OS X Server and time machine

I have installed OS X server and am running Mavericks. I am trying to use the time machine feature in the server to centrally backup two iMacs. The machines are backing up and are showing in the server backups window. However, when I try to access time machine for one of the computers, it aborts the open process and gives me the message "Can't connect to a current Time Machine backup disk." This happens on both computers.
Also, I can see that the machines have file sizes listed in the "Backups" pane, but the "Settings" pane displays Zero KB for time machine storage.

Launch the Console application in any of the following ways:
☞ Enter the first few letters of its name into a Spotlight search. Select it in the results (it should be at the top.)
☞ In the Finder, select Go ▹ Utilities from the menu bar, or press the key combination shift-command-U. The application is in the folder that opens.
☞ Open LaunchPad. Click Utilities, then Console in the icon grid.
Make sure the title of the Console window is All Messages. If it isn't, select All Messages from the SYSTEM LOG QUERIES menu on the left. If you don't see that menu, select
View ▹ Show Log List
from the menu bar.
Click the Clear Display icon in the toolbar. Then try the action that you're having trouble with again. Select any messages that appear in the Console window. Copy them to the Clipboard by pressing the key combination command-C. Paste into a reply to this message by pressing command-V.
When posting a log extract, be selective. In most cases, a few dozen lines are more than enough.
Please do not indiscriminately dump thousands of lines from the log into this discussion.
Important: Some private information, such as your name, may appear in the log. Anonymize before posting.

Similar Messages

Understanding OS X Server and Time Machine backups

Never used Time Machine with OS X Server before. What happens if you use Time Machine to backup the server itself? Is it reasonable to expect TM to back up the Users directory, and any user homes that are set up, as well as the server's system, libs, etc? Or should users (even those with Network Home Folders) be expected to run Time Machine when they log in...recursively backing up to the the server they're logged into?
If we back up the server itself with Time Machine then, I'd assume, users wouldn't be able to use TM to recover files from their home folder on their own...but an admin could do it from the server!?!
Anyone with experience with this shed any light on best practice here? Makes my head hurt just thinking about it.

Launch the Console application in any of the following ways:
☞ Enter the first few letters of its name into a Spotlight search. Select it in the results (it should be at the top.)
☞ In the Finder, select Go ▹ Utilities from the menu bar, or press the key combination shift-command-U. The application is in the folder that opens.
☞ Open LaunchPad. Click Utilities, then Console in the icon grid.
Make sure the title of the Console window is All Messages. If it isn't, select All Messages from the SYSTEM LOG QUERIES menu on the left. If you don't see that menu, select
View ▹ Show Log List
from the menu bar.
Click the Clear Display icon in the toolbar. Then try the action that you're having trouble with again. Select any messages that appear in the Console window. Copy them to the Clipboard by pressing the key combination command-C. Paste into a reply to this message by pressing command-V.
When posting a log extract, be selective. In most cases, a few dozen lines are more than enough.
Please do not indiscriminately dump thousands of lines from the log into this discussion.
Important: Some private information, such as your name, may appear in the log. Anonymize before posting.

Question about HP MediaSmart Server and Time Machine

I just got an EX490 MediaSmart server to use for backups and as a media server. I set up the server to serve as a Time Machine backup device, and it seems to work fine. However, when the server is connected and appears as a Share in the Finder, if I use the Finder to navigate to the "Mac" folder on the server, I don't see any files inside. Actually I searched through all visible files on the server and didn't see any files that might be a backup file. I tried turning on Invisible file viewing but that didn't make any difference. I'm assuming that the Time Machine backup file on the server is somehow hidden from viewing.
Does anyone know why the backup file isn't appearing?
Thanks.

I have been looking at similiar HP NAS model, which now appears to have beome a prior model -
HP EX485 MediaSmart Home Server
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B001OI2ZG4/
The prices have gone up slightly, too. The reviews on the above EX485 were almost like a mini review and informative. I assume you've created accounts and perhaps have (need?) a PC to configure Windows Home Server R2 fully? I was waiting for full Windows 7 support which is still in beta.
From what I read, one of the "Missing Bible" for WHS or something helps to get the most out of it and help with setup (though generally that just takes 15 minutes if you know how).

Using HP Media Smart Server and Time Machine

In a small office we have mixed Macs and Windows machines plus an HP Media Smart Server. HP provides Mac client software that allows Time Machine on the Macs to backup to the HP server. This is working fine on two Macs running snow leopard. Another Mac is running 10.5.8. The HP server is visible and accessible. Time machine Preferences even lets me try to select the HP server as the backup device. But when I make that selection, I get the error message,
"Time Machine could not be configured. The built-in network interface could not be found."
I have found a number of articles about this when I search the error message. But by and large those articles have to do with folks building their own intel based machine and then running Mac OS X. Fixes involve messing around with boot files, etc - not something I really want to do.
Does anyone have a clue what might be going on and/or how to resolve this?
thanks

Howard Cohen wrote:
I am somewhat reluctant to do that as I tend to not want to change things that I don't understand.
Good! And since that refers to a way to run OSX on non-Apple hardware (in violation of the License), it probably wouldn't apply to your situation anyway.
I don't easily find specs of this server, but if it doesn't meet the requirements set by Apple, it may not work reliably with Time Machine. See: Disks that can be used with Time Machine.
And be careful here: just because some 3rd-party hardware claims to support Time Machine doesn't necessarily mean that Apple supports it, or that it will work in all circumstances.
First, since this is *unsupported by Apple,* there's nowhere to go when there's trouble. AppleCare will refer you to HP, who will refer you to Apple.
Second, you're risking a future update preventing it from working, and perhaps rendering your backups useless.
From a post in another forum (found by V.K.):
The technical reason why Apple limits Time Machine to 10.5 AFP volumes appears to be to prevent disk image corruption. There were additional features added to AFP in 10.5 to support Time Machine. These presumably allow the disk image engine to force disk image journal data to write out all the way to the disk. Without such features, a network interruption can result in a corrupted filesystem on the disk image despite journaling. Remember, journaling relies on the journal being written all the way to disk before the changes take place. If you can't guarantee that (e.g., because of network/NAS buffering) then the journal is useless. Time Machine appears to rely heavily on disk journaling to deal with network drop-outs, interrupted backups, and the like. Take this away and your data is at risk.
If the NAS you are using supports these features it should report them to the OS and you should natively be able to choose that volume. If you have to trick the OS to use the volume it means the NAS does not support it.
To summarize: if you care about your backup data you should avoid using non-natively supported AFP servers.

Leopard, Leopard server, and time machine.

Okay. First of all, I spent about 30 minutes searching through all the time machine questions here and found nothing like it so I'm sorry if its a duplicate question, but it does seem rather unique.
I have an XServe G5 running leopard server with an 8TB external firewire 800 RAID array that was purpose purchased to act as a time machine backup destination for about 8 machines.
XServe has that drive set up to be the backup destination, everything there is OK.
Here is what happens on the OSX Leopard machines when I go to backup:
1. I open Time Machine preferences.
2. I click on the "Choose Backup Disk..." button.
3. It thinks for about 10 seconds
4. It brings up a list of about 3 possible destinations. I select the one I want "Backups (XServe G5)"
5. I press the gleaming "Use For Backup" Button.
6. It asks for the users name and password. Type away.
7. It comes back to the 'Time Machine Preferences" window. The little on/off switch turned off, and we're back at the "Choose Backup Disk...." button.
This occurs on each machine I wish to backup, be they Mac Pros, or macbooks.
Help?

Ladies and gentlemen, I have the answer.
I stumbled across this accidentally when I was playing desperately in the Finder trying to get some inspiration about this issue.
The problem doesn't lie in the clients... it lies in the Server.
Here is my solution:
1. In the finder, right-click on the external drive, and select "Get Info".
2. Under "General", there should be 2 little check boxes, "Shared Folder" and "Locked".
3. Click on "Shared Folder" to put an X in it.
Thats it!
For some reason Time Machine setup didn't share the folder and so the client machines recognised it as a shared time machine backup source, but couldn't actually find it on the network because it wasn't shared.
Have fun ladies and gentlemen!!

SL Server and Time Machine - Backups never finish - help.

I am running Snow Leopard Server (10.6.4) on a Mini. I want to use Time Machine to back it up to an external hard drive. This setup worked forever, until I upgraded to Snow Leopard.
Now, the backups start, but never finish. There is no consistency to this - sometimes it gets far into the backup, and other times if stops early. In other words, there is not one file that is causing this problem. The only consistent thing is, is never finishes.
I’ve tried to use an old sparsebundle, and I’ve erased the HD completely to start over. I’ve excluded files, folders, and groups of folders, and it never completes.
The alert I get usually says, “The backup was not performed because an error occurred while copying files to the backup disk. The problem may be temporary. Try again later to back up. If the problem persists, use Disk Utility to repair your backup disk.”
Needless to say, I’ve followed these instructions - waited (six months now), used a Time Capsule instead, used another HD instead, repaired the HD, everything. It just doesn’t work.
Anyone else have this problem? Any ideas on how to fix it?
Thanks.

I'm having the same problem. I can't use Time Machine at all on Snow Leopard Server on an Xserve. There are 2 1TB drives configured as a mirrored RAID set, and a 3rd internal 1TB drive set up to run as a Time Machine backup drive. I have not had any luck after almost a year of trying to get this to work, and I am finding no help on the Internet. I've seen the question asked, but it is never answered. Does ANYBODY out there have an clues as to why this keeps happening? Is it about permissions, since these files are being served from the sharepoint? If I exclude everything but one or two files, the process works, so it's not a hardware error, as far as I can tell. Can't I get TM to bypass any problem files and log them to a report? There are thousands of files. I can't exclude them one by one. I'm already very old.

SL Server and Time Machine Mail backups

Hello all
We've recently taken on a client who previously used a SL Server for their mail. Unfortunately their previous IT guys have taken away the server and wiped it now. All we have is a hard drive with the Time Machine backups on it.
Our client is now using a Windows Exchange server for email and I was wondering if there's anyway we can extract the individual emails for the users from the time machine backup so we can convert/migrate them into the exchange accounts.
Failing that, does anyone know where the location for the specific emails are on the Time Machine backups?

I'm having the same problem. I can't use Time Machine at all on Snow Leopard Server on an Xserve. There are 2 1TB drives configured as a mirrored RAID set, and a 3rd internal 1TB drive set up to run as a Time Machine backup drive. I have not had any luck after almost a year of trying to get this to work, and I am finding no help on the Internet. I've seen the question asked, but it is never answered. Does ANYBODY out there have an clues as to why this keeps happening? Is it about permissions, since these files are being served from the sharepoint? If I exclude everything but one or two files, the process works, so it's not a hardware error, as far as I can tell. Can't I get TM to bypass any problem files and log them to a report? There are thousands of files. I can't exclude them one by one. I'm already very old.

Can I use Mac Mini Lion server and Time Machine 2Tb together?

I have TM already and am looking to add a Mac Mini running O XS server soon. I use TM to back up my iMac and MacBook Pro laptop at present. My existing setup also includes a PC running windows which is backed up by an HP media smart server. I want to replace the PC with a Macmini running parallels and windows 7 to run my windows program's and want the TM to back this up also. I would like the MM server to run my iTunes library to all Apple devices and need to access the files stored on the MM server from my iPad. Is this solution workable?

The only differences between the current Mac Mini Server
and the other Mini versions is that it has the quad core i7,
comes with dual drives, and has the "Server app" installed.
So, you could install Lion by itself as the server software
is now a seperate "app" in Lion as opposed to being an
integral part of the OS.
BTW, what is the problem you are having?
I am running a 2011 Mini Server as a desktop and simply
just did not enable any of the server features when I first
set up and have not had any issues using it as a desktop.

Using LaCie 1Tb Network drive and Time MAchine

I have read a number of thread here about issues with LaCie and Time Machine but cannot find the help I am looking for. I have a the Lacie device connected to my network and I have access through the Browser Administration utility to the drive, I believe I have set up the users and the shares correctly, and can connect to the share, but when i try to set up Time Machine it fails to recognize that the NAS drive is available, I am doing something wrong and it's probably very simple.
Any help would be appreciated.
Thanks
John

Here's Apple's public statement at http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/timemachine.html for what devices work with TM.
[You can designate just about any HFS+ formatted FireWire or USB drive connected to a Mac as a Time Machine backup drive. Time Machine can also back up to another Mac running Leopard with Personal File Sharing, Leopard Server, or Xsan storage devices.]

Network drives and time machine with Lion

Since upgrading to Lion my MyBookWorld network drive is no longer working with time machine. The drive is recognised as being there by finder and time machine but when I try and connect to it as registered user there is a warning saying There was a problem connecting to the server "MyBookWorld.Local". This drive was working fine until I upgraded to lion. There is no new firmware from Wesern Digital for the disc. It looks like that will be the solution. does anyone have any idea when that may be forthcoming?

Please follow these instructions:
Lion: Connecting to legacy (pre-Lion) AFP services - and Mac OS X (server):
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3258472

Using airport extreme, an external HD and time machine for wireless backups

Hey All,
The whole reason I bought my airport extreme was to plug an external HD into and use it for backups. Then came time machine and Leopard, and now time capsule!!!
Does anyone know if you can use your airport extreme with an external HD attached and time machine in the same way as time capsule for wireless backups!??? The guy in the Apple store I spoke to says you should be able to if you mount the HD (a little cumbersome); I used to be able to mount the HD in Tiger, but cant in Leopard!!
Thanks!
Message was edited by: Fleery

Fleery wrote:
Does anyone know if you can use your airport extreme with an external HD attached and time machine in the same way as time capsule for wireless backups!???
No. Time Machine is supported in 3 configurations:
1. a directly attached HD
2. Time Capsule
3. A HD connected to a Mac with OS X 1.5 Server
I tried both 1 & 3 and they work perfectly.
The guy in the Apple store I spoke to says you should be able to if you mount the HD (a little cumbersome); I used to be able to mount the HD in Tiger, but cant in Leopard!!
Bogus. That is NOT a supported configuration. It will work for a while and you will eventually start to get errors when Time machine backs up, and they are not recoverable.

Restoring OSX SERVER from Time Machine

In the past we had been using a custom rsync script to run our backup rotation (3 drives, at least one off-site every night). Now that we have Leopard server, I've shifted over to using time machine (same 3 drive rotation, but backups happen at a system level, so it "feels" more stable to me (maybe I'm naivé?).
I set up the server, and then due to a little bit of poor planning on my part had to replace the system hard drive, so I basically had to rebuild the server from scratch. I know with Leopard client when you start up you can "restore from time machine", is that possible with Leopard server? It would have saved me a couple of hours. If not I imagine my disaster recovery plan (in case of building fire, etc.) would be:
1) get a new OSX server leopard
2) set it up from scratch (turn on AFP, set up users and shares, etc.)
3) get latest offsite backup drive and restore from time machine (is this even possibly on a different machine?)
Does that sound right? Am I missing something? Is there an easier way with OSX Server to "get back to your latest Time Machine snapshot"? I feel like step 2 shouldn't have to exist...

Paul,
Thanks for the feedback. Do any of those software packages you mention do incremental backups? Our current rsync solution, and Time machine both do, which is very useful since our data is about 300 gigs and we can have a month's worth of backups on a one gig drive.
I've looked at CCC and the only solution I can find is a complete backup, which basically means:
a) more than overnight to run a complete backup, just because of the vast number of files being transfered
b) can only fit 3 backups (at most) on our 1gig drive
Also, can you be a little more specific about what you mean by "gets whacked". Does that mean "Can't use pretty Time Machine interface" or "can't possibly get to your data".
Thx,

Restore from server with Time Machine not possible

I am not able to do a Restore with the Recovery Drive and the Option "Restore from Time Machine Backup". If i try to connect to the appropriate Backup Drive on my Server Running Server Version 4 on OS X 10.10.1 i continue to have "With the connection to the Server a problem occurred, contact your System Administrator".
Any hints:
Recovery drive on iMac to be Recovered: OS X 10.10
on Server:
OS X 10.10.1 with Server Version 4 and Time Machine turned on.
Any hints?

I try this:
1. Detach Backup Drive from Server (in my Case Lacie 4 Big)
2. Mount the Drive with Disk Utility and the dmg file to the iMac to be restored
3. Start restore
i know if this worked in 1h 15min

Back up Mac Server with Time Machine Server installed on the same Time Machine Server

I want to back up several Workstations (“Workstations 1-4” in diagram below) and a Mac OS X Server (“MacMini Server” in diagram below) that runs “Time Machine Server” on that same “Time Machine Server.”
Is this possible?
The MacMini server doesn’t seem to find the “Time Machine Server” for backups. I read that this is due to the fact that Time Machine backups via network are organized in another way than “normal” Time Machine backups are.
MacOS server is running MacOS 10.8.5 with server app v2.2.1(169)-
workstations are running 10.10.1, 10.9.5 and 10.8.4

The Time Capsule and Time Machine will automatically keep backups for each Mac separate.
A user on one Mac will not be able to "see" the backups of the other Mac.
You can add a few more Macs if you wish. 4 or 5 Macs would probably be a practical limit, depending on the size of the hard drive in the Time Capsule.

OSStatus 5 when trying to use Lion Server as time machine

I've set two volumes on hard disk 2 of the mac mini server with snow leopard server (now running lion server).
When I point my new MacBook Air at the time machine the Lion Server is serving which is simply displayed as Time Machine on server1.voigtstr.com, I authenticate (both server and laptop share the same username and password) and then I get
Time Machine can't access the backup disk "Time Machine"
The operation couldn't be completed. (OSStatus error 5.)
What needs to change at either the server or client side?
thoughts so far were that the time machine volume was case sensitive and the laptop was not, so I reformatted the server volume to be not case sensitive.
Any other thoughts?
When I choose "Do Not Backup" the Time Machine system prefs applet is left in a state of "Preparing Disk". Is that likely to finish in multiple hours? Or is it just in a hung state?
Cheers
Voigtstr!

I had the same problem.
Time machine on my server, updated from Lion to Mountain Lion.
Fixed it by:
(To be completely safe, always start by backing up to a extra external hard drive, if you can.)
On the Machine that is your Server
I went to (Server>Services>Time Machine). My Time Mahine backup folder was there.
Open a Finder window and follow the path to your backup folder
When I checked on the backup drive folder it didn't exist.
In Finder use "New folder" and recreate the directory folder as shown in (Server>Services>Time Machine) eg. Volumes/TM folder/Shared Items/Backups.
Go to the Server>Services>File Sharing. Check that the Master folder (ie. TM folder)you are using for your time machine is shared. Double click on it and check that the account you use to connect to the server has "Read & Write" access.
Open the Server Panel, under Services >go to "Time Machine" and turn off the Time Machine. (Server>Services>Time Machine)
Select the current folder and remove "-" the folder currently showing.
Then add "+" the newly recreated folder
Go back to Server>Services>Time Machine
Then turn on the Time Machine
Then try to connect your macbook to the Time Machine server again
If you get to step 3 and find the folder is there then just skip step 4 and do the rest to reset it.
It may not connect your machine to it's previous TM folder so before continuing on to step 5, mark that by ctrl+click>Label> any colour. You can then go back later when you have a couple of up to date backups in the new folder and delete the old on for more space.

OS X Server and time machine

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for