Turn Raspberry Pi as a Networked Time Machine Drive From Scratch

iqoota

I've given up this solution and turned to Odroid-xu4 + OpenMediaVault. The performance of RPi 3 to be a NAS and TM is intolerable.

(This tutorial is mainly for self use as a note for future reinstalling the service on raspberry pi)

Basically, this tutorial follows this article as reference How to Use a Raspberry Pi as a Networked Time Machine Drive For Your Mac(https://www.howtogeek.com/276468/how-to-use-a-raspberry-pi-as-a-networked-time-machine-drive-for-your-mac/), but from much beginning.

What You Need

Device:

• A raspberry pi (mine is 3 model B)
• Desktop External Hard Drive (Seagate Expansion 3 T)  a dedicated power supply is critical, or you can use a normal external hard drive with a USB hub which have an extra power supply
• microSD card (Samsung 32 GB)
• A Power supply for raspberry pi, better to have a case go with it. I chose the power supply+case+heatsinks+fan kit
• A monitor with HDMI cable. It will only be used when you installing the system. A VGA monitor will also do, but you’ll need an adapter as raspberry pi only has HDMI port
• A USB mouse
  

Install the System

There are bunch of choices for raspberry pi. In most cases, NOOBS is suitable for the beginner. Also, this out of the box system can be bought with microSD from many retailers. But I didn’t. So I have to install it myself.

• It can be downloaded from its official website(https://www.raspberrypi.org/downloads/noobs/). After downloading the ZIP file, unzip it.
• Inserting your microSD into macbook with adapter. Format it with the SDFormatter. It’s a free app and you can get it here(https://www.sdcard.org/downloads/formatter_4/)
• Copying everything from unzipped folder to microSD and then eject it.
• Put the microSD into raspberry pi, and connect your usb mouse, monitor with HDMI cable and power supply to it as well. You could also plugin the usb keyboard as well. If you only have Bluetooth keyboard, that’s fine, since raspberry pi 3 have the bluetooth model. Beside, if you can connect the ethernet cable to it but you can also choose to use wifi  after the system is installed if you have raspberry pi 3.
• Choose the Raspbian to install, then wait till finish.
  

Enable remote connect to raspberry pi

Till now, you’ll get this desktop in your monitor. Wow!

1. Connect to wifi if you didn’t use ethernet while installing the system. Enable SSH and change password from Preference-Raspberry Pi Configuration. If SSH can satisfy you, you can stop here. Next steps go with how to set up remote desktop with VNC.

2. Then we need to allocate static ip address for raspberry pi. Steps can be found here(https://www.modmypi.com/blog/how-to-give-your-raspberry-pi-a-static-ip-address-update)
3. For some cases, you also need to assign DNS for raspberry like me.

• sudo nano /etc/resolv.conf
  

Enter the following text

• nameserver 8.8.8.8
• name server 8.8.4.4
  

Reboot your raspberry pi

4. Before installing VNC, it’s better to have all softwares in raspberry is up to date. Run these two commands

• sudo apt-get update
• sudo apt-get upgrade
  

5. Install VNC with

• sudo apt-get install tightvncserver
  

• 6. After installed, set a password for remote connection with the command. You need to re-enter the password for verification. Regards password for viewing, usually we choose ’no’
  

• vncpasswd
  

• 7. Set VNC auto-run at startup
  

• cd /home/pi/.config
• mkdir autostart
• cd autostart
• nano tightvnc.desktop
  

•     Enter the following content
•         [Desktop Entry]
  
  •         Type=Application
  •         Name=TightVNC
  •         Exec=vncserver :1
  •         StartupNotify=false
    
• 8. Type ctrl-x and the y to save the changes to the file. You are all set.
  

TO BE CONTINUE...