TimeCapsuleSMB: Hacking the Apple Time Capsule to Run Modern Samba
The TimeCapsuleSMB project enables Apple AirPort Time Capsules to run a modern Samba 4 server, allowing newer macOS versions to use the device for network sharing and Time Machine backups. It supports both NetBSD 6 and NetBSD 4-based models, though older models require manual activation after reboots. The project is community-driven and not officially supported, with risks of configuration or data issues if something goes wrong.
- ▪The TimeCapsuleSMB project allows Apple Time Capsules to support modern SMB3 connections via a custom Samba 4 setup.
- ▪It works on both NetBSD 6 (Gen 5) and NetBSD 4 (Gen 1-4) Time Capsule models, with automatic startup only on newer models.
- ▪Time Machine backups are supported, but macOS 26.4.x currently has broken network backup functionality.
- ▪The setup requires Python 3.9+, smbclient, and access to the Time Capsule's password.
- ▪AirPort Extreme devices are not officially supported but may work with minor modifications.
Hacker News (Newest) files mainly under programming. We currently carry 5,306 of its stories.
Story provenance
Source · retrieval · rights · ranking — open for full record
inspect →
Story provenance
Attribution is not the same as permission. This drawer separates discovery metadata, excerpts, WeSearch-generated summaries, reuse status, and whether the publisher receives the visit. Nothing here claims a legal grant the publisher has not made.
Record
| Original publisher | GitHub |
| Canonical URL | https://github.com/jamesyc/TimeCapsuleSMB |
| Publication time | Wed, 29 Apr 2026 09:37:10 +0000 |
| Retrieval time | 2026-04-29T10:06:15.560Z |
| Last seen | 2026-04-29T10:06:15.560Z |
| Headline source | Publisher (no WeSearch rewrite) |
| Excerpt source | publisher body |
| Excerpt method | First ~120 words (~800 chars) of extracted publisher body, fair-use limited. |
| Summary | WeSearch · cerebras-chat (WeSearch summarizer) |
| Summary source text | contentText |
| Citation coverage | Summary is a WeSearch-generated derivative; primary citation is the original publisher URL. |
| Cluster | _D0V-U0YK6MI |
| Cluster logic | Grouped by semantic title/content similarity across sources within a rolling window. Same-publisher template collisions are excluded from coverage comparison. |
| Ranking reason | Story pages are not engagement-ranked. Hub feeds use recency, with optional source-diversified chronological ordering (cap consecutive stories per source). No personalized ranking. |
| Publisher visit | Yes — open original |
| Substitutes article? | No — link-out required for full text |
Rights status (four layers)
WeSearch handling by dimension
| Indexing | May the item be indexed (stored, ranked, made findable)? | Allowed |
| Snippet | May a short excerpt of the publisher's text be shown? | Allowed |
| AI summary | May WeSearch generate its own short summary of the article? | Limited |
| Retrieval / RAG | May the content be exposed for third-party retrieval-augmented generation? | Not asserted |
| Model training | May the content be used to train AI models? | Not asserted |
| Commercial reuse | May the content be reused commercially? | Not permitted |
Basis: Derived from the published RSS/Atom feed. Contact: [email protected]. Reviewed: 2026-07-24.
Opening excerpt (first ~120 words) tap to expand
TimeCapsuleSMB Apple AirPort Time Capsules are still perfectly usable pieces of hardware, but they only support AFP and SMB1. Apple has removed SMB1 support from macOS a long time ago, and AFP support is being removed for macOS 27. This repo configures a modern Samba setup that runs directly on the Time Capsule itself; modern macOS can connect to the Time Capsule as a network share, and use it for Time Machine backups. NOTE THAT TIME MACHINE ON MACOS 26.4.x (AND 15.7.5) IS CURRENTLY BROKEN, see https://www.cultofmac.com/news/macos-tahoe-26-4-breaks-time-machine-network-backups Macs running macOS 26.4.x can still use the device as a standard Samba network share in Finder.
…
Excerpt limited to ~120 words for fair-use compliance. The full article is at GitHub.