Time Machine to NAS

One thing I have learned over the many years of using computers is that backing up is critical. Of course you never admit this until a system crash destroys some of your work, then you curse yourself for not having spent the time creating that backup. The other thing you learn from experience is that the harder something is to do, then the less likely it is to get done. Therefore a backup regime needs to be planned and implemented with simplicity and automation in mind.

For a couple of years now I have used a program called Oops!Backup on my PC. It is a great little program from a small developer that is keen on seeing their program mature into a reliable and stable platform for automated backups. It allows you to ‘travel back in time’ to not only recover current files, but also to retrieve earlier versions of documents, photos etc., prior to any changes you may have recently made.

Destination Captain?

The other aspect of backing up is which media you choose. DVD disks are the current ‘floppy’ of this computer generation, and as such they can be unreliable, as well as too small to hold significant amounts of data. Single harddrives are very cheap and spacious, but suffer from the same problem as the drive in your computer, ie., they can fail – thereby destroying your backup. For me the best solution was to use multiple harddrives that ‘backed each other up’ (that is they provided redundancy). One such solution is a NAS device (Network Attached Storage). You can choose NAS devices from simple single disk boxes to multiple drive storage units, they can come empty or loaded with new drives; and they can offer solutions from simple backup through to web and media servers.

I chose a 4 drive NAS box from QNAP (the TS-439 Pro Turbo). I wanted to have a large storage capacity with the ability to run my NAS in a way that would allow the disk drives to have some redundancy in case of drive failure. To do this I set my NAS up in a RAID 5 array using 4 x 1.5tB drives. Whilst the NAS has some complexities due to its very nature, the installation and setup of the RAID could not be easier. One of the features I love about utilising a NAS RAID 5 array is that if a harddrive fails, you can simply replace it and the NAS device will rebuild the array – therefore, built in redundancy.

Back to the future.

So it has been a relatively easy process for me to protect my families data using Oops!Backup and the QNAP NAS. But now I have a macbook what is the best way to backup this machine? Well, as you may or may not know, the current macintosh operating system, OSX Snow Leopard, has a utility called Time Machine. This program is very similar to my Oops!Backup described above, probably even more powerful, as it provides a method of reinstalling your entire mac not just the data files.

Apple sells a harddrive backup system that works seamlessly with Time Machine, imaginatively titled Time Capsule. At first I was very tempted to go down this path due to my recent enamour of anything apple. But applying cold hard logic I resisted (my wife would shake her head at that statement). After all, Time Capsule is still only a single drive and fraught with the perils of single harddrive failure listed above. Arguably, Time Capsule is much more than just a drive as it provides a full featured dual band wifi ‘n’ router with many other capabilities built in to it’s simple yet elegant apple construction. However, it really doesn’t make sense if you already own a storage device and a wifi modem/router.

I figured the best solution for me was to point my MacBooks time machine utility at my QNAP box. Searching the internet led me to all sorts of problems people were having with this simple idea, not just with QNAP but many other NAS devices as well. There was a lot of evidence that Time Machine required certain configurations of drive space allocated in specific ways that required a fair bit of use of the mac ‘terminal’ and ‘archaic’ scripting commands – very unix. Considering my last real venture into CLI (command line interface) territory was back in the days of modifying DOS autoexec.bat files about 15 years ago, I started wondering if I had bitten of more than I could chew.

In the end I gave up trawling the forums and decided to take the bull by the horns. I ran the Time Machine utility and tried to point it to my NAS. Unfortunately, failure. At this point I started thinking again about how good the Time Capsule device looked, elegant, smooth, aluminium, small, sexy

Thinking about things a little bit further, I thought I should just check the configuration of the NAS box to make sure I had everything correct. When I loaded up the QNAP Backup servers page, I realised I hadn’t enabled Time Machine support (DOH moment).

So a couple of seconds on the Time Machine configuration page allowed me to set aside half a terabyte of storage space specifically for my macbook (probably overkill) and activate this in such a way that it should be visible to my Time Machine. The QNAP utility makes all the changes required, including activating the Apple File System protocols required automatically.

Back to my Time Machine, and voila, there was the volume showing up in the select disk requester. The remainder of the setup process was straight forward as documented in the Time Machine guide. Time Machine now backs up my macbook each hour it is turned on and this happens seamlessly via wifi through my router. I haven’t tested replacing a missing file yet (mainly as I don’t have much data on this machine), but at some stage in the near future I will prove the concept and also attempt a full restoration of my new toy.

From two to none

Being a long time PC user I have gotten used to the luxury of multiple buttons on my mice. Left click, right click, centre click, scroll – how do I manage on my new macbook that has no buttons? Well that is not quite correct really, the beautiful glass trackpad that equips these devices does have a click button, the trackpad itself is a button. But that still leaves me without my right mouse button and I know that OSX does have contextual (right click) menus.

One method that has been around since the days of B&W iMacs is to use the control key when you click. But that is to cludgy for me. Digging around in the Preferences section of OSX leads one to the trackpad settings requester.

Here we can enable our right mouse button (secondary click) and set it to use the bottom right (or left) of the trackpad. We also have a goodly array of other functions we can enable or modify to personalise the use of our trackpad and make us more productive. I found an interesting article that deals with this issue at http://www.macinstruct.com/node/66

Tomorrow I will discuss how I set up OSX’s Time Machine backing up to my QNAP NAS (network attached storage) device.

It arrives – finally

It was a longer wait than I anticipated but my new computer has finally arrived.

My brother and sister both have Macbooks and seem to love them. So I thought I would find out what all the fuss was about and ordered a 13in Macbook Air. It is incredibly thin and light, seems fast enough to do stuff on and looks incredibly good.

I am going to take awhile to get used to Mac OS as I have been a PC user for a long time (since before Windows). There is so much that is different. I think I will write some new blog entries as I figure different things out…

Tablelands trekking

On Sunday we went for a trek up to the Atheron Tablelands. The Gillies Highway climbs steeply from Gordonvale up to Yungaburra.

Looking down from Healies Outlook, Gillies Highway

Before Yungaburra we visited the Cathedral Fig and the magnificent Lake Barrine, one of a pair of crater lakes nestled on the tablelands, the other being Lake Eachem.

Lake Barrine

We had lunch at Gallo Dairyland, a cheese and chocolate factory where we enjoyed a huge cheese platter and some of the nicest chocolates I have ever tasted. Jaffa, mango and passionfruit chocolates… Then we visited the curtain fig and stopped in at coffee world in Atherton to finish off. Coffee world was very interesting with an incredible range of unusual quality gifts available.

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Cassowarys at Eddy Bay

Another big day today with a trip into Cairns to get some computer gear for Bruce and then lunch at the Sushi Train. Then onto the highway and headed south to look at various creeks with notable native fish; Walkers Creek, plant creek at Babinda, the Boulders national park.

Further south through Innisfail and to Etty Bay, home of some lovely maccullochi and gertrudae, lucky enough to see a cassowary standing by the side of the road.

Then back to Little Mulgrave for some prawns and mangoes.

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A quick trip away

Today I flew up to Cairns to see my old friend Bruce. It has been 10 years since I’ve flown on a commercial airliner and in that time the seats have gotten significantly smaller. The weather at Brisbane for our departure was miserable with heavy rain closing the aerodrome for a period, flights were delayed due holding and we eventually boarded about an hour late. There were some bumpy patches enroute but Cairns itself was relatively pleasant.

Abeam Hinchinbrook Island

Tonight we had a very pleasant dinner at the Gordonvale Hotel. Consisting of beer battered prawns, oysters and chicken stuffed with mushrooms and cheese. Both of us had trouble emptying our plates and there was no room for desert…

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Friday in Cairns

Today Bruce took me into Cairns to experience Rusty’s Markets. Fantastic. The amount and variety of fresh produce must be seen to be believed. I was expecting a commercial type market full of clothes for teenage girls experience, and I couldn’t have been more wrong. The day had proved to be a rather unpleasant sultry 38c and the markets themselves were quiet warm, but we found a relatively quiet seat near a most fantastic coffee stall which made superb iced lattes. We ate steamed pork buns and tasty spring rolls prepared by a delightful spanish woman, and followed those down with sweet and refreshing apricots and cherries. I found some exquisite lacquered Asian pieces for Beki and Ryan, and the most unusual wood crafted tea candle holders for Karen. Then to finish off this great day Bruce prepared a meal of muki miuki fish steaks and prawns with a lovely Ginger sauce, stir fried veggies and I made us mangoes in a lime sauce which we enjoyed with ice cream.

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Guts at Gardner Falls

Gardner Falls are located on Obi Obi Creek just a short drive east of Maleny. The falls are a great place to cool off on a hot day, and if you are inclined to a bit of adrenalin there are a number of ways to take the plunge.

Oh for Obi Obi

Last Monday was a stinker, high temps and humidity so I went for a drive through the Blackall Ranges on the Sunshine Coast Hinterland to escape the heat. The drive up through Maleny is very colourful at the moment with the many tibouchinas out in flower. The purple is Tibouchina alstonville and the pink is Tibouchina kathleen.

The following information is from the Gardening Australia website by Colin Campbell

Look out for include Tibouchina ‘Kathleen’, with its beautiful, mauve-pink flowers. Another that’s popular is Tibouchina mutabilis ‘Noelene’ – the flower starts white and turns to a mauve-pink. Tibouchina lepidota ‘Alstonville’ which is covered in masses of purple flowers from autumn right through to winter.

The plants filmed by Gardening Australia are in a garden in the hinterland of the Sunshine Coast where the soil is acidic – absolutely ideal for Tibouchinas. If the soil is not acidic enough the leaf burns at the edges, turns brown and eventually the leaf dies. If that happens correct the soil acidity by adding sulphur on the ground, around the roots, or use an acidifying fertiliser.

Tibouchinas originated in South America, where they grow over a wide diversity of climates, and that means they’ll do the same in Australia. They don’t like hard frosts, but give them a warmish spot and they’ll do well from Melbourne to Cairns.

Obi Obi Creek runs through the middle of Maleny. The creek provides and idyllic home to platypus, water dragons, tortoise, native fish and bird life.

There is plenty of time to soak up the peaceful solitude of the creek at Gardner Falls, accessed from Obi Vale Road about 3 kilometres east of Maleny. The water is cool and clear as it cascades over rocky bars and there are some deeper holes for swimming and many areas for lazing in the shallows.

The carpark is small, catering for about 20 vehicles and a gravel path leads the 300m to the falls themselves. There is plenty of grass areas and a couple of picnic tables here.

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Woodgate Beach

Woodgate Beach is a small community located in the Wide Bay area of Queensland. It is fronted by a long sandy beach protected by Fraser Island and bordered by Theodolite Creek to the north and the Burrum River to the south. Most of the surrounding land is National Park. Access is from Childers to the west or Bundaberg to the north.

The township is also home to mobs of the indigenous grey kangaroo – Macropus giganteus. There are also swamp wallabies – Wallabia bicolor, however they are not as forthcoming as there larger relatives.

Old man roo keeping watch for the mob.

There is accommodation availabe at the local caravan park (tents, vans, cabins) and the pub. Meals are available from the pub (extensive menu in Feb 2009) and the bowls club. There is bush camping (toilets and showers) in the National Park at Burrum Point, to the southeast of the town. The track in to the National Park camping grounds is 4WD only over portions of heavy sand. Camping registration and fees apply and can be booked and paid for online or at the self registration point in the camp area.

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