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KB wrote in to ask whether it is possible to have her Mac Book’s Time Machine automatically mount her Time Capsule (which is at her home) while she’s traveling and back up her Mac. The answer is yes, but it’s only easy to do if you have MobileMe.
For those of you without a MobileMe account, this solution won’t work (which is another reason to consider getting this great service). For those of you with a MobileMe account, let’s proceed. I am going to assume that you have only a single-user MobileMe account. If you have a family account, then without any more help, this hint will work if you are also the administrator of the Time Capsule. In addition, I am assuming you have already set up your Mac to back up to your Time Capsule. This solution is for adding a remote backup function, not setting up your Mac to use Time Capsule.
Basics
You need a few things to start: Your MobileMe user name and password, an internet connection, and administrator access to your Time Capsule. If you’re the only person using all of these, you should be all set.
The first thing we need to do is make sure you have set up your MobileMe account on your Mac. If you already have done this and turned on Back To My Mac, skip down to “Getting the Password” For the rest of us, you can find the MobileMe preferences in your System Preferences (access those from the Dock, your Applications folder, or the Apple Menu). Note: If you’re still running a plain-vanilla version of 10.5 Leopard and have never used Software Update, your Mac may still list the MobileMe preference as .Mac. I highly recommend you run all of your software updates before proceeding.
Here’s what we’re looking for:
Once you click on the MobileMe preference, your account page will come up. If you have not entered your MobileMe user name and password, it will provide fields for you to do so. Once you enter this information and it is verified you should get a screen similar to this:
The key here is that the screen says you are signed into MobileMe. Once that’s the case, click on “Back to My Mac.” Once on this screen, you need to click on the “Start” button to turn on the service. Note: If you don’t want to use the Back to My Mac service, that’s ok. We only need the computer to connect to the MobileMe servers once to generate a password. Once Back To My Mac is running, you can feel free to shut it off.
Great! Now you can quit your System Preferences.
Getting the Password
Now that we’ve set up our MobileMe account and Back To My Mac, we need to get our Back To My Mac password. To do so, go to your Applications Folder. From there, open your Utilities folder. Finally, in the Utilities folder, open the program called “Keychain Access.”
In the upper left pane, click on the “System” keychain. Then, look for the key that is the kind called “Back to My Mac key.” You’ll probably only have one of these, and it take the form of username.members.mac.com or username.members.me.com, where username = your MobileMe user name. It looks like this:
Now, double click on that key, and a new window will open. At the bottom, click on the checkbox next to “Show password.” A new administrator verification window will pop up, and you need to enter your computer’s admin password in order to view your Back to Your Mac password. Once done, you should see something like this:
Finally, highlight the password and copy it into your clipboard. We will need this password in just a minute. (Alternately, you can copy and paste it into a sticky if you think you’re going to need to use the clipboard before we finish this set up.) Take note of whether your account says username.members.mac.com or username.members.me.com. It does matter, so write it down. If you’ve only added your account since .Mac switched to MobileMe, it’ll say me.com. If you’re an old .Mac user, it’ll probably say .mac.com. Now you can quit Keychain Access. (If the program asks you if you want to save changes, say no.)
Time Capsule Setup
The last big job we have is to make some changes to the Time Capsule setup. You’ll need to open your AirPort Utility, which is in the same folder as Keychain Access. Once you open the AirPort Utility, you should see your Time Capsule listed in the window, like this:
Obviously, my Time Capsule is called Satellite. Double click on your Time Capsule. You may then have to enter your Time Capsule’s password in order to configure your settings. Once that window opens, you’ll be on the Summary tab. Click on the “Time Capsule” tab, then click the Edit button, as shown here:
Once you click the Edit button, you should get a window like this:
Ok! This is where the meat of the project comes in:
- You will not have the “Use dynamic global hostname” checkbox checked, but we want to do so now.
- Make sure you have something filled in for “Local Hostname.” Anything is fine.
- Now, back on the “Hostname” line, we’re going to fill it in with a long string. The first word will be your local hostname. Since mine is Satellite, my first word is satellite. Then I put a period, followed by my MobileMe user name (in my photo, I just put the word “username.” You’ll replace it.). After that, you’ll put another period, followed by members.mac.com or members.me.com, depending on what your keychain indicated your account used.
- On the “User” line, this is again going to be your MobileMe user name, followed by a period, followed by members.mac.com or members.me.com (whichever is correct for your account).
- On the “Password” line, you DO NOT put your MobileMe password. Instead, you paste the password we copied from the System Keychain.
- Now, click Done, then click the Update button to have your Time Capsule save the settings and restart.
Are we done yet?
Maybe. 
Theoretically, we’re done! You should be able to leave your home, go to a coffee shop or anywhere else with a wireless network, and within a few minutes of getting online, your Mac should detect your Time Capsule. I have found that, in some cases, it doesn’t quite work perfectly until we try a couple of steps at least one time.
If you go to another wireless network and then check your Time Machine system preference, look to see whether your Time Capsule is recognized. If it is, then you should actually have a date and time listed next to the “Next Backup” line. If you do not, try this:
- Simply turn off Time Machine and turn it back on. Wait a minute, and see if this does not correct the problem.
- If it still does not, go to the finder, then click on the “Go” menu, followed by “Connect to Server.” For the address, type in that entire host name string. On my computer it was satellite.username.members.mac.com (where username was my username). Then click Connect. If you did not set up your Time Capsule with a password to connect, it should connect on its own. If you set up a simple password only for the device (rather than usernames and passwords), then when the username/password box pops up, your username will be “user” and your password will be whatever you set up on your Time Capsule. Finally, if you chose to use specific usernames and passwords for Time Capsule, enter your username and password. Once your Time Capsule appears under your Devices tab on your Finder window (or Desktop), you can eject the Time Capsule. NOW, go back to your Time Machine preference, turn Time Machine off and then back on and wait a minute to see if the problem has gone away.
These two steps above should only be needed in rare circumstances. For most people, everything should work without the extra steps. A few more notes:
- If you’re like me and are stuck with a crummy cable connection at home or remotely, your upload speed is probably not very good, and this will significantly impact how long your Time Machine backups take. In my experience, the “Preparing” step in the Time Machine takes 20-30 minutes remotely before you even get an indicator of how much data needs to be backed up. This isn’t a bug; this is simply what happens when you’re not on a local connection.
- Since backups take much longer, you might want to consider downloading a program that lets you schedule your backups rather than using the standard every-hour-when-my-machine-is-plugged-in setting. I recommend the wonderful and free Time Machine Editor.
Update: If, after trying all the steps below, your Time Capsule still does not appear in the Time Machine list of disks, open Terminal and type this command, press return, then reopen System Preferences to look for the disk:
defaults write com.apple.systempreferences TMShowUnsupportedNetworkVolumes -bool yes
Did this work for you? Have a suggestion to improve this answer? Post your thoughts in the comments section!
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Nick,
You do not need to configure your ports on a Time Capsule for this function. Your problem can be one of two things:
1. You have another router in between your Time Capsule and your internet connection. Assuming you have cable/DSL, you need to know whether you have a cable/DSL *modem* or *router.* If it’s a router, then you have to set up the Time Capsule’s IP address as the DMZ on THAT router, not the Time Capsule’s. If you have a modem, make sure that it is already forwarding all the ports (which it probably is).
2. The router at your remote location does not support NAT-PMP or uPNP. In your email, you indicated you were at Starbucks. Starbucks has almost assuredly disabled uPNP access in their routers because BitTorrent users and gamers will hog all the bandwidth if it’s available. I doubt you’re going to get uPNP access with public wi-fi if the company knows what they’re doing in setting up the routers (your local coffee shop may be different).
Thus, you need uPNP/NAT-PMP on *both* ends of the connection.
As you said in your comment, the Time Capsule is not your router. One easy solution is to make Time Capsule your router. Then there’s no worrying about the DMZ. If you don’t want to do that, then you will need to use your router’s web management tool to change the DMZ settings. You can go to your router’s manufacturer’s site for more information on how to do this.
Hey – What if your mobile me account has a PERIOD in it? my account is ryan.fernandez@me.com
How would I type in the host name with the period in it in the Time capsule preferences?
Now that Time Capsule has the MobileMe addition to the firmware, is there an easier way to set this up using the MobileMe remote access features in the firmware update?
That’s really a good question. You can now engage back to my mac access to your time capsule. So why isn’t the remote access option for time capsule more straightforward? Then people could engage and disengage the remote service as their circumstances changed-say turn it on if they’re on-campus all day working on papers, or business traveling. And turning local access back on when they get home. It could be incorporated into the Time Machine Drop Down Menu. Sorry that I can’t actually provide you with an answer, but in the least I hope this updated reply will bump the thread and the google rating of this fine work-around.
Just an add-on. Having a dependable routine back-up routine anywhere is almost a substitute for autosave on open files. I’ve been using ForeverSave, but now that they have a pro version, I’m not confident of the extent of their light version features. Furthermore, their latest install for snow leopard is not working for me. With remote backup, it’s like getting an autosave on the hour wherever you are.
Matt, Thanks for the great tips! I had been looking for this exact solution, but Apple doesn’t publicize this as a capability of the Time Capsule when used with MobileMe. Your instructions worked perfectly.
One question: there is a checkbox in the Airport setup menu for the Time Capsule (Airport->Time Capsule) that says “Allow setup over the internet using Bonjour.” Do you know if that is something for non-MobileMe users to use, or is there a reason I might want to use it even though I use MobileMe?
Thanks!!
I had been able to make remote backups on the first couple of attempts, but now there seems to be an issue. When I start the backup, the remote Time Capsule is mounted, but now it appears to be stuck at “Making Backup Disk Available”. It has been an hour and a-half since Time Machine started and it is still trying to make the disk available.
Has anybody else had this problem? Any ideas for a solution?
Finally I could configure Back to My Mac by typing in the Terminal the command line mentioned at the bottom. This works fine from outside the network, but not from inside, as it does not detect the disc location automatically as it was before, and now every time I want to use the time machine I have to select manually the location of the disc. Therefore I wonder if you could please let me have the command line to undo the instruction to the previous status. Many thanks!!
One huge caveat: these remote backups are easily susceptible to corruption. I am not certain if making one of the backups, or accessing them remotely through time machine was the cause, but I do know that the sparsebundle was corrupted by remotely accessing the backup. I suspect it became corrupted when I mounted the remote drive with Time Machine in order to try and retrieve an old file from a remote site. I was unable to repair the image file using DiskWarrior and was forced to reformat my Time Capsule. A year’s worth of backups went down the drain. It was not worth the trouble to do these backups remotely. Furthermore, the backups are so painfully slow as to be impractical, not to mention the risk of corruption and loss of data. USE AT YOUR OWN RISK!!
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