AdmiNirvana

I have been itching to get Time Machine to work over a (unsupported) network-shared volume since we’re unwilling to drop the cash for a Time Capsule.  I’ve seen quite a few different posts on how to get it done, including the terminal trick to tell Time Machine to use unsupported volumes, but none of them quite worked.

The best I could get was Time Machine to begin to write the files to the share, but after a few seconds die with a vague “Backup disk could not be created error”.  This stumped me for a bit until I came across this.  Apparently sometime around 10.5.2, Apple introduced a new, undocumented “feature” to Time Machine that causes it to fail over network volumes when doing the initial backup.   However, once the files are created it will work fine.

So, the magical combination is as follows:

• CentOS 5 with Netatalk-2.0.3 compiled, installed, and configured per this post.  Note: I also had to modify etc/cnid_dbd/dbif.c with the same code change as specified there, but YMMV.
• OS X Leopard, patched to 10.5.4.
• Changes to Netatalk’s netatalk.conf file per this post at the Gentoo Wiki.
• Following the post linked above precisely.

Once that happened, Time Machine has begun to work great over AFP to our backup volume–even for multiple Macs connecting to the same share. Behold!

It probably doesn’t need saying; but this is clearly an unsupported way to use Time Machine.  It has been running this way for me only about a day.    If you’re concerned about having to troubleshoot problems that may pop up down the road, especially regarding backups; picking up a Time Capsule is probably a far better idea.

It has been almost a week, and the situation out / up here has gotten slowly, and progressively worse.   Most of the fire seems to be focused on the west side of town now, and the smoke has cleared out of the valley for the most part, giving us a view of what is going on up in the higher elevations.

That is pretty much what we have been seeing.   It’s pretty scary how close a few are getting to town, but in general Redding is not nearly densely forested as the surrounding mountains.  So nothing to worry about, yet.

Some good news is that the majority of fires on the east side have been contained or extinguished altogether.

More thunderstorms are in the forcast for the weekend.  Great.

This past Saturday morning I went up to Benton to take one of my last lessons and instead watched a nasty lighting storm roll through.    Mix lightning and dry terrian, and you can imagine what happens next.

We have about 50 or so major fires going on in the highlands around us, and all the smoke is settling down into the valley around Redding.   It smells like BBQ outside and the Sun has turned an eerie red-orange color; you can stare at it without even squinting.

One of the Mt. Lassen fires is a few miles away from my parents place in Shingletown.

Today Tex and I took Phaedrah up for a ride in 5519J. Though she liked the ride, it got a little bumpy at the end–and she ended up getting a little motion sickness. All in all she had a good time, which is what counts!

Do we possibly have another pilot-in-training in the family? Only time will tell!

What great day! We started out by doing some usual pattern work at Benton, a total of three landings. After the third, my coach asked me to taxi up to the building’s garage, and then he proceeded to get out of the plane.

Next he said: “Now it’s your turn, do three more of the same. Have fun!”

I did three more trips around the pattern on my own. Coach stayed on the radio, just in case I needed him–but it was smooth flying. After three decent (but not great) landings and doing it all on my own, I came back in and parked it. He took a polaroid of me next to N5519J, filled out a Solo Certificate (for framing) and then wrote stuff all over my shirt and cut it out

Tomorrow I had more time scheduled with my coach, but the plan has changed–it’s now all to myself. I’m planning on taking her south over our practice area and just doing some basic S-turn stuff and circling our house a few times (turns about a point)! Taking it easy at first and just having fun. I can’t wait!