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Raspberry Pi timecapsule with Pidora Linux
After more then two years good service as timecapsule for my Macs we will refurbish the Raspberry Pi for some new tasks. We replace the timecapsule functionality with a brand new Synology NAS system.
We just want to describe here briefly how we did the setup of the Raspberry Pi with Pidora Linux distribution and an external USB drive to capture the backups from the Macs. So, what do we need from hardware perspective? One Raspberry Pi, USB disk drive, an UTP network cable and power. Software needed is the pidora linux distribution, but it can be any kind of Linux in my opinion.
After installing pidora according the instructions we just need to tweak the configuration a bit to make it happen. First of all the external USB disk need to be connected and re-format it with parted in one big partition (Linux filesystem). We labeled it with a gpt disklabel (not dos). We formatted it with an ext4 file system.
Then mount it onto directory /mnt/TimeCapsule, which first must be created of course and added an entry in the /etc/fstab file:
/dev/sda1 /mnt/TimeCapsule ext4 rw,defaults 0 3
To make the TimeCapsule working we need some extra software packages. We added the following packages (not all really required):
$ rpm -qa --last | head -20
samba-4.1.9-3.fc20.armv6hl Tue Oct 7 21:22:32 2014
libaio-0.3.109-8.fc20.armv6hl Tue Oct 7 21:22:29 2014
samba-common-4.1.9-3.fc20.armv6hl Tue Oct 7 21:22:24 2014
hfsplusutils-1.0.4-19.fc20.armv6hl Fri Oct 3 13:14:39 2014
hfsutils-3.2.6-24.fc20.armv6hl Fri Oct 3 13:14:37 2014
nss-mdns-0.10-13.fc20.armv6hl Fri Sep 26 18:51:26 2014
avahi-compat-libdns_sd-0.6.31-21.fc20.armv6hl Fri Sep 26 18:51:24 2014
avahi-tools-0.6.31-21.fc20.armv6hl Fri Sep 26 18:18:13 2014
avahi-0.6.31-21.fc20.armv6hl Fri Sep 26 18:18:07 2014
netatalk-2.2.3-9.fc20.armv6hl Fri Sep 26 18:14:04 2014
gnupg-1.4.18-1.fc20.armv6hl Fri Sep 26 18:11:04 2014
Then it is just a matter of some configuration tweaks:
$ cat /etc/default/netatalk
ATALKD_RUN=no
PAPD_RUN=no
CNID_METAD_RUN=yes
AFPD_RUN=yes
TIMELORD_RUN=no
A2BOOT_RUN=no
$ grep -v \# /etc/netatalk/AppleVolumes.default
:DEFAULT: cnidscheme:dbd options:upriv,usedots,tm allow:gdha
/mnt/TimeCapsule "Time Capsule"
$ grep -v \# /etc/netatalk/afpd.conf
- -tcp -noddp -uamlist uams_dhx2.so,uams_dhx2_passwd.so -nosavepassword
Also, make sure the following services are enabled and started via systemctl:
avahi-daemon.service
avahi-daemon.socket
netatalk.service
To make things easier for us we disabled SELinux as we used it as an internal solution. Also, make sure the hostname has the extension .local as we are avahi to get discovered by the Mac.
On the Mac open the Time Machine application and link your RaspberryPi IP address to it to make it work and login with your account.
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