[HN Gopher] ThinMachine - A $25 Thin Client macOS Time Machine A...
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ThinMachine - A $25 Thin Client macOS Time Machine Appliance
Author : picture
Score : 52 points
Date : 2023-06-25 20:59 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (tomverbeure.github.io)
(TXT) w3m dump (tomverbeure.github.io)
| scorxn wrote:
| I have a Raspberry Pi running Pi-hole and Time Machine, making
| that little board probably the best value piece of tech I've ever
| owned. https://saschaeggi.medium.com/use-a-raspberry-pi-4-for-
| time-... is what I followed.
| satysin wrote:
| I use a Synology now but I used a Pi for a couple of years
| before that without issue.
|
| I did give it to my daughter to use at university but I very
| much doubt she actually used it and I've not thought about
| asking until this post :^)
| maxmalkav wrote:
| I opened the link mostly to see which thin client model the
| author chose, to discover it is a HP T520, a machine it happens I
| also own an unit.
|
| I cannot comment on TimeMachine, but regarding hardware + Linux,
| it has been a more stable server than equivalent RPi or Odroid
| SBCs while not consuming much more power and just having a bigger
| size.
| chris37879 wrote:
| I just checked the box in unsaid for "make this share a Time
| Machine volume", and added the unsaid machine and my MacBook to
| tailscale, configured the disk over tailscale and now I have
| remote Time Machine anywhere I have internet. This appliance
| seems like a good ticket if you just want a time capsule
| replacement, though.
| st3fan wrote:
| I'm not sure if AFP (via Netatalk) is really the right thing to
| use. I'm pretty sure that "native" Time Machine now prefera CIFS
| (Samba) over the network.
| climb_stealth wrote:
| My advice to retain your sanity: stop using Time Machine and use
| Carbon Copy Cloner [0] instead. It works. It keeps working. It
| has excellent documentation for any possible backup and restore
| cases. It is transparent about what it is doing.
|
| Time Machine works fine until it doesn't. And it won't tell you
| that a backup is broken until you try to restore from it. The
| errors are going to be cryptic. There is going to be no support
| and the forums are not going to help. The broken backup is not
| going to be able to be repaired. Time Machine uses the "fuck you
| user" approach of not providing any information about what it
| does, or doesn't, or intends to do or whatever.
|
| If your data is worth backing up, don't use Time Machine.
|
| [0] https://bombich.com
| Brajeshwar wrote:
| I use Carbon Copy Cloner to have a replica of my drive.
| However, I still use Time Machine as a convenience to go back
| in time for my mistakes. My daughter thinks I'm one of those
| nerds that married a regular girl from college and can do magic
| with software because I can make her computer go back in time
| and bring back versions of her files.
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| > My daughter thinks I'm one of those nerds that married a
| regular girl from college and can do magic with software
| because I can make her computer go back in time and bring
| back versions of her files.
|
| Wait until she discovers git!
|
| As an aside, I wish there was an alternative like Time
| Machine on Windows.
| smcleod wrote:
| CCC costs $77.50 AUD per major version just to use the app - it
| might be OK but that's a lot of money!
|
| TimeMachine is free and "good enough" for local / local network
| backups for most people, for remote backup BorgBase (although
| the "Vorta" borg GUI app is dreadful) and Backblaze are
| affordable-ish options.
|
| Also it doesn't look like CCC has write-only backups (immutable
| from the client side once created) like Borg has, there's no
| mention of encryption or deduplication in their feature list
| either - https://bombich.com/features
| firecall wrote:
| My advice is to use TimeMachine plus other backups.
|
| I use:
|
| 1. TimeMachine on a 20TB TrueNAS ZFS setup
|
| 2. BackBlaze
|
| 3. ...not a versioned backup, but iCloud Synching, which is a
| useful disaster recovery.
| Brajeshwar wrote:
| I've found that the ideal size of Timemachine drive is just
| about twice of the target drive. It last for months if not
| years -- enough to go back. Beyond that, there must be an
| archival/backup system in place if you still want to get back
| files deleted years ago.
| wlesieutre wrote:
| In my experience there's no need to worry about long term
| disk usage of Time Machine. The backup is going to get in a
| bad state and start failing to add new backups, requiring
| you to wipe it and start over before the drive fills up.
| [deleted]
| js2 wrote:
| * * *
| beering wrote:
| Is netatalk the key thing here that makes it Time Machine
| compatible? The rest seems like standard DIY home server stuff.
| jamesy0ung wrote:
| Yes, although Apple is deprecating AFP and now allows backup
| over SMB
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| A shame they still haven't implemented the ability to target
| iCloud.
| tverbeure wrote:
| Yes.
|
| There is nothing special about this, other than personally
| finding out that I could replace my failing Time Capsule for
| something so cheap.
| housemusicfan wrote:
| Yeah this is as pointless as every "life hack" on YouTube.
| Haven't you been able to Time Machine backup to any HFS-
| formatted sparse bundle since forever? Located on literally ANY
| samba server - Windows, Linux, or ye olde NAS. I have
| personally done this for years. I don't get the novelty here
| unless you're into the "I built a submarine with parts I got
| off eBay" angle.
| tverbeure wrote:
| I write these blog posts for primarily for myself, and
| hopefully because somebody might find them useful. I claim no
| novelty, there are no ads, no traffic tracking, there is no
| intention whatsoever to make money from it.
|
| But if my posts irritate some jerk on the Internet who has
| nothing better to do than spread negativity, then that's
| definitely a nice unintended benefit.
|
| Do you need a hug?
| rodgerd wrote:
| > But if my posts irritate some jerk on the Internet who
| has nothing better to do than spread negativity, then
| that's definitely a nice unintended benefit.
|
| Amen.
| housemusicfan wrote:
| No malice intended, but I genuinely felt as if you had
| wasted your own time. Sorry if I don't subscribe to the
| usual HN tug-fest. If you learned something - good for you
| but I've been down this exact road many times before.
| Oftentimes I have to mentor younger engineers that there is
| often a much simpler solution if you can see the forest for
| the trees.
| BolexNOLA wrote:
| We see projects like this almost daily on HN. Sometimes
| people just like to tinker and share, so yeah, the "I built a
| submarine with parts I got off eBay" type work can be fun and
| even useful. You never know who you might help!
|
| If that irritates you, this might not be the site for you.
| satysin wrote:
| AppleTalk is deprecated by Apple for a few years now. You
| should really be using SMB for Time Machine.
| firecall wrote:
| Running TrueNAS on an ex-lease Dell Micro 7060 with a bunch of
| USB 4TB drives, is currently the best Time Machine destination
| I've ever used; fast, reliable, always available.
| mberning wrote:
| Synology has nice support for time machine backups. Very easy to
| set up in DSM.
| murphyslaw wrote:
| Yh, and even they can't get it right. You lose connectivity
| once in a while and the only way to recover is to erase the
| backup and start over.
|
| I came here to see if someone had built a macos native time
| machine, but this looks like just another hack.
| climb_stealth wrote:
| Just posted this in another comment as well. Ditch Time
| Machine altogether. Use Carbon Copy Cloner instead. It backs
| up straight to a network drive. Been using it with my
| Synology for years. Using Time Machine is playing russian
| roulette with backup data.
| pridkett wrote:
| A superpower of doing Time Machine backups to a Synology is
| that you can put it on a BTRFS drive with automatic
| snapshotting. About once a year something seems to happen that
| causes Time Machine to give a "whoopsie, gotta start over from
| the beginning again!" sort of error. I've found that going back
| a day or two with snapshots on BTRFS fixes the problem.
| kmeisthax wrote:
| For me it was more like every day. I gave up on Time Machine
| very quickly.
|
| The underlying problem is that Time Machine stores a disk
| image over the network[0]. If the disk image is not unmounted
| cleanly, Time Machine treats it as horribly corrupted and
| refuses to touch it. And this happens very often if you're
| using a laptop that will be unexpectedly disconnected from
| its storage constantly.
|
| [0] This is to support things like hardlinks, etc. Ironically
| this is to emulate what BTRFS snapshots do natively. No clue
| if modern Time Machine uses APFS, but so long as they shove
| the actual data inside of a disk image this problem will
| continue occurring.
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(page generated 2023-06-25 23:00 UTC)