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.

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.

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.

Time machine Mail backup size

Hi everybody,
I don't understand why my Time Machine backups are around 1Go every time. Not every hour, but every 2 or 3 backups.
So my TM HD gets quickly full all the time.
I've used BackupLoupe, and I've realized that the problem comes from Mail.
It backs up around 750 Mo all the time.
Mail is set with an imap gmail account.
I've read the same issue here, but the post is archived :
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/2205780?threadID=2205780
I've not read the size issue has been solved, so If someone can tell me how.
Thanks a lot,

From the Mail menu bar, select
Mail ▹ Preferences ▹ Accounts
Select the problem IMAP account, then the Advanced tab in its settings. From the menu labeled
Keep copies of messages for offline viewing
select
Don't keep copies of any messages
If you're not sure which account is involved, take this step in each one.
Another option is to exclude the hidden folder that contains the messages from your backups. You can do that in the Time Machine preference pane.

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.

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!!

TIME MACHINE - MAIL BACKUP - MAC 10.6.8

Hi guys
I am new to using Time Machine and still learning about my Mac.
I have many important work emails that have contact information of people i am dealing with in other countries if i Lose my emails i am screwed. Does time machine backup your emails safely say something were to happen to my Mac???
I have been reading mixed reviews so I am unclear...... Help appreciated.
Thanks guys

It will unless you have excluded them in System Preferences/Time Machine. If they are important to you, I suggest you make a 2nd backup on another external drive using a cloning program.
Clone - Carbon Copy Cloner (Often recommended as it has more features than some others)
Clone – Data Backup
Clone – Deja Vu
Clone - SuperDuper
Clone - Synk
Clone Software – 6 Applications Tested

Time Capsule and Time Machine want backup, stops after 2-30GB

Bought 2 x 2GB Time Capsule yesterday to have for backup purpose. I have only used one of them yet (30 day return policy). I have an iMac with OSX 10.6.6 connected by LAN: I first tried to connect the TC to my ZyXEL P2602HWT, then directly to the iMac without any other network, and now i have set up ZyXEL as a bridge router and run TC with PPOE. All three connections provide the same miserable results. First backup starts quite normal and can backup everything from 2-30GB before Time Machine comes with a fault message "Time Machine Error This can be a transient problem. Try again later. If the problem persists, repair the backup disk using diskutility. I have tried everything rebooted TC, TC deleted, removed almost all the folders in the Time Machine except for documents, pictures and music folders but same result. Is there something wrong with my TC?

Kjetil Tomasgaard wrote:
Bought 2 x 2GB Time Capsule yesterday to have for backup purpose.
I'm wondering why you're using a Time Capsule for backups of an iMac; an external HD would be much faster and more reliable.
"Time Machine Error This can be a transient problem. Try again later. If the problem persists, repair the backup disk using diskutility.
It sounds like there's a problem with a file on your system; see #C3 in [Time Machine - Troubleshooting|http://web.me.com/pondini/Time_Machine/Troubleshooting.html] (or use the link in *User Tips* at the top of the +Time Machine+ forum).

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.

My Book and Time Machine

I use both MyBook for Mac and Time Machine to backup my computer.
I do backups once a week with MyBook. When I do a new backup are files/folders from previous backups (which are now deleted from my computer) kept in MyBook and Time Machine.

The WD SmartWare software keeps a predefined number of backups, this is a setting within the software. You'd want to check under settings to see how far back it will keep things.
Time Machine thins backups periodically according to some preset logic and the amount of space left on the storage destination. It keeps one backup per hour for the past 24 hours, one per day for the past week, one per week for the past month, and so on until the drive is full.

Should I use time machine to backup server?

moving from 10.4 server running on an emac, to a 10.5 setup on a mac pro tower, 2 500gig hard drives. I used to use silverkeeper as an automatic backup utility, I am wondering if it is a good idea to use time machine. I like the idea of being able to go back in time to restore users files, or take the system back when something gets messed up. Any suggestions? I have about 100 users with home directories on server. Clients are mostly running 10.4 with some 10.3. I am not talking about allowing clients to time machine to server, but rather backing up the entire server to the 2nd drive using time machine.

I think this is a controversial topic.
Apple certainly doesn't support it. Apple omits a bunch of key folders depending on what you use your server for. For example, Time Machine does not backup /var/spool which is where the mail store is located. Additionally, Time Machine does not back up logs.
These exclusions can be seen, and commented out, here:
/System/Library/CoreServices/backupd.bundle/Contents/Resources/StdExclusions.pli st
I personally comment out the exclusion of /var/spool and additionally any logs. I also set ServerAdmin to roll my logs so that Time Machine isn't constantly backing up the same log file for more than 7 days.
Of course, you must re-verify that your changes are in place after any software update.
Once I made these changes, I've been very happy with the use of Time Machine to backup my server.

Using Time Machine to backup a iMac G5 and restore to an intel iMac

Is it possible to use Time Machine to backup my iMac G5 and restore my backup to a new intel iMac?
The reason being is that I my mother-in-law's company bought her a new intel Mac and she wants to trade with me since she only uses her Mac for e-mail, photos and accounting software.
I was thinking of making sure her data is preserved by using the migration assistant to transfer her data to my iMac G5 and then using my time machine backup to restore to her intel iMac. I have concerns about this method after reading about the intel/powerpc issues with time machine. I also have concerns that perhaps the version of MacOS 10.5 installed to my iMac G5 will not be optimized for intel.

Well, not entirely. You cannot install or restore a PPC version of OS X to an Intel Mac because the PPC system will not work on an Intel Mac. You can copy your personal files, most preference files, and third-party applications (although it would be preferable to update all PPC-only apps to universal binaries which perform better on Intel machines.
Another possible concern is if your mother's company is transferring the ownership to her or simply purchasing the unit for her to use. In the latter case the computer belongs to the company, not your mother. She cannot then give it to you because it isn't hers. This problem should be resolved beforehand because the company may one day want the computer back.
Folders You Can Move to Your new Mac
From the Home folder copy the contents of Documents, Movies, Music, Pictures, and Sites.
In your /Home/Library/ folder:
/Home/Library/Application Support/AddressBook (copy the whole folder)
/Home/Library/Application Support/iCal (copy the whole folder)
Also in /Home/Library/Application Support (copy whatever else you need including folders for any third-party applications)
/Home/Library/Keychains (copy the whole folder)
/Home/Library/Mail (copy the whole folder)
/Home/Library/Preferences/ (copy the whole folder)
/Home /Library/iTunes (copy the whole folder)
/Home /Library/Safari (copy the whole folder)
If you want cookies:
/Home/Library/Cookies/Cookies.plist
/Home/Library/Application Support/WebFoundation/HTTPCookies.plist
For Entourage users:
Entourage is in /Home/Documents/Microsoft User Data
Also in /Home/Library/Preferences/Microsoft
For FireFox:
/Home/Library/Applications Support/FireFox
/Home/Library/Preferences/org.mozilla.firefox.plist
Credit goes to another forum user for this information.

Can I use time machine to backup on my server HD?

I've mac Leapard with Time Machine but never made use of it because:
- I don't have and don't want to have an external HD.
- Don't have Time Capsule, and cannot afford it.
Yet I was wondering if it was somehow possible to use Time Machine, to backup directly to my server (online) for example.

-(.)^(.)- wrote:
Time Machine backups are NOT supported for NAS devices except Time Capsule or a USB HDD connected to an AirPort Extreme Base Station. All other options are hacks.
I would add that even if a network drive were available, unless it was formatted HFS+ with either GUID or APM depending, it would not be acceptable anyway for TM.

SL Server and Time Machine Mail backups

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