Tuesday, December 16, 2008

Time Machine requires built in network interface

I'm using an Intel Mac Mini with a dead on-board ethernet port (lightning strike) and it seems I can't use Time Machine for backup.

Picture 1.png


"Time Machine could not be configured. The built-in network interface could not be found." - I'm on 10.5.6 by the way (the error was less informative before).

I can set up networking either wirelessly or with a USB ethernet dongle (the one for the Air seems to work these days), but Time Machine won't let me choose a backup volume.

Weird thing is that I can configure the on-board ethernet port, it has a mac address it just permanently looks to be unplugged.

The other interesting thing about this is that Time Machine works on a MacBook Air which only has wireless or USB networking.

Update

Got it working by doing this as root:


mv /Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/NetworkInterfaces.plist /Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/NetworkInterfaces.plist.old


Rebooted, went to Network System Preferences, tidied up the network interfaces (deleted bluetooth, a serial device, and the Firewire device) and re-configured Time Machine.

Anyway, it's good to back on the Time Machine routine again.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

wow thanks for this tip. saved my TM backups, as opposed to starting over my deleting some files on the TM drive like apple support suggests.

Unknown said...

Thank you so much you are very kind to post it here and help a person like me.

I just added "sudo " before the mv command, to execute it as a super user.

Thanks again

Peter Marks said...

Glad to hear this is helping other people.

Yes, you need sudo to execute the command as root.

Anonymous said...

Thanks! Worked liked a charm.

mariam said...

Great! In my case, the sudo command didn't work but I was able to rename the plist file by first placing it in the Trash.

Tim said...

ok i did this but now my internet does not work at all please tell me how to undo what i did

Peter Marks said...

Sorry to hear that Tim. I would try going to the Network preference panel and re-adding your interface (either ethernet or wireless).