While I appreciate the fun of getting this to work, overall, I really wonder whether saving $300 for a Time Capsule is worth it if it means that your backup solution is now relying on you typing a command like<p><pre><code> defaults write com.apple.systempreferences TMShowUnsupportedNetworkVolumes 1
</code></pre>
The "unsupported" would give me pause when setting up a solution I will need to be there when the worst happens. There must be a reason for this preference to be there.<p>Granted, it could just be Apple wanting to sell their products and thus doing some public key magic for it to work without the switch. Or it could be that TM relies on some very rarely used feature in AFP which is not or at least not perfectly implemented in netatalk.<p>Are you willing to bet your backup on this flag being needed for the former reason and not the latter?
I found the title a bit unclear. The first time I read it, it sounded like Apple was using Debian Squeeze as part of Time Machine somehow, rather than someone interfacing to Time Machine using squeeze. Both stories would have been interesting, I just wanted to know which one to expect.
One addition, use my little automator action (Create Backup Volume) [1] to generate the sparsebundle for each machine you are backing up. It sets up the sparsebundle with better arguments, namely a larger sparse-band-size=131072 which greatly improves the speed of the backups since it is fewer files being opened in the sparsebundle.<p>Don't worry about the size you give the bundle since newer versions of osx will just resize the bundle to the size of the shared volume in netatalk (something which was neglected in the blog authors post).<p>[1] <a href="http://code.google.com/p/backmyfruitup/downloads/list" rel="nofollow">http://code.google.com/p/backmyfruitup/downloads/list</a>
I had this running (except with netatalk 2.2.x I don't think all that "unsupported" prefs setting and xml hacking was necessary), anyway after a month or so Mac OS started complaining that the backup couldn't be "verified" or somesuch, and then proceeded to re-do the whole backup. As this started happening every couple of days I gave up and switched to running rdiff-backup manually across ssh instead. Makes browsing the backup repository much easier too, especially if I only need something from the last run.
It appears to be down. Here's the Google Cache <a href="http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:a7H_n-eKm-4J:www.mikepalmer.net/build-a-netatalk-timemachine-for-osx-lion-using-debian-6-0-squeeze/+mikepalmer+Time+Machine+for+OSX+Lion+10.7+using+Debian+6.0+Squeez&hl=en&client=safari&gl=us&strip=1" rel="nofollow">http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:a7H_n-e...</a>
An older page on doing this with a lot more detail:<p><a href="http://www.kremalicious.com/2008/06/ubuntu-as-mac-file-server-and-time-machine-volume/" rel="nofollow">http://www.kremalicious.com/2008/06/ubuntu-as-mac-file-serve...</a><p>Not all of it is necessary anymore with Lion (and maybe with more recent Debian/Ubuntu, I'm not sure), but it is a nice overview of the pieces.
Another data point. If you already have a regular Airport Extreme, you can plug a drive into the USB port, share it, and set it as your Time Machine target. I didn't see the need to spend the extra money for the Time Capsule.
I use Backblaze (<a href="http://goo.gl/LKYIq" rel="nofollow">http://goo.gl/LKYIq</a>) in case my house burns down and I do TM backups to a DroboShare FS in case I need the data immediately. The TM backups are also full backups so that if I need to just restore a whole machine I have that option too. I also have PreyProject installed in case someone steals my laptop.<p>Having lost data in the past, I can only say that setting up some sort of backup/recovery system is very important. Hard disks and SSD's are like life, they have a 100% guaranteed failure rate. =)
Here is another alternative.<p>Get a second-hand mac mini and attach an external hdd. Then share the hdd on the network and use it from timemachine.Now you also have a normal web server with apache and php, install your favorite db and you're done.<p>Or you can create a hackintosh from an old laptop. Though this is potentially quite unstable.