgrading to Mountain Lion erase all my files? And can't I only backup my home folder from Time Machine anyways? As long as I don't use Migration Assistant to restore the System files.
But yeah, will upgrading to Mountain Lion from Lion erase all my files and accounts?
Thanks!!

Does OS X Server 10.6 Snow Leopard support client Time-Machine backups

Hello,
Does OS X Server 10.6 Snow Leopard support multiple clients(20+) Time-Machine backups via LAN?
Thanks,
-Mike

mausimo wrote:
If the 20 users had 500GB hard drives and were planning on filling them, wouldn't i theoretically only need double the space to backup their computers?
I'm not quite sure what you mean by this. If your 20 users had 500GB hard drives, then your total HD capacity would be 10,000GB, or 10TB. Double would be 20TB, which is more than I recommended. The 15TB (1.5 x the amount of data you would theoretically be backing up) would be plenty.
That said, the DroboPro has a maximum of 16TB using currently available 2TB drives, so I would feel confident in recommending that to you. Realistically, your users probably aren't all going to fill their hard drives to capacity, so you might find you need even less.
If I were you, I would look at how much data is on each hard drive right now, add it all up, multiply it by 1.5, then throw in an extra TB for good measure. I would only purchase enough drives to handle that capacity. As your users take up more space, you can order more drives and add them to the DroboPro.
For example, if each user was using an average of 200GB currently, then for 20 machines you would have a total of 4,000GB, or 4TB. I would put 3x2TB drives in the DroboPro, giving you a total of 6TB (minus overhead) of backup capacity. From there, you can add more 2TB drives as you need them. This is almost identical to a system I manage for a client and it works very well.
I hope this helps!

Can a Server install alter a Time Machine backup's permissions?

I'm trying to change a server from Advanced to Simple, so I'd planned to:
1) Run a final Time Machine backup
2) Shut the server down
3) Reinstall Leopard Server from scratch
4) Reinstall any/all needed apps or files using Time Machine.
The first snag I ran into was that after step 3) all files in the Time Machine backup seemed to have had their permissions altered so that I could not access the folders and could not make changes to the files.
Based on help from someone else I was able to find out that an ACL is in effect on these files.
I also had some files stored on the Time Machine Backups drive as regular files....these do not appear to have the ACL applied.
When I couldn't figure out how to deal with that I went ahead and did a Full Restore using the Leopard Server Install DVD. This went without a hitch and the Time Machine backup files no longer appeared to have the ACL applied.
So can installing Leopard Server using all defaults where possible (excl. server name and such) and using the Simple server options alter the existing backups on a Time Machine Backups disk like this? Is there something I can/should be doing differently to get this to work "correctly"? Reinstalling from scratch again is still an option if there's something different to try.
Thanks in advance!
-Matt
P.S. I was expecting to have to do some manual reconstruction on the mail server that runs on this box, but didn't expect issues like this so any help is appreciated!

Hi, if I understand correctly yes, but may I ask the purpose of doing so?

I just restored my 13" MBP i5 at the apple store to the newest version of Lion after issues with a previous Time Machine backup from Snow Leopard- this time I created a new account and just ported files and folders, and now MS Office doesn't work. Help?

I just restored my 13" MBP i5 at the apple store to the newest version of Lion after issues with a previous Time Machine backup from Snow Leopard- this time I created a new account and just ported files and folders, and now MS Office doesn't work.
^^ that's the main problem. Here's the full history.
I bought a new 13" i5 MBP, early 2011 edition. I had an old white Macbook 2.14 ghz core2duo on Snow Leopard. I attempted to port over my time machine backup, but encountered problems in that my User was inaccessible from the new computer after the import finished, and I had to go in and change the root password, etc, and for some reason or another, I couldn't install any programs at all from that administrator's account. By "couldn't" I mean I could install them, but upon installation they would never boot. So, I took it to the apple store and did a clean install from the most up to date Lion OSX. Then, I created a brand new admin account, instead of trying to import the old one, and things seemed great. Then, I just imported my old files from the TM backup, but not any system settings, permissions, or user data. Just my Docs, pics, vids, apps, and itunes stuff.
Here's where things get weird again. I imported this stuff under the name "old", but all of these folders have a red negative sign on them, marking them as restricted. So, from my main admin account, I cannot even peruse these folders. Since I didn't import user data, I can't sign in to the "old" account to change permissions. I already tried to change the permissions from system preferences, but that didn't change anything. And now, for whatever reason, of all the apps that were imported then, MS Office is the only set of apps that does not work. When I click on it, it just says there was a problem and asks if I'd like to send a report to apple. I tried reinstalling it to no avail. I'm an English student, so i really need access to Word. Can anyone help? The Apple store is a major detour for me and would like to fix this issue myself.

Most likely you have Office 2004 which are PPC-only applications and will not work in Lion. Upgrade to Office 2011. Other alternatives are:
Apple's iWork suite (Pages, Numbers, and Keynote.)
Open Office (Office 2007-like suite compatible with OS X.)
NeoOffice (similar to Open Office.)
LibreOffice (a new direction for the Open Office suite.)

Leopard Server - Time Machine Backup - Full

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