I'm hacking the Apple Time Capsule so that it will work even after Apple removes support for it from MacOS. I'm 95% done, but need some volunteers to help
For the people who don't know: the Apple Time Capsule (2008-2013, rip) is basically a hard drive strapped to a wifi router. Most importantly, the hard drive part works really well for smooth Apple Time Machine backups for anyone with a Mac. Just come back home... when your macbook automatically connects to wifi, backups automatically start.
Well, Apple's trying to kill it off with the next version of MacOS next year. Apple is removing AFP support from MacOS, which means the computer can no longer connect to the Time Capsule (which only supports AFP and SMB1). ^(Apple already removed SMB1 support from MacOS many years ago; SMB1 was notoriously insecure and caused the WannaCry worm)
A few months ago, I started this project, got it halfway done... got frustrated because cross compiling stuff for NetBSD6 on a Mac was painful, and stopped working on it: https://github.com/jamesyc/TimeCapsuleSMB
I'm finally finishing it up the past few days, and it's 95% done. It works! It's running Samba 4.8 with SMB3 on my Time Capsule. I can use it as a network drive in Finder, and macOS uses SMB3 to connect to it (not SMB1).
It's almost at my long term goal: hacking the Time Capsule enough that anyone who can copy some terminal commands can spend 10 minutes, and get their Time Capsule working with future versions of MacOS.
Unfortunately, due to sheer bad luck, Apple broke macOS Time Machine backups in 26.4 recently: https://www.cultofmac.com/news/macos-tahoe-26-4-breaks-time-machine-network-backups There's a workaround, but it doesn't work for everyone, and it's not working for me.
This means I can't actually properly test it. Also, I only own a A1470 generation Time Capsule, so I can't test the code on other generation devices as well.
I'm asking for some people who are a bit more on the technical side (translation: comfortable with using the terminal) who have a spare Apple Time Capsule to help out with some testing.
- If you only have a little bit of free time, feel free to read the README in the repo and try it out. File a github issue if you run into any problems: https://github.com/jamesyc/TimeCapsuleSMB/issues
- If you're willing to volunteer more time, especially if you have a mac that is NOT on 26.4, comment below what specs you have for your Time Capsule and Mac and I'll try to figure out the best strategy to quash the last few bugs.