DIY Time Machine on OpenWrt: Quick Guide

Part 2 of 3. This guide details how to turn an OpenWrt-compatible router into a Time Machine server.

Quick overview

• Uses Samba 4 with fruit:time_machine for SMB-compatible backups.
• Advertises the backup share via Avahi so macOS discovers it automatically.
• Supports per-user size quotas and multiple backup disks.

Basic steps

• Install packages: opkg update && opkg install samba4-server avahi-daemon
• Format USB drive: mkfs.ext4 /dev/sda1 and mount at /mnt/timemachine
• Create user: adduser tmuser && smbpasswd -a tmuser
• Edit /etc/samba/smb.conf to include a [TimeMachine] share with fruit:time_machine = yes
• Advertise service: create /etc/avahi/services/timemachine.service with _adisk and _smb records.
• Reconnect Mac: System Settings → Time Machine → Add Backup Disk → choose the router share.

This minimal setup gets a working network backup. Detailed optimisation tips will be added later.