time machine network to ZFS / support lock stealing?

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time machine network to ZFS / support lock stealing?

Post by erico » Mon Dec 17, 2012 11:02 am

Dear all,

I have now successfully gotten ZFS running on my octo-core powermac. It seems nice! I am so thrilled to be using a real file system with pool based storage.

Now here's the question...I am trying to now set up backups for my laptops to the ZFS pool using time machine. I have created a sparse image bundle for each of the laptops, copied it to the remote server running ZFS, used the hack to get mac os x to share out non-hfs volumes, and used the technique listed here http://www.jamesbadger.ca/2012/09/12/mountain-lion-time-machine-over-afp-auto-mount-edition/ to "bless" the images as the official time machine destinations for the individual laptops. However, I end up receiving an error message when I do the last step:

Code: Select all
Destination does not support lock stealing. (error 45)


Is this an inherent problem to ZFS that HFS sparse bundles cannot be hosted on ZFS volumes? Or is it a current implementation problem? Is there a workaround? Does merely copying the sparsebundles to a ZFS volume invalidate them in some way, or is it that time machine backups cannot run to a ZFS destination over a network?

Any insights would be most welcome!

thanks,
Erico
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Re: time machine network to ZFS / support lock stealing?

Post by chipped » Mon Dec 17, 2012 5:22 pm

I've been backing up multiple macs to my ZFS volume over the network using Time Machine for a while now. Works fine.

I just installed Server from App Store to make my Mac a time machine destination.

You aware of this or don't feel like forking over $20?
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Re: time machine network to ZFS / support lock stealing?

Post by erico » Mon Dec 17, 2012 7:07 pm

Interesting that you are able to get it to work. I actually purchased the server program in hopes of making it work, and that didn't seem to do the trick. I had installed the kernel extension to make ZFS shareable (https://github.com/joshado/liberate-applefileserver) beforehand. Maybe I need to uninstall that? Or is there a special configuration in the apple server software? I am not experiencing the "it just works" magic....so I'd be curious if you did any special changes.

Thanks for the thoughts....

erico
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Re: time machine network to ZFS / support lock stealing?

Post by erico » Tue Dec 18, 2012 3:28 pm

Just an update and some further questions:

I am still not able to get this to work. I just did a clean install of mountain lion + mountain lion server + zevo. As it stands, if I don't have the special kernel extension that enables afp on non-hfs volumes, I can't even set up a share on the ZFS pool. Are you saying, chipper, that this worked for you? Does this work for anyone?

When I do install the kernel extension, I can share a folder from the ZFS pool BUT any attempts to add a folder on the ZFS pool to the time machine destinations via the server panel just fail, without an error....literally nothing happens!

So my question is whether a) anyone has been getting ZFS shares via AFP to work without the kernel extension; b) whether they have gotten time machine destinations to work at all and c) what other steps (permissions? extensions? Command line setting via tmiutil? ZFS commands commands/options? ) were necessary to make it work

Any help would be much much appreciated. I'm tearing my hair out!
-erico
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Re: time machine network to ZFS / support lock stealing?

Post by erico » Tue Dec 18, 2012 3:28 pm

Just an update and some further questions:

I am still not able to get this to work. I just did a clean install of mountain lion + mountain lion server + zevo. As it stands, if I don't have the special kernel extension that enables afp on non-hfs volumes, I can't even set up a share on the ZFS pool. Are you saying, chipper, that this worked for you? Does this work for anyone?

When I do install the kernel extension, I can share a folder from the ZFS pool BUT any attempts to add a folder on the ZFS pool to the time machine destinations via the server panel just fail, without an error....literally nothing happens!

So my question is whether a) anyone has been getting ZFS shares via AFP to work without the kernel extension; b) whether they have gotten time machine destinations to work at all and c) what other steps (permissions? extensions? Command line setting via tmiutil? ZFS commands commands/options? ) were necessary to make it work

Any help would be much much appreciated. I'm tearing my hair out!
-erico
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Re: time machine network to ZFS / support lock stealing?

Post by mk01 » Tue Dec 18, 2012 7:17 pm

erico,

your question is still valid, but.

did you considered other options too? for example, if you don't need system backup (waste of space on the backup destination from my opinion) look for server (you have it already) home sync.

you can setup network home dirs, which are synced between server and clients, network user accounts and the possibility to log from ever client (your laptops, but not only, work with linux clients too etc) to you network (server), having all user files ready and this even without to create users / copy data to clients.

and always exactly in the last state you last logged out (anywhere). and this for example including apps preferences, look & feel (because this is all kept always in user home dir).

br,
Matus
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Re: time machine network to ZFS / support lock stealing?

Post by chipped » Sat Jan 05, 2013 10:31 am

Hey, sorry I forgot about this head and didn't get back to you.

I installed the liberate afp too, and installed Server app. I'm using Mountain Lion. These are the settings I'm using on the Backups folder. Which is found in /Volumes/MyZevoDrive/Shared Items/Backups, it's created by Server app when you set a drive as the Time Machine destination.

http://imageshack.us/a/img822/7258/photojan06022724.jpg
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Re: time machine network to ZFS / support lock stealing?

Post by erico » Sat Jan 05, 2013 12:29 pm

Dear chipped,

Thank you for sharing that. I follow you so far as creating the settings in the backup folder. I was able to set up a share and create a sparsebundle to which I can back up. I notice you have special folders assigned to each user. Did you create those manually, or did Time machine do that for you?

I would like to think it "just worked," perhaps through server.app. But when I go to the Server.app and try to turn on the volume for "time machine backups," it does not add the volume. Also, my backups only work if I manually mount (over AFP) the shared volume/sharepoint containing the sparseimage . Does automount work for you? If I try to use tmiutil on my laptops it refuses to add the share point, saying that it does not support lock stealing. Is this parallel to what you have experienced?

If you got automount to work, did you perhaps edit the plist file as Buxtor suggests here: http://superuser.com/questions/285225/how-to-make-timemachine-back-up-contents-of-any-path-or-mounted-volume ?

Or am I just doing something completely wrong?

thanks again!

Eric
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Re: time machine network to ZFS / support lock stealing?

Post by mk01 » Tue Jan 08, 2013 6:32 pm

erico,

what I tried now is:

1) create ZFS file system
2) in server app go to File Sharing, enable this FS for sharing (this assumes installation of liberate hack
3) enable sharing for homes option (this will add the share into opendirectory for automounts)
4) edit permissions (still via File Sharing) and add System, Spotlight and com.apple.access_backup for full access
5) then open terminal and via serveradmin tool change parameter "isTimeMachineBackup" to yes for this share
6) start the timemachine service

after I did this, the folder (FS) appeared automatically on the client under possible backup destinations - and in timemachine config under server.app as well.
I didn't test the backup itself, but is worth a try. let us know.

mk
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Re: time machine network to ZFS / support lock stealing?

Post by antikus » Fri Jan 11, 2013 2:31 pm

Thank you mk01!

That solved TimeMachine backups for me. The service is up and running and my computers are backing things up over the network.

FYI, you might not need to do step 4: "4) edit permissions (still via File Sharing) and add System, Spotlight and com.apple.access_backup for full access". The server seems to do that itself, once I changed the isTimeMachineBackup parameter
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