How to use a NixOS Linux Server for Time Machine Backups
posted on May 10 2017
Several years ago I remember researching this process for Ubuntu, and kremalicious.com had the best instructions out there. When looking around this time, I was dismayed to find the process hasn’t seemingly improved for most Linuxes: custom compilation, fakeroots, and the like.
However, I believe NixOS provides the most succinct and reproducible instructions yet, without even having to muck with defaults write.
Incorporate the following in to your configuration.nix, nixos-rebuild switch, and you’re done:
{
networking.firewall.allowedTCPPorts = [
548 # netatalk
];
services = {
netatalk = {
enable = true;
volumes = {
"grahamc-time-machine" = {
"time machine" = "yes";
path = "/home/grahamc/time-machine";
"valid users" = "grahamc";
};
};
};
avahi = {
enable = true;
nssmdns = true;
publish = {
enable = true;
userServices = true;
};
};
};
}
Tested on NixOS 17.03.