TimeMachine ⏳ 🤖

A docker-compose based samba server compatible with MacOS's TimeMachine.

Quickly deployable on Raspberry Pi.

Pre Reqs 👶 🛠

• docker
• External Storage Device, connected to docker host (Raspberry Pi)

Setup ⚙️ 💾

Step 1: Attach your external disk and identify the name of your device using lsblk

    $ lsblk  
    NAME        MAJ:MIN RM   SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINTS
    sda           8:0    0   3.6T  0 disk 
    └─sda1        8:1    0   3.6T  0 part 
    mmcblk0     179:0    0 119.4G  0 disk 
    ├─mmcblk0p1 179:1    0   512M  0 part /boot/firmware
    └─mmcblk0p2 179:2    0 118.9G  0 part /

In this example, the device name is /dev/sda1.

We will refer to this as $DEVICE moving forward.

    $ export DEVICE=/dev/sda1

Step 2: Create a directory to use as the mount point.

We'll refer to this as $MOUNT_POINT moving forward

$ export MOUNT_POINT=$PWD/tm_data
$ mkdir $MOUNT_POINT

Step 3: Create the mountpoint, using the variables from above.

$ sudo mount $DEVICE $MOUNT_POINT

To check your work, use lsblk again

$ lsblk
NAME        MAJ:MIN RM   SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINTS
sda           8:0    0   3.6T  0 disk 
└─sda1        8:1    0   3.6T  0 part /path/to/mounted/tm_data

Step 4: Prepare .env

$ cp example.env .env

Use the included convenience script to get the device size:

$ env DEVICE=$DEVICE ./device_get_size.sh
DEVICE = /dev/sda1
SIZE_MB = 3906982908

$ export SIZE_MB=3906982908

Edit the .env file

Var	default	description
TM_PASSWORD	timemachine	password to connect to the samba share
TM_SHARENAME	timemachine	the name of the network share
TM_DEVICE_MONUT_POINT		set this to $MOUNT_POINT
TM_DEVICE_SIZE_MB		the size of the share in Megabytes (MB); set this to $SIZE_MB

Deploy 🐳 📦

1. docker compose up -d
   • Run docker-compose logs -f to watch the container logs

Uninstall 🗑 🔥

1. docker compose down -v
2. unnount the drive: sudo umount $DEVICE $MOUNT_PONIT
   • this will remove the docker volumes but will not touch the data on the mounted disk

Testing & QA 🔎 🧪

All testing has been done on the following hardware and software:

• Raspberry Pi 4B 4GB; RaspberryPi OS Lite (64bit)
• Raspberry Pi 4B 8GB; RaspberryPi OS Lite (64bit)
• Raspberry Pi 5 8GB; RaspberryPi OS (64bit)