Netatalk 2.2.1 happily doesn’t blow up when the volume gets full. They have this in their notes, but I had to check it myself. I tested it last night by setting the quota on the volume pretty low, and then having a script generate random 2.5GB files (and overwrite previous files when it made a new one). This ensured a constant flow of new data that would need to be backed up, and correctly, TimeMachine started deleting my backups from the netatalk volume.

Now that this is done, I’ve turned compression back on and upped the quota on the volume to 300GB. This also means I can recover the 750GB drive I’m currently using for TimeMachine.