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This tutorial will show you how to use a Cubieboard + one 2.5″ hard drive to backup your Mac (or your Hackintosh), just like you would use an Apple TimeCapsule. I will assume that you already have a Cubieboard or Cubieboard 2 with Cubian installed, some kind of terminal access (for instance via SSH), and a SATA hard drive connected to the SATA port. An USB connected hard drive should work fine too.

You can learn how to install Cubian on your SD-card here: https://github.com/cubieplayer/cubian/wiki/Install-Cubian. Instead of using Image Writer, I recommend using Win32 Disk Imager.

To make your Cubieboard work like a TimeCapsule, you need to:

• configure and connect your hard drive, install support for the HFS+ filesystem
• install and configure the Avahi and Netatalk daemons

Connecting your hard drive

The hard drive needs to be formatted as Mac OS Extended (Journaled). To do that, connect it to your Mac (probably via USB), open Disk Utility, select your drive in the left side box, and click Partition on top. In the Partition Layout box select 1 Partition, in the Name field type a name (like Data, TimeMachine, or Backup), in the Format box select Mac OS Extended (Journaled), and click Apply. Please note that this erases everything on the selected disc, so make sure the right drive is selected. Once the operation is complete, you can unplug the drive from your Mac and get back to the Cubieboard.

With that out of the way, connect the hard drive to your Cubieboard, start it up and connect via SSH.

Let’s install the support for the HFS+ filesystem by issuing the following command:

sudo apt-get install hfsplus

Once the process is complete, let’s try to identify and mount the disc:

sudo blkid

The above command should output something like this:

cubie@Cubian:/$ sudo blkid
/dev/nanda: SEC_TYPE="msdos" LABEL="Volumn" TYPE="vfat"
/dev/nandd: UUID="57f8f4bc-abf4-655f-bf67-946fc0f9f25b" TYPE="ext4"
/dev/nande: UUID="57f8f4bc-abf4-655f-bf67-946fc0f9f25b" TYPE="ext4"
/dev/nandh: UUID="57f8f4bc-abf4-655f-bf67-946fc0f9f25b" TYPE="ext4"
/dev/nandi: UUID="57f8f4bc-abf4-655f-bf67-946fc0f9f25b" TYPE="ext4"
/dev/nandj: LABEL="NUCLEAR" UUID="38DC-07B2" TYPE="vfat"
/dev/sda1: LABEL="EFI" UUID="67E3-17ED" TYPE="vfat"
/dev/sda2: UUID="07291167-3ca6-3be7-8ddb-6e83fcc58186" LABEL="Data" TYPE="hfsplus"
/dev/mmcblk0p1: LABEL="cubieboard" UUID="68ed2b81-d507-4d85-a8ed-261bff7666bf" TYPE="ext4"

Look for the label you used when you formatted the drive (Data, TimeMachine etc.) and the TYPE=”hfsplus”. On my board it gives this line:

/dev/sda2: UUID="07291167-3ca6-3be7-8ddb-6e83fcc58186" LABEL="Data" TYPE="hfsplus"

Note down the UUID too, because we will need it later (you can actually issue the command again when you need it), and use the following commands to mount /dev/sda2:

sudo mkdir /mnt/TimeMachine
sudo mount -o force /dev/sda2 /mnt/TimeMachine

The partition should now be mounted under /mnt/TimeMachine, so you can change to that directory, and create some files to make sure it’s working correctly. You may need to change permissions/ownership on /mnt/TimeMachine or use sudo. To change ownership do:

sudo chown cubie:cubie /mnt/TimeMachine

If everything checks, let’s make sure the drive is mounted automatically on reboot. Edit /etc/fstab and add the following line at the end:

UUID="xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxx" /mnt/TimeMachine hfsplus rw,force,exec,auto,users 0 3

Don’t forget to replace xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxx with your actual UUID, as shown by blkid. Your /etc/fstab file should look something like this:

#<file system>  <mount point>   <type>  <options>       <dump>  <pass>
/dev/mmcblk0p1  /               ext4    defaults        0       1
tmpfs   /tmp    tmpfs   defaults        0       0
tmpfs   /var/tmp        tmpfs   defaults        0       0
UUID="07291167-3ca6-3be7-8ddb-6e83fcc58186" /mnt/TimeMachine hfsplus rw,force,exec,auto,users 0 3

You should now reboot and see if the disc is correctly mounted. After the reboot, issue the command mount and you should get something like this:

/dev/root on / type ext4 (rw,relatime,data=ordered)
devtmpfs on /dev type devtmpfs (rw,relatime,size=414336k,nr_inodes=103584,mode=755)
tmpfs on /run type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,noexec,relatime,size=82892k,mode=755)
tmpfs on /run/lock type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime,size=5120k)
proc on /proc type proc (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime)
sysfs on /sys type sysfs (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime)
tmpfs on /run/shm type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime,size=165780k)
devpts on /dev/pts type devpts (rw,nosuid,noexec,relatime,gid=5,mode=620,ptmxmode=000)
tmpfs on /tmp type tmpfs (rw,relatime)
tmpfs on /var/tmp type tmpfs (rw,relatime)
/dev/sda2 on /mnt/TimeMachine type hfsplus (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime,umask=22,uid=0,gid=0,nls=utf8)

We are interested in the last line. It shows that the partition is mounted under the correct directory, as read-write, which is important.

Install Netatalk and Avahi on the Cubieboard

We now have to install the services and libraries that the Cubieboard needs to communicate with the Mac:

sudo apt-get install avahi-daemon libavahi-client-dev libdb-dev db-util db-util libgcrypt11 libgcrypt11-dev make

This may take a while, since it installs some dependencies too. Grab a tea.

We need to install Netatalk from source. No need to be scared, I’ll hold your hand. First, download Netatalk. At the moment of writing this, the latest stable version is 3.1.0:

wget http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/netatalk/netatalk-3.1.0.tar.gz?download -O netatalk.tar.gz

Make sure you’re in your home folder before downloading.

tar xzf netatalk.tar.gz
cd netatalk*
./configure --with-init-style=debian --with-zeroconf
make
sudo make install

Building Netatalk will take a while too. Why not grab another cup of tea?

With everything installed, all we need to do now is configure Netatalk:

sudo nano /usr/local/etc/afp.conf

Delete everything and replace with:

;
; Netatalk 3.x configuration file
;

[Global]
; Global server settings
hostname = TimeCapsule Cubie
afp listen = 192.168.0.18   <-- replace with your Cubieboard static IP
log file = /var/log/netatalk.log
log level = default:info

[Homes]
basedir regex = /home
cnid scheme = dbd
; Display each user home directory in this format
home name = Home: $u

[Time Machine]
; Our Time Machine volume
path = /mnt/TimeMachine
cnid scheme = dbd
file perm = 0660
directory perm = 0770
time machine = yes

And Avahi:

sudo nano /etc/avahi/services/timecapsule_afpd.service

Write this in the above file:

<?xml version="1.0" standalone='no'?>
<!DOCTYPE service-group SYSTEM "avahi-service.dtd">
<service-group>
      <name replace-wildcards="yes">TimeCapsule Cubie</name>
      <service>
          <type>_afpovertcp._tcp</type>
          <port>548</port>
      </service>
      <service>
          <type>_device-info._tcp</type>
          <port>0</port>
          <txt-record>model=TimeCapsule</txt-record>
      </service>
</service-group>

Now start the services:

sudo /etc/init.d/netatalk start
sudo /etc/init.d/avahi-daemon start

Ensure the services are started at every boot:

cd /etc/init.d/
sudo update-rc.d netatalk defaults

That’s it! Now grab your Mac. You should already see the new TimeCapsule Cubie share.

Select the share, click Connect As… in the top right corner and enter your Cubieboard credentials (default for Cubian is username: cubie, password: cubie).

It takes a little while to authenticate…

…and you should see something like this…

Now open Settings…

…click Time Machine…

…then click Select Backup Disk and you should see your new Time Machine:

Select it and then click Use Disk.

Confirm your credentials or enter them if they weren’t saved…

…and you’re done! Backup should begin shortly. If you want to back up your files while on battery, make sure to click Options and set that up.