Time Machine¶

In the past, I have had issues using Samba shares on my NAS as backup targets for Time Machine. Here's the guide I used to set it up.

Avahi¶

MacOS will not use SMB Time Machine shares unless they are advertised via Bonjour mDNS.

apt install avahi-daemon -y && systemctl enable --now avahi-daemon

Create the Time Machine service file and then restart the Avahi daemon.

<?xml version="1.0" standalone='no'?>
<!DOCTYPE service-group SYSTEM "avahi-service.dtd">
<service-group>
<name replace-wildcards="yes">%h Time Machine</name>
<service>
    <type>_adisk._tcp</type>
    <port>9</port>
    <txt-record>sys=adVF=0x100</txt-record>
    <txt-record>dk0=adVN=TimeMachine,adVF=0x82</txt-record>
</service>
</service-group>

systemctl restart avahi-daemon

Samba¶

Install and configure Samba if you haven't already and then restart the Samba daemon. Here's the Time Machine section I used most recently if that's all you need.

[timemachine] 
    comment = Time Machine 
    path = /dpool/timemachine 
    browseable = yes 
    writable = yes 
    public = no 
    guest ok = no 
    fruit:time machine = yes 
    fruit:resource = stream 
    spotlight = no
    fruit:time machine max size = 2T

systemctl restart smbd nmbd

ZFS¶

If your underlying storage is zfs, run these commands. Also make sure to set the appropriate permissions for the underlying folders reguardless of the filesystem.

zfs set casesensitivity=mixed dpool/timemachine
zfs set atime=off dpool/timemachine
zfs set recordsize=1M dpool/timemachine
zfs set acltype=posixacl dpool/timemachine
zfs set xattr=sa dpool/timemachine

chown -R dominic:dominic /dpool/timemachine
chmod -R 770 /dpool/timemachine

After this is all set, go to System Settings → General → Time Machine and click "Add Backup Disk". Evidently, it's not advised to "Connect to server" from the Finder. Also, if there’s existing junk in /dpool/timemachine, macOS may silently refuse it.