The Daily Admin

Create Apple Time Capsule for Time Machine backups using Centos 6.5

I have been looking for the parts required to put together so that I can backup all the macs on a linux server hosted here in my lab.  What follows is the my “yum ready” instructions.

• Start With Centos 6.5 Minimal Distribution
• We need to create the file space where the Time Machine is going to save the files. I chose /home/tony/timemachine
  • Create the user:
    adduser lynn #create user
    passwd lynn  #set password
  • Create the path:
    mkdir -p /home/lynn/timemachine
  • Set ownership:
    chown -R lynn:lynn /home/lynn
• Install wget
  yum -y wget
• Install the EPEL Repository

  wget http://www.mirrorservice.org/sites/dl.fedoraproject.org/pub/epel/6/i386/epel-release-6-8.noarch.rpm
  yum localinstall epel-release-6-8.noarch.rpm

• Use Yum to install the required packages:
  yum -y install netatalk avahi  dbus nss-mdns
• Set services to start at boot:
  chkconfig netatalk on
  chkconfig messagebus on
  chkconfig avahi-daemon on
• Now configure netatalk by posting this line at the very bottom of the file:

  - -transall -uamlist uams_randnum.so,uams_dhx.so,uams_dhx2.so -nosavepassword -advertise_ssh
  (Yes, just like that)

• Edit /etc/netatalk/AppleVolumes.default and create the network shares. You’ll need one for each laptop you want to backup:

  /home/lynn/timemachine allow:lynn options:usedots,upriv,tm dperm:0775 fperm:0660 cnidscheme:dbd

• Next edit /etc/nsswitch.conf

  hosts:      files mdns4_minimal dns mdns mdns4

•  Create  /etc/avahi/services/afpd.service with the contents:

  <?xml version=”1.0″ standalone=’no’?>
  <!DOCTYPE service-group SYSTEM “avahi-service.dtd”>
  <service-group>
  <name replace-wildcards=”yes”>%h</name>
  <service>
  <type>_afpovertcp._tcp</type>
  <port>548</port>
  </service>
  <service>
  <type>_device-info._tcp</type>
  <port>0</port>
  <txt-record>model=TimeCapsule</txt-record>
  </service>
  </service-group>

• Remove the ssh service from Avahi

   mv /etc/avahi/services/ssh.service /etc/avahi/services/ssh.service.disabled

•  IPTABLES are running by default, so add the following to open up some ports and then save the iptables config:

  iptables -I INPUT -p udp –dport 548 -j ACCEPT
  iptables -I INPUT -p tcp –dport 548 -j ACCEPT
  iptables -I INPUT -p tcp –dport 5353 -j ACCEPT
  iptables -I INPUT -p udp –dport 5353 -j ACCEPT
  iptables -I INPUT -p udp –dport 5354 -j ACCEPT
  iptables -I INPUT -p tcp –dport 5354 -j ACCEPT

  service iptables save

• Start the required services:

  service avahi-daemon start
  service messagebus start
  service netatalk start

When you open Time Machine on your mac (mine is a MacBook Air running Mavericks), click the locked padlock to allow changes, which also enables the add/remove a backup disk. Click Add/remove and you should see your network Time Machine disk.