The Time Machine service in macOS Server 5.2 hasn’t changed much from the service in previous operating systems. To enable the Time Machine service, open the Server app, click on Time Machine in the SERVICES sidebar. If the service hasn’t been enabled to date, the ON/OFF switch will be in the OFF position and no “Backup destination” will be shown in the Settings pane. Click on the ON button to see the New Destination screen, used to configure a list of volumes as a destinations for Time Machine backups. The selection volume should be large enough to have space for all of the users that can potentially use the Time Machine…
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Steampunk In 80 Movies Or Less
Steampunk is a genre of fiction where technology advancements are steam powered, rather than electricity or nuclear powered. The term itself came in 1987 from K. W. Jeter, but the genre of fiction, and even of gadgetry in film had started long before that. I’ve always been drawn to Steampunk. The Victorian age, which much of Steampunk centers around, saw humanity grasping to understand the massive leaps made in the Age of Enlightenment, equal to the repercussions from the advances made in the Renaissance. Steampunk was before the dirt and grit brought about from the industrial revolution. This was art nouveau meets science fiction. Less than 100 years after Gulliver’s Travels came Frankenstein, and…
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Using Time Machine Server in Mountain Lion Server
The Time Machine service in Mountain Lion Server hasn’t changed much from the service in Lion Server. To enable the Time Machine service, open the Server app, click on Time Machine in the SERVICES sidebar. If the service hasn’t been enabled to date, the ON/OFF switch will be in the OFF position and no “Backup destination” will be shown in the Settings pane. Click on the ON button to see a list of volumes to use as a destination for Time Machine backups. This should be large enough to have space for all of the users that can potentially use the Time Machine service hosted on the server. When you…
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Changes in Mountain Lion Server
Mountain Lion Server is now available on the OS X App Store and as with the last few updates there are some things missing that you might be expecting and depending on. First up, three major services are gone: Podcast Producer, RADIUS and dhcp. You can still do dhcp as you always did with OS X client as those features work on OS X Server, but the more granular controls available in OS X Server are now gone. The biggest impact of dhcp is probably in testing NetBoot services when there are network issues and you need to prove to network admins that it’s the network and not your server……
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Setting Up Time Machine Server in Lion Server
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Using ServerBackup to Backup Lion Servers
ServerBackup is a new command included in Lion Server, located in the /usr/sbin/ServerBackup directory. The ServerBackup command is used to backup the server settings for services running on a Lion Server. The command is pretty easy and straight forward to use, but does require you to be using Time Machine in order to actually run. In the most basic form, ServerBackup is invoked to run a backup using the backup command. Commands are prefixed with a -cmd followed by the actual command. As you might be able to guess, the commandlet to fire off a backup is backup. The backup command requires a -source option which will almost always be…
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My New Book on Time Machine Now Available
I have published a new book on Time Machine (Time Capsule, deployment/Managed Prefs and Time Machine Server as well). I wrote it months and months ago and it finally ended up getting posted (publishing is a weird world like that sometimes). It is available for Kindle (Amazon) for now and should be up on the iBooks store as soon as the good people from iTunes Connect get back from their holiday break. To quote the Amazon excerpt: Time Machine is Apple’s built-in backup solution that comes bundled with Mac OS X. In this book, we will explore Time Machine, looking at how to enable Time Machine, configure what to back…
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Mass Deploying Time Machine in Mac OS X Lion
A lot of environments want to use Time Machine at scale. But prior to Lion there hasn’t been a simple way to do so. Apple has introduced a new weapon in the war to backup client computers in the new command tmutil that was introduced in OS X Lion. The tmutil command allows administrators to enable Time Machine, make snapshots, kick off backups, delete snapshots, perform restores, configure options within Time Machine and, with a little scripting, build a centralized dashboard, pulling in Time Machine statistics from clients. Enabling Time Machine The first thing to know is that pretty much everything you do in Time Machine is going to require…
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Lion's Versions Feature
In Mac OS X Lion, applications can make use of a feature to auto-save and version files. This feature locks files that are inactive for editing and when the file is unlocked then starts automatically saving versions. If you have a problem with the file you can then always step back to a previous version of the file. The feature is manifested in the title bar and the file menu of applications that make use of it. When you open a file, it can be locked. Viewing the file in the Finder also shows that it is locked. Clicking on locked provides the option to unlock. Once unlocked you can…
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Changing Time Machine Backup Frequency
Time Machine just does what it does and there’s not much controlin’ it aside from what’s in the System Preference pane. Or is there? Earlier, I covered how to disable the disk check feature, now let’s look at how to change the frequency of when backups occur. Backups are initiated by com.apple.backupd-auto.plist, stored in /System/Library/LaunchDaemons. The contents of this file are, by default: <?xml version=”1.0″ encoding=”UTF-8″?> <!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC “-//Apple Computer//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN” “http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd”> <plist version=”1.0″> <dict> <key>Label</key> <string>com.apple.backupd-auto</string> <key>ProgramArguments</key> <array> <string>/System/Library/CoreServices/backupd.bundle/Contents/Resources/backupd-helper</string> <string>-auto</string> </array> <key>StartInterval</key> <integer>3600</integer> <key>RunAtLoad</key> <false/> <key>KeepAlive</key> <false/> </dict> </plist> The StartInterval integer controls the frequency with which backups occur, in seconds. You can customize this by altering the…