I mentioned a few posts back that I was going to try and create a script (if no-one beat me to it) to automate the process of configuring a samba share to be used with Time Machine. I’ve had a go…
Here is the automator script: http://www.tickett.net/downloads/setup_samba_for_time_machine.zip
There are still a few steps required but it removes the need to open the terminal and lookup your computer name, mac address etc
1. Mount your samba share
2. Right click the setup_samba_for_time_machine automator script (downloaded above) and select Open With, Automator Runner
3. Select your samba share mount point, click choose
4. Wait a minute and you should see a message similar to above. Now launch Time Machine and point at the samba share!
I’ve never used Automator before so I expect the script can be improved considerably… I expect there are currently a few limitations:
- The .sparsebundle file must not already exist
- Your computer name must not contain any spaces
- Others?
I have also seen an error when trying to backup one of my Macs that the image isn’t big enough even though it is set to the same size as the hard disk drive? (Should we be making the .sparsebundle image larger than the hdd size?)
Feel free to modify the script and please feedback and changes/comments etc- I will most likely blog later about the way the script works (I found it quite hard using google to solve issues such as: How do I determine the size of the hard disk drive? How do I display a simple message/popup/dialog?)
L
Tickett's Blog 
Thanks, that works!
Brilliant: by far the easiest way to set it up. Thanks so much for making this available.
I was caught out by the ‘Computer name cannot have spaces’, since mine did. I simply took out the spaces in System Preferences > Sharing and ran the automator script again. Perfect.
You might want to explain here that creating a ‘200GB disk image’ does NOT require 200GB of free space. It’s a tiny file that can grow to 200GB over time. When I tried to make the Sparse bundle in Disk Utility on my MacBook Pro it said I can’t because I only have 33GB space free. So use the command line bit or the script and it’ll work.
Also I got a warning about ‘FileVault’ being on for some user accounts. Turns out it was an old account I used for testing, so stopped the ‘straight away’ Time Machine backup,deleted that account and went back to tell Time Machine to go ahead.
Great!
Can you email me the script?I cant download it. It says the domain the script is located on is expired.
I’ve updated the link and will e-mail you the file also :)
Thanks
L
Will this work for WHS 1? I had Time Machine working by following directions from here: http://www.multimedia-pcs.com/version-3-use-time-machine-with-windows-home-server and getting it to WHS, but after upgrading to Lion, I started getting an AFP error (as last two comments in posts indicate – one being mine). Anyway, was hoping this might work in WHS1 and thought I’d ask before going through trial and error.
It should do yes. The trick is more on the client side rather than the server side. This should work with any samba share regardless of the server o/s.
Well, the script was definitely nice in terms of not having to manually do anything. Unfortunately, I still get the following error:
Time Machine could not complete the backup.
The network backup disk does not support the required AFP features.
Open Time Machine preferences to select a different backup disk.
Great script. No luck with Lion as others have posted.
Any chance you can put this up / e-mail this again? It seems to have disappeared.