Resolved Time machine experiencing multiple issues on Monterey (my personal issue resolved)

[MacinMan]

That’s the problem. Even if i enter that command and resolve my problem, i don’t see any exclude items in the options section.

I found this page here that might provide some help: https://www.macworld.com/article/220774/control-time-machine-from-the-command-line.html. However, it looks like you're easiest bet is to reset Time Machine, by disabling it and setting it up again. I don't see any command to remove exclusions with the command line. But using the disable command with tmuil and then setting it up fresh with the system preferences, should give you the defaults. I've never used the tmutil command line though. I've never needed it.

 

[MacinMan]

I apologize, I misspoke in my above post. Read the man page for tmutil. It has what you need. There IS a remove command for exclusions.

 

[TriciaMacMillan]

That’s the problem. Even if i enter that command and resolve my problem, i don’t see any exclude items in the options section.

I suspect that your exclusion command did not actually work. You used "~" in the command, and I believe that the command cannot resolve that to the actual path /Users/username. Also, you omitted -p option which adds even a non.-existent path.

So my guess is, the fact that the exclusion does not show up under Options means that they are not there.

You may check using

tmutil isexcluded <item>

- for <item> use an existing path that you would expect to be excluded. To remove exclusions, use

tmutil removeexclusion <item>

 

[TriciaMacMillan]

I can now also confirm that macOS 12.2 fixes my Time Machine problems.

To verify, before installing the update, I removed the excluded paths as explained in the work-around. The issue indeed returned with Time Machine not being able to complete the backup and, in the log, complaining about not being able to access Find My files and one of the Prime Video app.

I then installed the update, and the next Time Machine backup went through very smoothly.

I checked the log, and I still see access failures, however, it looks like Time Machine now simply skips them, for example:

localhost backupd[709]: (TimeMachine) [com.apple.TimeMachine:FileProtection] Failed to acquire device lock assertion even though screen is unlocked - proceeding with copy of '/Volumes/com.apple.TimeMachine.localsnapshots/Backups.backupdb/savvyMac/2022-01-27-135733/Macintosh HD - Data/Users/metin/Library/Containers/com.apple.findmy.FindMyWidgetItems/Data/Library/Preferences', error: Error Domain=NSPOSIXErrorDomain Code=22 "Invalid argument"

I did not see the message any more that said "Adding event for inaccessible protected file".

For me, this issue seems fixed, although I am not sure if Apple implemented an actual fix for the root cause or rather something like a work-around.

 

[MacinMan]

I suspect that your exclusion command did not actually work. You used "~" in the command, and I believe that the command cannot resolve that to the actual path /Users/username. Also, you omitted -p option which adds even a non.-existent path.

So my guess is, the fact that the exclusion does not show up under Options means that they are not there.

You may check using

tmutil isexcluded <item>

- for <item> use an existing path that you would expect to be excluded. To remove exclusions, use

tmutil removeexclusion <item>

@TriciaMacMillan I looked it up online while I was looking for a helpful solution. Apparently to this thread on ask different:https://apple.stackexchange.com/que...d-via-tmutil-do-not-appear-in-tm-options-list Suggests items added with the commandline tmutil are not supposed to show up in options.

 

[TriciaMacMillan]

@TriciaMacMillan I looked it up online while I was looking for a helpful solution. Apparently to this thread on ask different:https://apple.stackexchange.com/que...d-via-tmutil-do-not-appear-in-tm-options-list Suggests items added with the commandline tmutil are not supposed to show up in options.

In my case, they did show up. So either the information is outdated, or there is another factor that influences it.

That's why I'm curious to learn what tmutil isecxluded returns in @Pskordilis's case.

 

[TriciaMacMillan]

@MacinMan Re-reading the info from your link, I understand that is makes a difference whether the -p option was used or not. The difference is:

With -p the path is excluded, no matter if it exists or not, and it always stays the same.

Without -p the file is excluded. It must exist, and even if moved to another location, it stays excluded. To allow for this, instead of adding the path as an exclusion (which could be seen in Time Machine options), the file gets an extended attribute that marks it excluded from Time Machine backups.

So when I recommended the -p option and used it myself, that's why I was able to see the exclusion in Time Machine options.

Others obviously did not use -p option, and then I'm not sure if the work-around did in fact work as expected, because a sticky exclusion requires that the file exists when it is excluded – otherwise it is impossible to add the extended attribute (for obvious reasons, you cannot add an attribute to a non-existent file). So if the file would be created later, the TM issue would return.

 

[MacinMan]

@MacinMan Re-reading the info from your link, I understand that is makes a difference whether the -p option was used or not. The difference is:

With -p the path is excluded, no matter if it exists or not, and it always stays the same.

Without -p the file is excluded. It must exist, and even if moved to another location, it stays excluded. To allow for this, instead of adding the path as an exclusion (which could be seen in Time Machine options), the file gets an extended attribute that marks it excluded from Time Machine backups.

So when I recommended the -p option and used it myself, that's why I was able to see the exclusion in Time Machine options.

Others obviously did not use -p option, and then I'm not sure if the work-around did in fact work as expected, because a sticky exclusion requires that the file exists when it is excluded – otherwise it is impossible to add the extended attribute (for obvious reasons, you cannot add an attribute to a non-existent file). So if the file would be created later, the TM issue would return.

Then, in addition to that site, when reading Apple's manpage for tmutil, the syntax in the example suggests using the -v and-p options together. It's not exclusively recommended, but that's what the example shows is -pv used together.

Not sure if that means anything specific to this situation or not, but I thought i would add this to your above comments.

 

[TriciaMacMillan]

@MacinMan The option -v is for volume exclusion and does not make sense in the scenario we are discussing.

The third kind of exclusion is a volume exclusion. These track volumes based on file system UUID, which is persistent across volume name and mount path changes. Erasing the volume will cause Time Machine to apply default behavior for the newly erased volume.

The -v option configures volume exclusions

 

[MacinMan]

That’s the problem. Even if i enter that command and resolve my problem, i don’t see any exclude items in the options section.

Do you have any confirmation that they are still being excluded ? if neither the command line, or GUI are giving you any feed back? Also one thing to consider is: If you're talking about the metadata for FindMy, one user did a test several posts up and simply deleted those folders and the system recreated them. So you may not need them backed up anyway.

 

[Pskordilis]

Do you have any confirmation that they are still being excluded ? if neither the command line, or GUI are giving you any feed back? Also one thing to consider is: If you're talking about the metadata for FindMy, one user did a test several posts up and simply deleted those folders and the system recreated them. So you may not need them backed up anyway.

i can’t even find those folders! there are nowhere !

 

[MacinMan]

i can’t even find those folders! there are nowhere !

Including the source drive? e.g. active system drive? If that's the case, you may not need to even worry about this. Someone else might be able to add information I currently don't have on this. I never had issues with these particular items that the majority of people here have. So, I haven't paid attention to closely to this part on my particular system as things have just worked after sorting out the speed issues. Someone with an Apple Silicon Mac may be of more help here since they seem to work differently from Intel.

 

[Pskordilis]

Including the source drive? e.g. active system drive? If that's the case, you may not need to even worry about this. Someone else might be able to add information I currently don't have on this. I never had issues with these particular items that the majority of people here have. So, I haven't paid attention to closely to this part on my particular system as things have just worked after sorting out the speed issues. Someone with an Apple Silicon Mac may be of more help here since they seem to work differently from Intel.

i was from the first persons who have that problem. M1 user here. In which path is the findmy?

 

[MacinMan]

i was from the first persons who have that problem. M1 user here. In which path is the findmy?

Here is what I can say comfortably without feeling like I'm providing incorrect information. It sounds like the FindMy data is stored in iCloud, and when you sign in that data is stored on the Mac and synced. So, from what I understand is, not backing it up won't lose data. The new install of macOS will just sync what's stored in iCloud. That's how most iCloud services work. Granted that I have Find My enabled, but rarely use it, I'm not too deeply familiar beyond this how it works.

 

[likegadgets]

That does sound promising, you've been one who hasn't been able to get it to work at all, even with the suggested workarounds. The fact you got it to complete normally sounds like really good news.

So far so good. Time Machine on two drives working normally after 12.2. over the last 24 hors with hourly incremental backups. No mods or exclusions. Newly formatted drives APFS with encryption. I continue to run CCC and Super Duper just in case (it doesn't cost extra and on the M1 MAX does not appear to tax the Mac performance) . It sure took Apple a long time to address the issue.

 

[Pskordilis]

So in case anyone want to learn something. I just enable the find my Mac from options and guess what? TM not working again !!!! I will try in a while to disable it and test it again...i don’t know what the hell happened but even disk utility doesn’t open now...

 

[MacinMan]

So in case anyone want to learn something. I just enable the find my Mac from options and guess what? TM not working again !!!! I will try in a while to disable it and test it again...i don’t know what the hell happened but even disk utility doesn’t open now...

If a reboot doesn't fix it, then you might have file system corruption, especially if Disk utility won't open. Whatever Apple Silicon Macs call recovery mode, I would boot into it and run disk Utility from there to check your drive for damage.

 

[Pskordilis]

If a reboot doesn't fix it, then you might have file system corruption, especially if Disk utility won't open. Whatever Apple Silicon Macs call recovery mode, I would boot into it and run disk Utility from there to check your drive for damage.

i already do that and everything works fine. i will try and do a backup again on the same hdd as before but i format it that time to apfs.

 

[MacinMan]

i already do that and everything works fine. i will try and do a backup again on the same hdd as before but i format it that time to apfs.

Sounds like you're on the right track now. Well done!

 

[Pskordilis]

Sounds like you're on the right track now. Well done!

sorry you misunderstood me. i was mean i already do that check before you answer me.

 

[TriciaMacMillan]

Interesting find:

I use 3 NAS drives, two of them at the office, one at home. The Time Machine backup to those at the office was immediately cured after the 12.2 update. The one at home still didn't seem to work – still complaining about the FindMy files. I was so disappointed! But after 3 unsuccessful backups, Time Machine eventually started a longer cleanup phase, and after that, the backup was successfully completed.

So maybe those who seem unlucky should wait a little and let Time Machine do its job a few times.

 

[MacinMan]

sorry you misunderstood me. i was mean i already do that check before you answer me.

That's how I took it. I understood it as you did the checks I told you to do them, and everything checked out, so now you're going to reformat the backup drive to APFS so it's clean and try a fresh backup.

 

[MacinMan]

Interesting find:

I use 3 NAS drives, two of them at the office, one at home. The Time Machine backup to those at the office was immediately cured after the 12.2 update. The one at home still didn't seem to work – still complaining about the FindMy files. I was so disappointed! But after 3 unsuccessful backups, Time Machine eventually started a longer cleanup phase, and after that, the backup was successfully completed.

So maybe those who seem unlucky should wait a little and let Time Machine do its job a few times.

sounds like you had whatever corruption was causing the issues still on the home backup and TM eventually got rid of it and moved on.

 

[Pskordilis]

That's how I took it. I understood it as you did the checks I told you to do them, and everything checked out, so now you're going to reformat the backup drive to APFS so it's clean and try a fresh backup.

Yeap, i can confirm with 12.2 all works fine. In my case needed to re-format the drive i backed up before 12.2

 

[matthewnp]

Kind of pilling on here, but I'll add that my problems with TM backup are also finally resolved with 12.2.

I started with a fresh container on a APFS drive and the backups are working normally again.