TimeMachine and Mac OS Lion

[hammo]

Reports coming in that MANY vendors in the same position:

http://www.tuaw.com/2011/07/21/a-few-na ... s-in-lion/

It's not just my NAS that has this problem; products from Western Digital, LaCie and many other providers simply don't work or need a firmware update. Some vendors, like Synology and Western Digital, say a fix is in the works, but others are silent so far. So what is causing the NAS issues? Apple has changed the way file services work in Lion, and the result is the inability to communicate with many network storage devices. Lion requires netatalk 2.2 which isn't on most of these devices. This is particularly bad if you are using these devices with Time Machine.

[schumaku]

Some vendors, like Synology and Western Digital, say a fix is in the works, ...

You can add QNAP to the list - this information appears to be lost in al the hyping notes here... When things go well, v3.5 will be available from 9 August 2011 - fully supporting OS X Lion AFP and TimeMachine, and bringing some relief to the long share connection times, too.

Lion requires netatalk 2.2 which isn't on most of these devices. This is particularly bad if you are using these devices with Time Machine.

QNAP has entered a support agreement with NetAFP and has access to the final netatalk 2.2 code for a while now.

AS the interoperability issue must be considered before updating an OS massivley changing the AFP and SMB side (!), it's kind of reality-blind updating to OS X Lion without checking the potential interoperability issues - which are well-known and documented for QNAP in this forum.

[sodium]

...When things go well, v3.5 will be available from 9 August 2011 - fully supporting OS X Lion AFP and TimeMachine, and bringing some relief to the long share connection times, too.

Thanks for clearing this up... I've discussed this... and we can wait until then

[ghuber]

Hallo Gerog,

Gruezi Kurt,

The slower the processor the longer the authentication process - and the 800 MHz Mavell ARM is not a powerhouse for this business. It's not slow performance - it's the time required until the AFP session is established. QNAP V3.4.2 has DHX2 enabled by default, the AFP client will pick the best method available. Unless you are using an elderly OS X where the AFP client is not supporting DHX2 yet - every initial share connection using DHX2 will take it's time. With v3.5 and netatalk 2.2, the CPU-intensive processing will be executed on the initial share connection from a client (and user), all subsequent share connections will not massively delayed anymore.

Thanks for your reply! Do I understand you correctly that once authentication has been completed performance should be about the same as with previous firmware versions? And: will the move to 3.5 at least improve the authentication process a little? It is not that I can't live with the long authentication, but it really IS slow

Is authentication required for every share window that I open (with CMD-Shift-K)?

Best regards,

Georg

[schumaku]

Hoi Gerog,

I was not very exact on the point It's not on the first connection - it's on the startup already, where the Mersenne prime numbers for DHX2 UAM are generated once at startup, and no longer with every share connection resp. login. This code is implemented since netatlak 2.2 beta3 already.

Enjoy,
-Kurt.

[mccltd]

is there a way I can get a file out of my qnap's time machine now that i'm on lion?
I

[tuennes]

My "old backup" that I made under SL is under Lion still accessable and I can get files from it.
Once done I always disable TM in order to avoid getting error notifications due to the lack of the new afp code.

Best,
Tünnes

[GEON]

I am running 3.4.4 Build0718T. The TimeMachine AFP problem has not yet been resolved with Lion.

Any idea when this will be resolved? I can't backup!

G

[schumaku]

I am running 3.4.4 Build0718T. The TimeMachine AFP problem has not yet been resolved with Lion.

Corect - there is no cnahge in the netatalk on the v3.4.x builds required by TimeMachine AFP.

Any idea when this will be resolved?

Does not make sense to ask the same thing repeatedly. Statement is still valid: http://forum.qnap.com/viewtopic.php?f=3 ... 11#p211881

[quassum]

Just got an email from the Qnap guys; they'll release 3.5 with Lion compatibility: http://www.qnap.com/fw_v35/osxlion.asp this Friday!

[chris_h]

I just had to download the new version of the firmware manually, the option to automatically update just states the last update I had which was 3.4.4 was the latest level. Hope this fixes up the issue..

Chris...

[sjarvela]

I can confirm that Time machine is indeed able to backup to QNAP now, but in my case the connection is very unreliable. Don't know if this is bonjour related, but my Mac is very unlikely to find the QNAP Time machine volume more than once after start/wake up. Clicking "backup now" usually just says it can't find the volume.

The reason I'm suspecting Bonjour is that the same happens with regular AFP shares in QNAP as well. QNAP might be listed in the shared list in Finder, but clicking it just makes it disappear. After that, it does not reappear until reboot or sleep.

However, everything worked just fine before updating to Lion, so this shouldn't be network setup problem, but either is Lion or QNAP issue (nothing in qnap log, though). Anybody else having this problem?

[chris_h]

sjarvela

Yes I am seeing the same kind of issue, but it is not consistent? I cannot determine if it is QNAP or the MAC losing the address but it does seem to be buggy somewhere.

Chris...

[notshy]

Downloading now.

Admins/Moderators - what testing or utilities can we run to help troubleshoot ? Console ? Any of the network utilities in Lion ?

[ghuber]

Hoi Gerog,

I was not very exact on the point It's not on the first connection - it's on the startup already, where the Mersenne prime numbers for DHX2 UAM are generated once at startup, and no longer with every share connection resp. login. This code is implemented since netatlak 2.2 beta3 already.

Enjoy,
-Kurt.

Hi!

I just need to come back to the "speed" of authenticating. For some reason, sometimes connections seem to time out even when trying to establish them (QNAPAndy in another thread said, they would fix that in 3.5.1). Yet, it is extremely annoying with TimeMachine, since my Mac sometimes cannot even mount the TM Volume and neither can I mount the AFP volumes in the Finder. As you previously explained to me that the TS-110 with its 800 MHz ARM "isn't exactly a powerhouse in that regard" I have thought about upgrading to a 419P+ (alongside its RAID capabilities). Although the 419P+'s nominal CPU is clocked about double the TS-110's, will performance be somewhat on par with the x86 ATOM models?

It is not primarily the authentication or Mersenne generation at startup that I wish to combat, my main issue with the TS-110 is that whenever I access it for instance via Windows Samba to do some unrar extracting, everything else seems to time out (TM Backup, mounting in Finder, etc.). And, as said above, RAID5 would be nice too, since I am running out of disk space. My fear is however that buying a TS-419P+ will not target this issue accordingly and I will have spent many Euros for not much of a performance increase and still face the same issues as with the 110.

Can you confirm this is true?

Thank you so much for your help

Georg