From 9f9485d827e1043ba0076532b2525bd8f8570c15 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: "C. McEnroe" Date: Sun, 25 Apr 2021 22:43:11 -0400 Subject: Publish "Time Machine" --- www/text.causal.agency/021-time-machine.7 | 144 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ www/text.causal.agency/Makefile | 1 + 2 files changed, 145 insertions(+) create mode 100644 www/text.causal.agency/021-time-machine.7 (limited to 'www') diff --git a/www/text.causal.agency/021-time-machine.7 b/www/text.causal.agency/021-time-machine.7 new file mode 100644 index 00000000..93d35c1e --- /dev/null +++ b/www/text.causal.agency/021-time-machine.7 @@ -0,0 +1,144 @@ +.Dd April 25, 2021 +.Dt TIME-MACHINE 7 +.Os "Causal Agency" +. +.Sh NAME +.Nm Time Machine +.Nd an awful one +. +.Sh DESCRIPTION +If, like me, +you have a Raspberry Pi 3 at home +that you've just upgraded to +.Fx 13.0 +which has a hard drive +from an old laptop +attached to it by USB adapter +with ZFS on it +and you want to +use that as a Time Machine +backup destination +over SMB using +.Xr samba 8 , +despite +.Xr samba 8 +being awful software +and using ZFS on a system +with only 1 GB of RAM +being a terrible idea, +this is how to do it. +. +.Pp +In +.Pa /usr/local/etc/smb4.conf : +.Bd -literal -offset indent +[global] +vfs objects = zfsacl catia fruit streams_xattr +fruit:metadata = stream +fruit:model = Macmini + +[TimeMachine] +read only = no +path = /media/zhdd/backup/TimeMachine +fruit:time machine = yes +fruit:time machine max size = 250G +.Ed +. +.Pp +The important thing here is +.Sy zfsacl +in the vfs objects list. +Most pages will tell you about the others, +but without +.Sy zfsacl +Time Machine will just fail to +create the backup +and not provide any useful error. +I'm not actually sure if the +.Sy fruit:metadata +setting is required, +but a bunch of pages recommend it. +The +.Sy fruit:model +just makes it look nice in Finder. +The rest creates an SMB share called +.Dq TimeMachine +that macOS will be willing to use. +You can limit the size of the share that +.Xr samba 8 +reports so that Time Machine +doesn't fill up the whole drive. +. +.Pp +The other important thing to do +is to create some swap space. +When I first tried backing up +to this share, +it stopped after a while +because +.Xr smbd 8 +got killed +when there was nowhere to swap pages to. +A wiki page told me to +create swap on ZFS like this: +.Bd -literal -offset indent +zfs create -V 2G \e + -o org.freebsd:swap=on \e + -o checksum=off \e + -o compression=off \e + -o dedup=off \e + -o sync=disabled \e + -o primarycache=none \e + zhdd/swap +swapon /dev/zvol/zhdd/swap +.Ed +. +.Pp +To be fair to +.Xr samba 8 , +most of the memory +is being used by the ZFS ARC +.Po +which you can see in +.Xr top 1 +.Pc , +but +.Xr smbd 8 +still seems to be using +far more memory than is reasonable. +It's interesting seeing processes +with 0 RES in +.Xr htop 1 +because they're all being swapped out +while the ARC takes half the available RAM. +And having to wait for my shell +to be paged back in when I quit +.Xr htop 1 . +. +.Pp +Anyway, +as expected this whole thing +is terribly slow. +On my initial backup, +I'm currently at 26.49 GB +of 104.22 GB +with an estimate of 8 hours remaining. +Normally transfer time estimates +are wildly inaccurate, +but I think in this case it's right. +. +.Sh AUTHORS +.An june Aq Mt june@causal.agency +. +.Sh BUGS +.Fx +doesn't seem to want to mount +the ZFS volumes on the hard-drive-over-USB +automatically at boot. +I have to +.Xr zpool-import 8 +the drive manually each time. +I don't know if there's a workaround for this, +but I don't have anything essential +to the system on the drive, +and it doesn't need to reboot often. diff --git a/www/text.causal.agency/Makefile b/www/text.causal.agency/Makefile index 94dc499b..d6a590c6 100644 --- a/www/text.causal.agency/Makefile +++ b/www/text.causal.agency/Makefile @@ -23,6 +23,7 @@ TXTS += 017-unpasswords.txt TXTS += 018-operating-systems.txt TXTS += 019-mailing-list.txt TXTS += 020-c-style.txt +TXTS += 021-time-machine.txt all: ${TXTS} -- cgit 1.4.1