Samba For Time Machine

Quote from mig67

Ok but how can I limit the size of the backup? Time machine makes an incremental backup and as long as there is space the backup grows

[Edit]
Found the solution here: https://www.reddit.com/r/homel…chine_backups_on_a_samba/

To set quotas you need to put a .com.apple.TimeMachine.quota.plist file:

cat <<< _EOF_ > /srv/backup/timemachine/$USERNAME/.com.apple.TimeMachine.quota.plist
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
<key>GlobalQuota</key>
<integer>300000000000</integer>
</dict>
</plist>
_EOF_

Size is in Byte, so 300GB in this example

Quote from Steini

[Edit]Found the solution here: https://www.reddit.com/r/homel…chine_backups_on_a_samba/

To set quotas you need to put a .com.apple.TimeMachine.quota.plist file:

Code

cat <<< _EOF_ > /srv/backup/timemachine/$USERNAME/.com.apple.TimeMachine.quota.plist
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
<key>GlobalQuota</key>
<integer>300000000000</integer>
</dict>
</plist>
_EOF_

Size is in Byte, so 300GB in this example

Display More

so I added the file in the backup folder :

root@openmediavault:/srv/dev-disk-by-label-data03/mac_backup# ls -la
total 20
drwxrwsr-x+ 1 root users 216 Jan  6 09:12  .
drwxr-xr-x  1 root root   40 Jan  5 15:37  ..
-rw-rw-r--+ 1 root users 252 Jan  6 09:12  .com.apple.TimeMachine.quota.plist
drwx------+ 1 tm   users 376 Jan  6 08:55 'MacBook Air de Alan.purgeable.sparsebundle'

root@openmediavault:/srv/dev-disk-by-label-data03/mac_backup# cat .com.apple.TimeMachine.quota.plist 
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
  <key>GlobalQuota</key>
    <integer>300000000000</integer>
  </dict>
</plist>

restarted the Daemon

root@openmediavault:/srv/dev-disk-by-label-data03/mac_backup# systemctl restart smbd.service

but it still wants to use the whole 2 TB. Any Idea?

ok, do not ask me why, it suddenly worked. Even without rebooting my Mac.
I expect rebooting the mac would have resolved the issue immediately...

I have a followup question related to this. I have a 5 TB 2.5" USB drive (raspi 4, OMV5), of which I want to use 1.5-2 TB for time machine backups. I believe the recommendation from OMV is not to partition the drive (so just use a 'TimeMachine' folder at the root of the drive). So currently I intend to do this.

I too want to restrict time machine backups (to 1.5-2 TB). However there are several users with different disk sizes to backup: user1, user 2 (500 GB), user3, user4 (128 GB). To accommodate them I need top create a share pro user and add a quota file:

cat <<< _EOF_ > /srv/backup/timemachine/user1/.com.apple.TimeMachine.quota.plist ...etc
cat <<< _EOF_ > /srv/backup/timemachine/user2/.com.apple.TimeMachine.quota.plist ...etc
etc

Then (or at the start) I need to create 4 users (OMV: Access Rights Management, User) and ensure they all belong to the sambashare group. And of course I have to create a shared folder before I can share it via SMB/CIFS.

Is this right, anything I've not thought of?