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schlupps

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Sep 22, 2020
323
296
RheinMain - Germany
hi.
i recently switch hardware and moved on to Ventura. Things are running pretty smooth so far: the new hardware seems to be sort of bored by my demands =D
The migration went fine from what i see so far.
My timemachine use case was to trigger a backup each day at 11:11 (with timemachinedit). This way, the rest of the day, the TM drive was 'silent' (i am not very noise tolerant). With Ventura i removed timemachineedit and set the Timemachine to run backups 'daily'.
Today i was fumbeling with a new sd card reader and I ran the mount command in the shell. What i saw there, made me wonder a little bit: is it "common" to see a mounted volume for every of the past few days?

mountTMVolumes.png


Now my question would be: How many entries related to the Timemachine do YOU have, when checking with mount?

Thanks for reading and maybe checking and even more for responding =) !

kind regards,
schlupps
 

gilby101

macrumors 68030
Mar 17, 2010
2,970
1,640
Tasmania
How many entries related to the Timemachine do YOU have, when checking with mount?
I think it depends on the exact state of your system, e.g. have you viewed the TM disk in Finder or Disk utility?

Frequently (and right now) I see most TM backup snapshots. Just like you do.

It is normal with APFS formatted TM disks and is required when you try to access the content of any backup. You will notice that they are mounted read-only.
 
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schlupps

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Sep 22, 2020
323
296
RheinMain - Germany
thanks for checking and thanks for responding!

i checked "tmutil listbackups / " and result was the same list. This TM backup is sort of 'fresh, meaning, it was created after taking the new hardware in service.
Really wondering, if there will be about 30 mounts being added every month.
The 'old' TM drive still is attached occasionally (once every week to have another set of backup and store it 'unplugged' ) ; but this device is running no APFS, so not comparable i guess..
i will have an eye on this and keep posting, if things change.

Thanks again for Your feedback!! Really appreciated =)
 

svenmany

macrumors demi-god
Jun 19, 2011
2,279
1,531
I have seen many entries in the past, but did not study them. I have one entry now and it's a mounted local snapshot, not one from any of my backup disks.
 
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schlupps

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Sep 22, 2020
323
296
RheinMain - Germany
odd.. i just unmounted/ejected the Timemachine harddrive and restarted the mac mini. After the restart (which mounted the Timemachine harddrive again), i found only one volume mounted at /Volumes/.timemachine/... so, the mount command showed one entry for "/Volumes/.timemachine/.." at that moment and one for "/Volumes/Timemachine/" ! And this volume ("/Volumes/.timemachine/..") was unmounted without my 'assistance' by its own after a minute or so..
maybe i should have faith in the system and probably just accept/ignore that =))
 

svenmany

macrumors demi-god
Jun 19, 2011
2,279
1,531
In my case, the leftover mount was caused by an error that I can see in the logs:

23-04-26 08:53:27.751 TimeMach Failed to unmount '/Volumes/com.apple.TimeMachine.localsnapshots/Backups.backupdb/HD/2023-04-26-085109/Data', Disk Management error: {
Action = Unmount;
Dissenter = 1;
DissenterPID = 0;
DissenterStatus = 49168;
Target = "file:///Volumes/com.apple.TimeMachine.localsnapshots/Backups.backupdb/m3/2023-04-26-085109/Data/";
}
 
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svenmany

macrumors demi-god
Jun 19, 2011
2,279
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Looking back 24 hours in my logs, I see that there were three such errors yesterday. If I hadn't rebooted this morning, I suspect I would now see 4 (or more) such leftover mounts. All four errors relate to local snapshots only. Local snapshots always happen just before the backup to the external disk.
 

svenmany

macrumors demi-god
Jun 19, 2011
2,279
1,531
One last thing to report: I went in to TimeMachine to browse my backups. After leaving that, a very large number of TimeMachine mounts were left. I suspect a bug.
 

schlupps

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Sep 22, 2020
323
296
RheinMain - Germany
good point!! i grepped through the logs in /var/log but could not locate a similar or related entry in my mini.. but i will monitor this =)
 

svenmany

macrumors demi-god
Jun 19, 2011
2,279
1,531
good point!! i grepped through the logs in /var/log but could not locate a similar or related entry in my mini.. but i will monitor this =)

One thing to note, there's very little logging getting into the text logs in the file system.

From https://developer.apple.com/documentation/os/logging there's this:

The unified logging system provides a comprehensive and performant API to capture telemetry across all levels of the system. This system centralizes the storage of log data in memory and on disk, rather than writing that data to a text-based log file. You view log messages using the Console app, log command-line tool, or Xcode debug console. You can also access log messages programmatically using the OSLog framework.

I have good luck on the command line using the "log" command. But, there's a learning curve. Another option is to use "Mints" or "Consolation" from this fabulous person at https://eclecticlight.co/downloads/. Try "Mints" first since there's a "Time Machine" button.
 
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gilby101

macrumors 68030
Mar 17, 2010
2,970
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Tasmania
One last thing to report: I went in to TimeMachine to browse my backups. After leaving that, a very large number of TimeMachine mounts were left. I suspect a bug.
My guess is that this is deliberate. Mounting all those snapshots takes time, as does unmounting. So better to leave mounted incase you do more browsing/restoration.
 
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schlupps

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Sep 22, 2020
323
296
RheinMain - Germany
over 200? o_O wowsa!
the same inner urge that wants me to do the necessary to keep logs clean, is the same one telling me, that i keep the mounts to a minimum/necessary level. But my meaning of necessary/minimum obviously differs from the OperatingSystems ideas ;)
Thanks a lot for Your feedback!!
 

svenmany

macrumors demi-god
Jun 19, 2011
2,279
1,531
My guess is that this is deliberate. Mounting all those snapshots takes time, as does unmounting. So better to leave mounted incase you do more browsing/restoration.

You're probably right. Though, I do use the mount command frequently and those entries can get in the way. Happily, they're usually not there.

over 200? o_O wowsa!
the same inner urge that wants me to do the necessary to keep logs clean, is the same one telling me, that i keep the mounts to a minimum/necessary level. But my meaning of necessary/minimum obviously differs from the OperatingSystems ideas ;)
Thanks a lot for Your feedback!!

:) We are the same. It bothers me sooooo much. When testing this out yesterday, I only slightly browsed my backup history. I now have 110 Time Machine mounts and they won't go away until I reboot.
 
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