🎓 Intranet

Backup

5 min read

Configure Time Machine to backup to the Sirius Samba server

Last updated on July 4th, 2021 

Before you get started

Typically, important calculations and results related to research will be on either Orion or Fornax. These files are regularly backed up to the storage server, Sirius. However, a 20TB partition has been allocated to help protect and backup files on your MacBook.

Time Machine is the built-in backup utility for macOS and the snapshots and backups made by Time Machine can be shared over SMB protocol onto a remote Linux Server, via Samba.

Before you can backup to Sirius, a Samba account needs to be created for you by the System Administrator. These credentials will be used to mount your personal Time Machine volume on Sirius over the network to work with Time Machine.

Once your credentials have been provided to you, please follow the rest of this guide to set up automatic Time Machine backups to Sirius. If you have any issues, please contact Tim via email (tim.pook@nus.edu.sg) or via Teams.

Setup Time Machine Backup

  1. Open finder
  2. Hover over the Go tab at the top of the screen and select Connect to Server. (Alternatively, use the shortcut ⌘+ k)
  3. Once the Connect to Server window is open, connect to the server with the address: smb://username@sirius.nus.edu.sg , where the username is the samba username supplied to you by the System Administrator.
  4. Once connected to the server, you will be prompted to enter a password. This is the samba password provided by the system administrator. It is recommended to select the option to remember the password in your keychain.
  5. Once authenticated, you will be shown a list of volumes to mount onto your machine. Select the volume with the format username’s TimeMachine. This is the Samba time machine volume which can perform the Time Machine backup. You may also see a volume simply called username. This is the physical directory but will not be accessible. You may also see the Time Machine volumes for other users, however you will not be able to access them without proper credentials.
  6. Once the volume is mounted, you can find the Time Machine volume in Finder, under locations → network.
  7. Now that you are connected, ensure that you SMB file sharing is enabled by going to System Preferences → Sharing → File Sharing → Options and make sure that “Share files and folders with SMB” is enabled. If there is an option to share files with AFP, make sure that this box is unticked.
  8. Now you should be ready to start your backup with Time machine. Go to System Preferences → Time Machine → Select Disk. If the previous steps were successful, your Time Machine volume on Sirius should be available. Select this volume and enter your Samba login details again. Select Encrypt backups to keep your data secure and then Use Disk.
  9. Now you are ready to backup your MacBook to Sirius. If you have Backup Automatically selected then there is nothing left you to do, but ensure that your MacBook stays powered on and connected to the NUS network during the backup.

Connect to Samba server on login

If you have followed the main procedure to backup to Sirius, then you know how to connect to the Server manually and let Time Machine backup for you. However, Time Machine is convenient as it allows for backups to be automated. Thus, it’s recommended to connect the Samba server automatically.

  1. Go to System Preferences → Users & Groups
  2. Go to login items and add a new login item to the list by clicking on the + button.
  3. Select the server in locations, then select the Time Machine volume and click Add.
  4. Now, you will connect the server automatically upon start up.

Important

This will only work properly if the password for the Samba server is saved in your keychain.

Optional

Once added to login items, you can click the select the hide box to prevent the Connect to server window from opening every time you login.

Speedup your first backup

The initial backup may require several hours if not days. To speed up your backup execute the following command from the terminal. Time Machine is designed to work quietly and slowly in the background. Most of your regular backups are incremental and therefore don’t need much power. If you only back up your Mac once per week (or longer), Time Machine has a lot more work to do, but still runs quietly and slowly in the background. Using this Terminal command, you will disable the disk operation throttling so Time Machine will run faster.

sudo sysctl debug.lowpri_throttle_enabled=0

While it may be great to speed up your Time Machine backup, it is doing so at the expense of everything else. You don’t want the throttle disabled at all times. After you’ve finished backing up your data, you’ll want to revert to having Time Machine run quietly and slowly in the background (or not at all if you’re not running it constantly). Use this Terminal command to reenable the CPU throttle.

sudo sysctl debug.lowpri_throttle_enabled=1

Graph View

Backlinks