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Resolved Time machine experiencing multiple issues on Monterey (my personal issue resolved)
- Thread starter MacinMan
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Well, in some ways, it was never safe to fully trust TM from the start. It's always had it's quirks with network backups especially where the backup would randomly become corrupted. Chances are, these issues somewhat always existed, and the change in hardware, and security and other changes along the way, have really brought them to the surface more. I just can't see something suddenly just breaking like this overnight unless there were already underlying problems people just weren't aware of.
It must have had substantial portions rewritten in recent years, e.g. use APFS snapshots rather than HFS+ hard links.
Some old problems go away, new ones emerge.
UPDATE: the problem isn’t solved. After finishing the first update, the next update is not finishing at all. I’ve added an external HD to be backed up with TM and again the same problem. I’ve started a backup with BlakeBlaze because I cannot stay without a proper backup
As of writing today, and checking again. I am problem free with TM, for now... I'm a little sceptical of trusting TM on its own, so have CCC6 doing it's thing also. And Backblaze for offsite.
Hey all, I wanted to share a discovery I just made with TM and Monterey. Keep in mind, I'm running an Intel based iMac from late 2015, so I'm not sure this will work for everyone. Anyway, my TM drive had filled up, and it was because things got backed up I didn't catch soon enough before the backup(s) ran. Anyway, I wanted to see if I could get back space by deleting old backups, so I selected all the backups listed, except the newest two, and right clicked and saw a "Delete Immediately" menu item, so, I selected it and two my surprise it worked, and I have space back now. I'm not sure if this is a bug, or Apple's new intended way of managing TM backups. Nothing seems to have broken, but will have to see what happens when the next backup runs.
Anyway, just wanted to share my findings.
Anyway, just wanted to share my findings.
I was keenly following this thread as TM is one of my backup methods, however this post is leaving me puzzled.
How can we expect TM to function as designed if we mess with its file system in this way?
Are you saying that one of the problems with TM on Monterey is that it does not clear up space when needed, in the way it supposed to do by default?
I mean, I presume you all know that TM is designed to use all the space on the destination disk and free up old backups as needed?
Can you please explain your logic, because I am really confused by this action.
Time machine for the most part has always let you delete files from within. Now that function seems to have disappeared with Big Sur and going forward. So like I said, either this was a bug, or this is Apple's new option for managing backups manually. Also it's always been possible to delete Time Machine Snapshots manually to free up space. Also, the point of this thread is because Time Machine has not been functioning as it should be as of Monterey. (especially with Apple Silicon Macs). If what I did shouldn't be possible, and someone else does it and looses data, then people should know about it. That's why I explained the situation, and what I did, and asked if this was new normal behavior, or not.
From within TM, fair enough.
I thought you did it from the Finder, and that in my book is definitely a no no.
Still, the purpose of deleting files from TM is so that you don’t keep old copies of a file/folder you want to disappear for good.
With regard to freeing space, TM is doing that automatically.
I did delete the old backups from Finder, which has never been possible in prior versions, that's why I made mention of it. Anyway, the next backup ran without issues, and Time Machine updated it's records of when the oldest backup was based on the oldest one that remained.
By the way: one thing to consider, since there are growing reports of various situations of Time Machine NOT working, and oding what it should under Monterey (especially) is there anyway you could guarantee that it would do what it's supposed to regarding freeing up space on its own? I personally don't know why Finder let me do this, Apple has made no mention of changes, if they made the change.
One other note, CCC gave me an alert yesterday over Snapshots spiking in storage usage. Not sure why that happened, but rebooting seems to have fixed it. So that's another reason I manually cleaned up TM, in case it was not working right.
There is a reason this wasn’t allowed.
Everything might seem fine, until the day you attempt a restore.
I am not saying that you WILL have problems, but this is a bad idea and frankly, to my eyes at least, it invalidates any further experience you have with this particular TM backup from now onwards.
Either it works and it will delete space automatically, or it doesn’t in which casse something is broken.
Deleting files manually using Finder is likely to break it even more.
You can also probably delete MacOS with Finder, but it doesn’t mean it is a good idea.
There used to be an excellent explainer on the internet by a fellow that had time machine mapped out. It was some years ago, I understand the author sadly passed away and the web page went.
Obviously it has changed a lot and one thing I noticed recently was Time Machine would keep snapshots on drives it was backing up. I always thought it was held on the Time Machine disk only but wonder if there is a good explainer about now.
Edit. I understand that snapshots can be managed in disk utility View menu.
Obviously it has changed a lot and one thing I noticed recently was Time Machine would keep snapshots on drives it was backing up. I always thought it was held on the Time Machine disk only but wonder if there is a good explainer about now.
Edit. I understand that snapshots can be managed in disk utility View menu.
Actually that's my point, with SIP on and working correctly, you Can't delete system related stuff. For example certain things in /Library can't be manually deleted unless turning off SIP, and some of those things were perfectly safe for the user to manage "IF" they knew what they are doing. So, my reasoning here is, if Time machine is managed by the system, and is supposed to be protected, then I shouldn't have been able to do what I did, at least not without turning off SIP first, and probably even going through more safeguards.
I'd much rather make the mistakes for people here and report what happens, rather than have someone here without the experience, or time to deal with issues end up losing data they can't get back. So bottom line, if Apple's own safeguards aren't working correctly under Monterey, there is a much bigger problem than Time Machine here.
Well, the issue that has come up seems to be: that I was able to manually delete backups from the TM drive from finder. Prior to Monterey this was not possible. So, either Apple has changed something, or the OS is really broken. With that said, I cleared space, and TM started from where I left the backups remaining. E.g. the oldest backup is now from yesterday vs when I created the backup back in Nov on the 11th. So I'm trying to figure out if Apple added this as a feature, or if someone else without the experience and preparation for dealing with unexpected problems could wind up in big trouble.
From what I understand reading around, if the backup disk is formatted in APFL now TM use snapshots instead of folders and file alias for incremental backup. Probably you can now safely delete a snapshot and the file system manage everything without data loss. I’m no expert so take this as an hypothesis
Yep, seems harmless as TM has gone about it's business all day without issues, and it's just creating new snapshots
yes!! you're a genius, this worked for me on my Mac Mini M1 running Monterey. thank you!
I tried to remove com.apple.TM.plist, FindMy folders/files, did enormous amount of tries to make it wrap up the backup, but no luck. Currently I have a complete and full log of backup failing wrap up process. If someone from this topic will have a chance to talk with Apple representative you can just send this log to them:
Code:
2021-12-04 21:19:27 Finished copying from volume "Macintosh HD - Data"
2021-12-04 21:19:27 Saved back-up-later cache (Protected:1) at /Volumes/TM Backup 1/2021-12-04-200550.inprogress/.reservations.plist
2021-12-04 21:19:27 Records for BULRecordType
2021-12-04 21:19:27 Failed postflight for destination <APFSDestination /Volumes/TM Backup 1>
2021-12-04 21:19:28 Unmounted '/Volumes/com.apple.TimeMachine.localsnapshots/Backups.backupdb/ Vancoder MacBook Pro M1/2021-12-04-200550/Macintosh HD - Data'
2021-12-04 21:19:28 Unmounted local snapshot: com.apple.TimeMachine.2021-12-04-200550.local at path: /Volumes/com.apple.TimeMachine.localsnapshots/Backups.backupdb/ Vancoder MacBook Pro M1/2021-12-04-200550/Macintosh HD - Data source: Macintosh HD - Data
2021-12-04 21:19:28 Backup failed (104: BACKUP_DELAYED_UNFINISHED_PROTECTED_FILES)
2021-12-04 21:20:12 Accepted a new connection from 'Finder' for service com.apple.backupd.session.xpc
2021-12-04 21:20:12 Mountpoint '/Volumes/TM Backup 1' is still valid
2021-12-04 21:20:12 Accepted a new connection from 'Finder' for service com.apple.backupd.session.xpc
2021-12-04 21:20:13 Failed to get string value for extended attribute 'com.apple.backupd.SnapshotVolumeUUID' on '/Volumes/com.apple.TimeMachine.localsnapshots/Backups.backupdb/ Vancoder MacBook Pro M1/2021-12-04-200550/TM Backup', error: 2 No such file or directory
2021-12-04 21:20:13 Starting session for '/Volumes/TM Backup 1' with options: 3
2021-12-04 21:20:13 Accepted a new connection from 'Finder' for service com.apple.backupd.session.xpc
2021-12-04 21:20:13 Session requested for Time Machine volume '/Volumes/TM Backup 1'
2021-12-04 21:20:13 Session prepared 0 backups (0 cached dates) for file:///Volumes/TM%20Backup%201/ (APFSMachineStore)
2021-12-04 21:20:13 Prepared 0 backups!
2021-12-04 21:20:13 Accepted a new connection from 'Finder' for service com.apple.backupd.session.xpc
2021-12-04 21:20:13 Accepted a new connection from 'Finder' for service com.apple.backupd.session.xpc
2021-12-04 21:20:13 Starting session for '/Volumes/TM Backup 1' with options: 3
2021-12-04 21:20:13 Accepted a new connection from 'Finder' for service com.apple.backupd.session.xpc
2021-12-04 21:20:13 Session requested for Time Machine volume '/Volumes/TM Backup 1'
2021-12-04 21:20:13 Session prepared 0 backups (0 cached dates) for file:///Volumes/TM%20Backup%201/ (APFSMachineStore)
2021-12-04 21:20:13 Prepared 0 backups!
2021-12-04 21:20:14 Accepted a new connection from 'Finder' for service com.apple.backupd.session.xpc
2021-12-04 21:20:18 Accepted a new connection from 'Finder' for service com.apple.backupd.session.xpc
2021-12-04 21:20:20 Finishing session for '/Volumes/TM Backup 1' with options: 3
2021-12-04 21:20:20 Finished session for '/Volumes/TM Backup 1' with options: 3
2021-12-04 21:20:20 Accepted a new connection from 'Finder' for service com.apple.backupd.session.xpc
2021-12-04 21:20:20 Finishing session for '/Volumes/TM Backup 1' with options: 3
2021-12-04 21:20:20 Finished session for '/Volumes/TM Backup 1' with options: 3
2021-12-04 21:20:20 Accepted a new connection from 'Finder' for service com.apple.backupd.session.xpc
2021-12-04 21:20:20 Unmounted '/Volumes/com.apple.TimeMachine.localsnapshots/Backups.backupdb/ Vancoder MacBook Pro M1/2021-12-04-200550/Macintosh HD - Data'
2021-12-04 21:20:20 Failed to enumerate 'file:///Volumes/com.apple.TimeMachine.localsnapshots', error: Error Domain=NSCocoaErrorDomain Code=260 "The file “com.apple.TimeMachine.localsnapshots” couldn’t be opened because there is no such file." UserInfo={NSURL=file:///Volumes/com.apple.TimeMachine.localsnapshots, NSFilePath=/Volumes/com.apple.TimeMachine.localsnapshots, NSUnderlyingError=0x155d2b280 {Error Domain=NSPOSIXErrorDomain Code=2 "No such file or directory"}}
2021-12-04 21:20:31 '/' not offered as a backup destination because it is the root volume
2021-12-04 21:20:31 '/System/Volumes/Data/home' not offered as a Time Machine destination because it does not allow read, write, or append access.
2021-12-04 21:20:31 '/dev' not offered as a backup destination because it is not browsable
2021-12-04 21:20:31 '/System/Volumes/VM' not offered as a backup destination because it is not browsable
2021-12-04 21:20:31 '/System/Volumes/Update' not offered as a backup destination because it is not browsable
2021-12-04 21:20:31 '/System/Volumes/Preboot' not offered as a backup destination because it is not browsable
2021-12-04 21:20:31 '/System/Volumes/Data' not offered as a backup destination because it is not browsable
2021-12-04 21:20:31 '/System/Volumes/Hardware' not offered as a backup destination because it is not browsable
2021-12-04 21:20:31 '/System/Volumes/iSCPreboot' not offered as a backup destination because it is not browsable
2021-12-04 21:20:31 '/System/Volumes/xarts' not offered as a backup destination because it is not browsableI finally got mine to work; no idea how. Was powered down while I went out, came back turned it on and it was working. Shrugs.
But... and we've been here before...
After being consistent for many years, the coding that does the thinning has flip flopped over the last few versions. It was sensible. Then for a time, this part of the coding was rubbish, then it went back to the original algorithm. Now it seems to have reverted to rubbish.
The Monterey version has now been running long enough to thin the backups. On my machine, "Daily" now means just before 24 hours has elapsed, so the 'days' its kept are timed Day 1 at 16:22 (4:22pm - first that ever succeeded), Day 2 at 15:18, Day 3 at 14:39 ... even though there were earlier and later backups on both days 2 and 3.
What does it take to make Apple realise it should be consistent; that is always the first backup of the day or the last that should be kept?
But... and we've been here before...
After being consistent for many years, the coding that does the thinning has flip flopped over the last few versions. It was sensible. Then for a time, this part of the coding was rubbish, then it went back to the original algorithm. Now it seems to have reverted to rubbish.
The Monterey version has now been running long enough to thin the backups. On my machine, "Daily" now means just before 24 hours has elapsed, so the 'days' its kept are timed Day 1 at 16:22 (4:22pm - first that ever succeeded), Day 2 at 15:18, Day 3 at 14:39 ... even though there were earlier and later backups on both days 2 and 3.
What does it take to make Apple realise it should be consistent; that is always the first backup of the day or the last that should be kept?
I wish that I had searched the forums earlier. I have wasted countless hours troubleshooting through two reinstalls and with 3 different SSDs. My issue with Time Machine is that it performs backups but there are no notifications of their completion. Moreover, Time Machine reports “Oldest backup: None” and “Latest backup: None”. Also, Finder does not show any files present on the SSD. However, Get Info reports gigabytes of disk usage. I purchased a $2,500 MacBook Pro 14-inch with the intention moving out of “Wintel”. It is not going to happen —at least not now.
I had the same symptoms.
Look up Carbon Copy Cloner.
I would not rely on a single method anyway. TM is free and used to be reliable, I expect a fix. For now I have mine disabled and several other methods of backup in play and TM is just another option, that fact. that it failed, it show why more than one is needed.
Time Machine is designed to be unobtrusive and it does not notify of completed backups.
However, you should be seeing a date for the last completed backup. If none is shown, it means that none was completed.
It's supposed to notify on completion of the initial backup, after that, you are correct. If the first backup doesn't give a notification, then there is a problem.