OSX Time Machine Over Your Network Without a Timecapsule

So I spent the other day figuring out how to do this, and then when I went to price buying a NAS, timecapsules were going for $200, so I bought one. I'm generally happy with it. Thinking I had wasted my time figuring out how to make timemachine work with an unsupported network device, my co-worker mentioned to me today that he needed to get this working for our Macs at work. Ha! I said, I'll get to use this bit of knowelege after all. So here it is.

Start by connecting to your network storage through either SMB or AFP. Create a file called

.com.apple.timemachine.supported

Next you're going to need your machine name and the MAC address of your network card.

Drop to a terminal to get both of these. You machine name should be your host name, or the first part of your command prompt, the bit before the colon.

Laptop:~ greg$

Next now, execute
ifconfig

Locate the line that says
ether
under the network interface card. That's your MAC address.

en0: flags=8863 mtu 1500

ether 00:13:db:9d:62:fc


Now take that machine name and MAC address minus the colons to create the name of the disk image you'll need to create to make this thing work. Put them together seperated by an underscore.

Laptop_0013db9d62fc

Now you'll need to create a disk image. Use this command, replacing your image name with mine and add .sparsebundle to the end of it.

Laptop:~ greg$ hdiutil create -library SPUD -megabytes 204800 -fs HFS+J \
-type SPARSEBUNDLE -volname "Laptop_0013db9d62fc.sparsebundle" \
"Laptop_0013db9d62fc.sparsebundle"

You should also set the size of your disk image about twice the size of the drive you are backing up. After the disk image is finished being created, drop it on your network storage device.

One last step and you're good to go. Execute this at the terminal.

defaults write com.apple.systempreferences\
TMShowUnsupportedNetworkVolumes 1

Now connect to your network storage device and open up timemachine, hit
Change Disk
and your network storage device should show up as an available device.

Of course this is all subject to change. I read through a number of
how-to postings on this written a different times, and it seems apple
keeps making this process more and more complicated, but as of the
writing of this posting, this process works.