[OT] Hardlinks and directories

[Patrick O'Callaghan]

On Sat, 2010-02-13 at 22:12 -0800, Gordon Messmer wrote:
> On 02/12/2010 05:56 PM, Patrick O'Callaghan wrote:
> > One of the comments to the LWN article also mentions the case of Apple
> > allowing these links for the sake of their Time Machine backup system (I
> > think it's restricted to that special case so it doesn't run the risk of
> > a general-purpose feature). Presumably that's the main reason TM doesn't
> > work with non-Apple partitions, despite several NAS manufacturers
> > advertising that it does. I just bought an Iomega NAS partly on the
> > strength of this and it definitely doesn't work.
> 
> I believe that OS X is supposed to create a .dmg (more or less) file for 
> Time Machine when used with non-local disks.  Even when using Apple's 
> Time Capsule, that's what it will do.  OS X can then mount the dmg file 
> locally and do whatever it wants, independent of the capabilities of the 
> NAS device.

OT: It's called a "sparse bundle" apparently, but even when I create one
by hand it still doesn't work. The Iomega support forums are useless,
likewise the documentation. The irony is that this beastie is almost
certainly running a version of Linux, but you can't SSH into it to see
what's going on. For now I'm just using it via NFS and rsync.

poc