Reset network Time Machine Server Settings

Does anyone know how to reset the settings for the Mac Server Time Machine service? Somehow it is jacked up. I can backup to a network Time Machine and restore files through Finder but when I boot into recovery mode and try to do a restore, I can see the backup drive, I authenticate but then get an error saying it can't connect to server name.local. Doesn't appear to be issues with DNS. I have tried setting up a new external drive that hasn't been previously used before and it does the same thing. So I wanted to reset the settings without having to reset all the other services. Does anyone know where these settings for just the Time Machine Service are?
Thanks,

Richard,
I am running a headless mac mini with Lion Server. Same setup as yours, except externals are connected via USB. I have no problems backing up our macbook pros over newtork via Time Machine. My current backup drive is an old 500GB WD Book-whatever. I have also successfully used a 2TB drive in a generic Rosewill JBOD external enclosure. Both were freshly formated HFS+ (journaled) with GUID map prior to TM use. Make sure you format journaled using GUID.
I also get the "This disk drive may not support Time Machine backup over the network." popup but after ignoring it am able to add the disk (don't bother following the information link in the popup...hello 2005!).
Not much help, but a note to say that it can be done and don't give up.
Of note...if you are successful and one day you suddenly can't mount the backup volume on your server, fire up the Terminal and disable then reenable journalling on the volume using diskutil. The Disk Utility app will check the drive/volume and say it they are fine, but the volume won't mount until you play with the journaling.

Similar Messages

Time Machine Server - external firewire 800 RAID array incompatible??

Hi all
I originally posted in the wrong forum... so here I go again...
I have an XServe G5 connected to an 8TB RAID array via firewire 800 (running latest version of leopard server) purchased solely to act as a time machine server for a whole bunch of machines. A lot of money and resources went toward this as this is a vital part of our office. One of the machines is a completely decked out Mac Pro with 4x500GB Hard Drives striped for multimedia processing. (Thats why I need a HUGE backup partition on Time Machine)
Now, this was working for about 4 months. Some computers still see the backup array as a destination, but can't write to it, (just sit there for ever "preparing backup") and one machine successfully is still backing up to it.
But for the majority of the machines, when I try to set the Xserve external raid array as a Time Machine destination for the network, it comes up with a yellow "!" sign and "This disk drive may not support Time Machine over the network. Get more information about compatible drives" with a link that points here: http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=306332
As you can see, that was completely not helpful, and now i'm wondering if I'll still have a job after the boss finds out I've just wasted his several thousands of dollars...
When selecting a backup destination for time machine backups, the array appears, but it always says "Failed" with an "i" next to Latest Backup in the system preferences, with the message "Backup volume cannot be found". Thats not true because i've so much as gone to the effort of actually mounting the dang drive in the finder... so its just not looking hard enough!
Here is some info about the external device:
It looks like a PC tower thing, with 8 firewire 800 ports on the back and 8 internal SATA slots. I purchased 8x1TB drives and inserted them in, and software partitioned them to create a giant striped drive (I understand that this might be a little unstable but its just a backup drive).
I daisy chained the firewire 800 ports on the back to output 2 cables, both going in the back of the xserve. Formatted fine, and works a treat. Except for the silly time machine thing....
I think what I am going to do is completely and utterly start again... go nuts one weekend and erase everything, every computer, every wireless router, everything, and start fresh. Since there have been so many little glitches here and there I just want them dead.
Well, if anyone has a quick fix, i'd appreciated it before the weekend

Hi everyone, Just thought I would give you all an update on how things went.
Lets just say that I got everything working fine... this is what I did.
1. I went through, completely un-raided and formatted the external 8 Bay firewire 800 drive
2. Completely reformatted XServe and reinstalled fresh (Probably not an option for a few, but I had a spare weekend)
3. Completely reformatted all client computers and reset all client accounts (Once again, probably not an option for most)
Essentially, I was starting out with a completely virgin setup and setting up for the first time. I installed the firewire 800 drives, and made them into a RAID again. Then installed Leopard server. Brought all the backed up files across, and when I plugged in the drive in Finder, it asked "Do you want to use this as a time machine backup" to which I said "Yes". It proceeded to create a backup.
When that finished, I went into server preferences, and selected the external as a time machine backup for the network. It worked...
I then went about everything like business as usual, and everything worked great. Still going... for now.
So thanks for all that helped, maybe try completely reinstalling everything and it may work.

Time machine server / Bonjour

At my workplace we have Mac OS X Server Leopard 10.5.3 that we use as a Time Machine server, with a share point with the option "Enable as Time Machine backup destination" checked. Until now my Time Machine worked very well, both when my computer was connected to our lab's Airport or wired-ethernet.
But now there is a new institute-wide wlan, from which I can contact our server (with ssh, afp, ...). When I connect to this network Time Machine doesn't backup automatically anymore, and the backup fails. In my system.log I discovered the following:
/System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[3899]: Network mountpoint /Volumes/time not owned by backupd... remounting
/System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[3899]: [SnapshotUtilities remountVolumeRef] url could not be resolved via BonJour
/System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[3899]: Failed to remount network volume.
/System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[3899]: Backup failed with error: 19
So, apparently the problem is the fact that Bonjour is not working over the institute-wide network, which personally I find kind of logical, or at least it's difficult for me to find reasons to convince the upper levels to enable it. I also don't see any reason why Time Machine actually 'needs' bonjour, since it can connect the server, by ip address, hostname. And I can mount the time machine mount 'by hand' with 'Connect to server..." from Finder.
Is there anybody who knows (without destroying my current Time Machine archive) some way to change this behavior of Time machine so that it doesn't need Bonjour (by changing some setting, or putting a hard ip address in a plist or something) ?
Thx,
Werner Van Geit

Hi,
Actually I don't know, the IT service over here is quite of 'black box', and it takes quite some time to get some information. I'm quite sure that even don't know what Bonjour is, they install all kinds of devices without actually knowing much about all the settings, so it will be **** of a job to get Time Machine working if Bonjour is necessary. But like I've already said, I don't think Bonjour should be necessary to use Time Machine, but I could be wrong.
Werner Van Geit

Cannot use my Mac Mini server as Time Machine server

Hello,
May some one can help me...
I try to connect clients to a time Machine server, well it's seems to be a bit difficult, I created user's accounts, computers accounts, group of computers... It works for the update services, but after configuring Time Machine on the server, shared in server admin, in Workgroup manager, file sharing, preference pane, user's services... I can see the volume in time machine preferences, but there is always the same issue, first message is "the disk is not reachable" second "there is a probleme with the network name and password" I tried with different posix, ACLS, with user's password, server admin password, directory admin password... Well I'm a bit tired...
I tried on the server and on a Promise 4To, I can see the shared items folder and the Backups foledr and that the only thing I can do...
Well if some one can help me it will be great for me and for every body arround me...
Thanks,
Nicolas

Hello Peter,
Thanks for your answer.
There must be something wrong in the different steps I follow.
Firts I set Time machine on the server for each user, shoosing the Volume "SmartStor" (a network volume attached on the Mac Mini server) it creates a "Shared items" folder with a "Backups" folder in.
In Server Admin tools I can see in the AFP services the share point /Backups
In Workgroup Manager I set the Time Machine's preferences for the different computers and computers' group with the path afp://myserver.local/Backups/
At least on my client's computer I can shoose the volume "Backups" "on my server".
And it doesn't work... even with all the logins and password, User's, Dir Admin and Server Admin.
With User's and Dir Admin it runs quickly and tells "the volume is not reachable on account of wrong user's name or password"
With Server Admin login and password it runs indefinitly, nothing occurs ...
Is there something to do in terminal ?
Well I tried to find explanations on the web but I found nothing for the moment... The informations are to set a network volume in Terminal in place of the default one...
'Hope to find soon, I can't stand that something runs for every one but not with me...

Time Machine Ignores Settings

I've upgraded my mid 2009 15" MacBookPro to Mountain Lion and overall I pretty happy with it. But I've run into an issue and wondered if anyone else has seen it. Time Machine seems to back-up fine but it ignores the preferences. I have it set to back-up only when plugged in it runs a back-up even when I am running on battery power. So I go into the preferences and turn if off, the icon in the menu bar is grayed out and it ignores that also and runs it's hourly back-ups anyway.
Has anybody else seen this and any suggestions short of doing a clean install. I've already deleted the .plist system file but that had no effect.

Sounds like the preferences file (where the settings are kept) may be damaged.
Try a "full reset" of Time Machine, per #A4 in Time Machine - Troubleshooting.

Time Machine Server backup speed

Has anyone used time machine on OS X 10.5.8 Server to backup 50+ client machines at one time?
We have a project where we will be binding 50 Macs to AD and migrating user data. We have a process for the migration and will have done extensive testing by the time the migration happens, so if I have any questions about that it will be in a different forum.
We would like to have a solid backup that is easy to restore if we run into issues. We have Retrospect backups yet the backup server is a Windows 2008 Server and sometimes even restoring small amounts of data can be troublesome. I would rather not restore a user's account using Retrospect if at all possible.
We don't want to goto each machine and use Carbon Copy Cloner if possible, yet we are looking into using CCC over the network for backups/restores.
One backup plan is to setup a Time Machine server on one of our OD masters with an external RAID.
Next we touch every machine and direct each client to the Time Machine Backup drive on the network and they all start backing up.
How long would you think it takes for 50+ machines averaging 10GB of data to backup using Time Machine on a new Gigabit LAN with CAT 5e cables and a Cisco managed switch setup?
Is there a way in ARD to send a command to set clients to choose a Time Machine Backup server?
If you were in my position and needed to backup 50+ machines in the shortest amount of time with the quickest/easiest restore process, how would you do it?
Thanks in advance for any assistance.

Well SAM
It actually worked. THANKS A BUNCH! I trying again as root, allthough I thought sudo did it.
I needed to first do some repairing (permissions and so on), change the host name and bind all the machines anew to server.
Anyway it finall works. The disk is available form startup prior to ANY login.
So aganin: thank you. I am sorry I can't find how to change the appraisal of your answer from 'helped' to 'solved' to give you more credit(s).
Francesco

What is best stockage for time machine server

H i hello
I want make a time machine server for backup all macs in my network
I have mountain lion server, and i want know what is the best solution for stockage for time Machine
Nas ? San ?
Can i use NTFS with time machine ? CIFS ? or just AFP ?
Thanks you for your help

Welcome to the Apple Support Communities
Any modem will work. Note that you will only use your modem to connect your Time Capsule to it using an Ethernet cable, and it will bring the Internet connection to the Time Capsule, so all modems do the same

Networked Time Machine Backup in Yosemite (10.10.1)

Hello Everyone!
I am having issue using a networked Time Machine volume with my Debian Box. Prior to 10.10.1 Yosemite update Time Machine was working just fine. Even issuing the command sudo tmutil setdestination "afp://<Remote Server Address>/Time\ Machine/<sparsebundle>" and defaults write com.apple.systempreferences TMShowUnsupportedNetworkVolumes 1, Nothing seems to work. Time Machine doesn't recognize the drive. I am able to connect to the drive by going to Go, but Time Machine still doesn't see the drive. My Debian Box is using Nettalk in conjunction with AFP. I followed this link as a guide. If anyone know a work around that would be greaaaaat.
Thanks!

A "Netatalk" server is unsuitable for use with Time Machine, especially if it's your only backup. I know this isn't the answer you want. I know Time Machine accepts the server as a backup destination. I know that the developer says the server will work with Time Machine, and I also know that it usually seems to work. Except when you try to restore, and find that you can't.
Apple has published a specification for network devices that work with Time Machine. The incomplete, obsolete Netatalk implementation of Apple Filing Protocol doesn't meet that specification.
If you want network backup, use as the destination either an Apple Time Capsule or an external storage device connected to another Mac or to an 802.11ac AirPort base station. Only the 802.11ac base stations support Time Machine, not any older model.
Otherwise, don't use Time Machine at all. There are other ways to back up, though none of them is anywhere near as efficient or as well integrated with OS X. I don't have a specific recommendation.

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.

Can I network Time Machine with my Dlink DI624

Hi:
Maybe the answer to this question at first glance may be an obvious NO. I have a USB Firewire drive enclosure made to hold an IDE drive. I would choose a 160 gig. Now that configuration will work for 1 computer, my Macbook with 10.5.2. My wife has an iBook 1.3 gig and Leopard. On a non network config could she just disconnect the drive enclosure from me and use time machine as well or is it restricted to just 1 user?? Because there may be another computer G4 if she switches to Leopard, could both daughter & wife share my 160 gig enclosure? Because sharing in this manner has its disadvantages such as plugging and unplugging and moving it to many places and finding room for it.
Now you can see the advantages of networking Time Machine. We have a DLINK DI 24 with many computers networking wirelessly. We have a Dlink DP G-321 Print server as well as a Dlink DWL-2100AP to cover the second floor and provide the same signal to computers upstairs as the DI 624 provides on the main floor. Sorry for such detail. Now I know that the Airport extreme would fit perfectly because it has a USB port which neither the DI 624 or it repeater the DWL-2100AP but the wireless DP G-321 Print server does. It has 3 ports 2 USB and a parallel port: one of the former being used by my laser printer so I have 1 USB port port. Would it work? If not would an Airport Extreme (with USB port) replace my DI624? Would the print server and DWL-2100AP fit perfectly with an Airport Extreme? The DWL-2100 AP is a hard wired wireless extension of the DI624 (sorry if I have the terminology wrong)
Thanks
Ted

Thank you

How to reset my Time Machine??? It's got messed up.

My Macbook initially used an external USB drive for Time Machine backup and worked fine. But then I purchased a Time Capsule and used it for bak up.
Then the Time Machine get confused. The backup data volume increase from the initial 120 GB to 260 GB!!!! My Macbook's internal drive has 160GB only and I have used only 50GB. Funny, how comes there are 260GB data to be backed up?????
So how can I reset the Time Machine so that it backs up my Macbook properly again????

Do you have other computers backed up to the Time Capsule? My MacBook Air tried to do an hourly backup this afternoon, and after preparing the procedure, wanted to back up 146GB. Didn't make sense, as the MBA has an 80 GB drive. But I added up the sizes of the other two computers' backups (.sparsebundle) files plus the MBA's .sparsebundle file, and sure enough, they add up to 146GB. Maybe it's a coincidence, maybe not.
Why (and if) it's trying to consolidate the other backups, I don't know. But if you have other computers backed up to the Time Capsule, that might explain the huge backup data volume you're seeing.

Can see and recognize my wireless network and Internet is working, but I can't connect with ANY computers/iPad/iPod/air TV, etc. I have reset the time machine several times, and can see the network, but cannot access it with any device. PLEASE HELP!

I have Comcast Internet and have it connected to a Motorla Surfboard modem and have that running directly to a 2TB Time Capsule. The TC is serving as our time machine as well as our wireless router. We lost power in a storm a week ago and can no longer connect to my wireless network I can see the network and sign into it via password, but cannot connect with any device(iMac, MacBook, iPhones, iPod touches, air tv, etc.). ALL of these devices worked gat before the power went out. I reset both modem and TC and still can't connect. I can connect to the Internet through Ethernet cord directly from the modems dn have confirmation(per Comcast service) that the Internet is working and we have a good connection.
The TC is less than six months old so I'm not sure what is wrong. I have reset settings with TC to no avail. I have reset the TC SEVERAL times and have no idea what could be wrong and what is prohibiting me from connecting. Anyone that has ANY suggestions or ideas as to how to fix this, PLEASE HELP!!! I'm going crazy using iPad 3G and not being able to connect to our wifi. THANKS FOR YOUR TIME AND I LOOK FORWARD TO GETTING BACK TO THE 21ST CENTURY!

Anyone have any ideas or information to help with this? Any help and consideration is MUCH appreciated.

Time Machine server will not let me use external disks to share over network

Hi Apple land,
Im running a lion server from a headless MacBook Pro, its running install and diagnostic netboot images well.
I have added an eSata card via the expresscard 34 slot.
drives connected to it work well, nice and fast.
Now, i can mark the drive for timemachine and it will change the icon and get ready for backup, no worries, for the local system only.
but going through server.app to make it a timemachine destination for others over the network give me an error:
"This disk drive may not support Time Machine backup over the network."
there is a link to this error, but it simply says make sure you dont remove the power to this drive as it could cause backups to fail.
It still lets me select the drive, shows 'writing time machine settings' but then the big switch flicks itself to OFF
I have searched and found the exact message posted in 2008 on this site, without resolution
so i guess i want to know, for lion server to have a drive available for others, does it have to be internal? or is it because its running through an expresscard then eSata thats confusing it?
would any of the terminal command tricks work (the ones that force compatability)
I didt want to breaking anything just in case
thank you in advance.
Richard

Richard,
I am running a headless mac mini with Lion Server. Same setup as yours, except externals are connected via USB. I have no problems backing up our macbook pros over newtork via Time Machine. My current backup drive is an old 500GB WD Book-whatever. I have also successfully used a 2TB drive in a generic Rosewill JBOD external enclosure. Both were freshly formated HFS+ (journaled) with GUID map prior to TM use. Make sure you format journaled using GUID.
I also get the "This disk drive may not support Time Machine backup over the network." popup but after ignoring it am able to add the disk (don't bother following the information link in the popup...hello 2005!).
Not much help, but a note to say that it can be done and don't give up.
Of note...if you are successful and one day you suddenly can't mount the backup volume on your server, fire up the Terminal and disable then reenable journalling on the volume using diskutil. The Disk Utility app will check the drive/volume and say it they are fine, but the volume won't mount until you play with the journaling.

Concerned about resetting a Time Machine

Hello Everyone,
I'm a tech for a school district and I need to reset all the passwords on the time machine we have for one of our video production classes. The network features aren't really used and the Time Capsule acts more like a file server.
I was reading online that by holding the "reset" button for 1 second I can reset my Time Capsule. My concern is that the students would lose and entire year's worth of video and music and what not.
Does resetting delete files or just reset system settings? If it does delete files, what are my options because right now the Time Capsule cannot even be accessed.

Hello poolmanjim. Welcome to the Apple Discussions!
Regardless of the type of reset performed on the Time Capsule, none of them should affect data stored on the internal hard drive. (ref: How to reset Time Capsule )

Time Machine Server

I have a Mac OS X Lion server that I would like to use as a Time Machine backup destination. The server is housed along with my company's other servers in a dedicated location on server-only VLANs. The machine has an internal DNS record that points to it. Prior to Lion, you could mount the AFP location manually by going to Finder > Connect to server > afp://<user>@<dns-name> then set that as the backup destination in System Preferences > Time Machine. I am still able to do that in Lion, but the backups never succeed. I get errors like this in Console:
com.apple.backupd[25996]: Starting standard backup
com.apple.backupd[25996]: Attempting to mount network destination URL: afp://<user>@<dns-name>/Backups
com.apple.backupd[25996]: NAConnectToServerSync failed with error: 80 for url: afp://<user>@<dns-name>/Backups
com.apple.backupd[25996]: Backup failed with error: 19
This is odd because I can still manually mount the AFP location and modify its contents. I fought with this for a few hours changing various settings and permissions on the server with no success. So I grabbed a laptop and went to the server closet. I dropped the machine onto a port that is on the same VLAN as the server and initiated a backup. It started with no problem. Apple can't really expect us to have our backup servers on the same net as the machines we want to backup can they? That seems highly impractical. Any help would be great!

Sort of.
You can't control the backups from the server, and you can't limit their maximum sizes by a simple selection on the server, as you can with the actual server product.
But the "clients" can back up to a shared drive in or connected to the mini. See #22 in Time Machine - Frequently Asked Questions (or use the link in *User Tips* at the top of this forum).
The only way to limit the size of the backups is to either put each on a separate partition, or let them all contend for space on a single one.
If you're also backing-up the mini, it's best to do that to a dedicated partition. See #3 in the FAQ.

Reset network Time Machine Server Settings

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