Crashes in backupd since upgrade to Sonoma 14.5

[donawalt]

Ever since my MacBook Pro upgrade to Sonoma 14.5, I have gotten 28 crashes in 8 days. They are all what shows below. It's not every hour, being 28 in 8 days. I ran First Aid on the drive, it was fine. I am doing the container now (lots of snapshots that take awhile) and then volume next.

Any advice? Anyone else seeing this?

Exception Type: EXC_BAD_ACCESS (SIGSEGV)
Exception Codes: KERN_INVALID_ADDRESS at 0x0000000000000bad
Exception Codes: 0x0000000000000001, 0x0000000000000bad

Termination Reason: Namespace SIGNAL, Code 11 Segmentation fault: 11
Terminating Process: exc handler [90064]

VM Region Info: 0xbad is not in any region. Bytes before following region: 4305253459
REGION TYPE START - END [ VSIZE] PRT/MAX SHRMOD REGION DETAIL
UNUSED SPACE AT START
--->
__TEXT 1009d0000-100c08000 [ 2272K] r-x/r-x SM=COW /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd.bundle/Contents/

 

[Grumpus]

Assuming your MBP is supported by Sonoma (i.e. this is not an OCLP install) this is something you maybe should contact Apple Support about. Does pausing Time Machine backups via 'sudo tmutil disable' stop the crashes?

A segmentation fault occurs when a process tries to access memory which hasn't been allocated to it, and the address 0xbad is.... weird.

 

[donawalt]

Actually I just noticed the summary in the menubar says last backup May 15 - the day of the upgrade. And it is a 2023 MacBook Pro. I'll try pausing it when the First Aid is done.

 

[Nermal]

For what it's worth, backups are running correctly on my machine (2020 iMac, OS 14.5). My last crash (of anything, not backupd) was under the previous version.

 

[donawalt]

I tried turning it off and disconnecting from the Mac, and then plugging in/turning it on. It seems to struggle through backup, then this time, it panicked. I think I am going just reformat the disk and start over, nothing I need on it at this point. I think I also got an mdwrite error in the crash log.

 

[JustAnExpat]

Are you using any pirated or wares programs by chance? or anything that's changing the kernel?

 

[donawalt]

Not at all @JustAnExpat ! It’s a very vanilla install.

 

[JustAnExpat]

Not at all @JustAnExpat ! It’s a very vanilla install.

I recommend taking it to the Apple Store and getting it looked at. It should not be doing this at all

 

[donawalt]

Thanks. I am trying a couple things first, if all else fails I will.

 

[donawalt]

Update:
As soon as I updated my 2023 MacBook Pro from Sonoma 14.4.x to 14.5 on May 15, Time Machine crashes every hour. Latest crash is below. I have tried:
- restarting MacBook Pro
- power cycling drive
- trying multiple Thunderbolt/USB cables
- trying multiple external drives, SSD and spinning
- completely erase drive, running First Aid on it, then trying to do a first backup
- trying multiple ports on the Mac.

I just reinstalled Sonoma 14.5, am trying again with a different drive. I think this is a Sonoma bug. I reported it on the Feedback Assistant app, I assume that's the right place to report it?

 

[Brian33]

Weird. I've never heard of TM crashing like that. The Time Machine log entries might shed some light on the issue. Know that not every "Error" message is necessarily a problem, though. In Terminal.app:

log show --last 1h --info --style compact --predicate 'subsystem=="com.apple.TimeMachine" '

(I'm still on Monterey but that should still work in Sonoma.)

 

[donawalt]

OK, I did a backup twice, with a newly erased SSD disk. the first crashed at 3:37 PM local time. The second died at 7:01 PM local time. Both times, the disk was erased and empty, and just added as a TM disk to use. I did screen caps both times, it progresses quickly (roughly half done), then crashes around the identical place - it pauses at this point for about 5 seconds, then ends - as if no backup was done. The crash I show above is then in the log.

Here are the views of the progress.

The first crash at 3:37 PM:

And here is the 7:01 PM crash:

Nearly identical!

I ran the command @Brian33 gave me above, and I include the text file of the result in this post. I don't see much there at the point of the crash (which would be 7:01 PM. This would not crash at the nearly identical point if it was hardware I suspect. Any ideas?

 

[donawalt]

So PROGRESS! And need some help from you all on next steps.

I decided to take a newly erased disk (that I had used before for TM, one of two - and SSD), and I went into

Safe Mode - and it worked!

Full backup. I then let it do an incremental backup, and that worked too. I went back to normal restart, and let it try again in an hour - it crashed again, same crash as above.

So my thought is - what's next - turn off everything in Login Items to narrow it down? Or do I take another path to narrow down what the conflict is? Ihave already run the backup with no other apps running, and that failed.

Thanks for your help!

 

[Grumpus]

So my thought is - what's next - turn off everything in Login Items to narrow it down?

That sounds like a reasonable approach. What do you have in Login Items anyway?

 

[donawalt]

Nothing abnormal - I had 5 in "Open in Login" that I deleted, and 17 on in Allow in Background. I deleted all the "Open in Logic", and turned off the 17 in Allow in background - it still crashed. So it's not that - there must be something else different in safe mode vs. regular mode. Any other ideas?

 

[Grumpus]

I'm pretty sure that non-Apple kexts aren't loaded in safe mode. Do you have drivers for 3rd-party hardware installed? Other than that, no, no ideas. I don't see other users reporting backupd crashes, so it seems to be something unique to your setup.

Your Open at Login and Allow in the Background numbers sound high to me (I have 1 each on a 2023 MBP, both for BlockBlock). You appear to have ruled those out, but maybe if you post a screenshot of the Login items screen it will ring a bell for someone.

 

[donawalt]

@Grumpus good thought - I just toggled off all the Extensions showing in Settings/Privacy & Security/Extensions, and turned off all the Open in Login and Allow in Background again. I'll try another backup with all that disabled.

Here is my Open in Login list:

And here is the Allow in Background List, in case someone sees something else that could be an issue:

 

[donawalt]

@Grumpus I re-disabled all the Open at Login and Allow in Background, plus turned off all the Extensions in Privacy & Security/Privacy, restarted, and it still crashed ☹️

 

[Grumpus]

Sorry to hear that. I would call Apple Support.

 

[Grumpus]

You could try creating a new user to test whether TM crashes while that user is logged in. And you could try reinstalling Sonoma, first without erasing the disk, and if still no joy erase the disk and recover everything using Migration Assistant from a good TM backup you made in safe mode.

EDIT: and maybe download and run Onyx Maintenance to rebuild the launch services database and cleanup caches.

 

[donawalt]

Thanks @Grumpus. I tried:

- creating a new user. Backup failed same place!
- I did reinstall Sonoma from Recovery without erasing the disk - that failed.
- I tried Onyx - still failed.

So I guess my only course now is wipe the disk - like I am selling the Mac, setup new with Migration Asst. Ugh.

Thanks again!

 

[Grumpus]

So I guess my only course now is wipe the disk - like I am selling the Mac, setup new with Migration Asst. Ugh.

I hope that works! The only other thing I can think of would be to run hardware diagnostics on your machine. That seems like a long shot, since things work fine in safe mode, but it's worth a try.

 

[HDFan]

Since the problem didn't occur in Safe Mode run etrecheck and remove all added extensions and login items by moving them out of the appropriate directories, in the case of extensions. If that works then add them back until you find the one that is causing the problem.

 

[donawalt]

Thanks @Grumpus I ran the diagnostics and it found no issues! @HDFan thank you for your reply too - I ran EtreCheck Pro and he found no issues. I disabled all the extensions, login items, and allow in background apps, and it still crashes. Weird.

 

[donawalt]

Well it took awhile, but FIXED! Today I:
- erased all data (like prepping for sale)
- did a new reinstall of Sonoma 14.5 from Recovery
- Restored from my TM backup

and it's working fine now! I actually did a full backup to a new disk, then hooked up my long-standing disk to use, and it has been fine too trying with both disks - no crashes!

Thank you so much @Grumpus and @HDFan for all the ideas and help!