Pondini

Q: UPDATED: Serious Time Machine bug on Mountain Lion

This is continued and summarized from a previous thread, Serious Time Machine bug on Mountain Lion, which has grown rather large and unwieldy (and which I marked Solved in error).  There are a few other threads that touch on it as well.

 

 

Some of us have seen a few cases of a pretty nasty problem with Time Machine backups on Mountain Lion.  It doesn't seem to affect a lot of users, but those who have it, don't know it.  It seems to have started at different times for different users, some as long ago as December, 2012.

 

The backups cannot not be used to do a full system restore from recent backups -- they don't appear on the selection screen that shows only "complete" backups.  Plus, they're not recognized as backups by Setup Assistant or Migration Assistant.  They don't appear on the Select the Source or Select Your System windows at all.  But your user data is fine via the Time Machine browser (the "Star Wars" display).

 

What's happening is, the top-level Applications, Library, System and (hidden) private folders are being excluded by some process (not the user, and the exclusions do not appear on the Time Machine Preferences window).  But all backups complete normally, and Verify Backups from the Time Machine menubar on network backups, and Verify Disk or Repair Disk via Disk Utility, don't show a problem  (because what's there is intact; those processes can't tell that what's missing isn't supposed to be missing.)

 

In addition, we've seen a few threads where the problem is intermittent -- backups are unexpectedly large, sometimes often, sometimes less so, intermittently.  In those cases, the folders are backed up, then skipped, then backed-up again, then skipped, etc.  Since they appear to be "new" when backed-up again, they're backed-up in full, making backups of 15 GB or more.

 

 

See #D10 in Time Machine - Troubleshooting for an easy way to tell if you're affected, and a fix.


 

However, as we have no clue as to the cause yet, we need to be sure Apple knows about this, in detail, while it's happening, so I'm asking for some folks who are having these problems, and are fairly comfortable with the Finder at least, and following directions to do other things you may not be so familiar with, to help us collect information and contact Apple before running the fix in the link above (as that will destroy some of the evidence).

 

We're especially interested in folks who are covered by AppleCare, as you can call them for free and get some fairly quick attention.  We can supply some "ammunition" for when you call them (since I haven't had this problem, and don't know how to reproduce it, I can't report it myself). 

 

 

If you're having this problem and just want to run the fix, by all means do so (and check it periodically), but please don't post back with just a "me, too" post, unless you have something significant to add -- this thread may get long and those won't really help.

 

But if you're having a different problem, please do not respond to this thread.  Start a new one, instead.  If you're not sure how to do that, please go to the main Apple Support Communities page;  some Tutorials are listed at the right.  They'll show you how to get started.

Posted on Jun 24, 2013 6:55 AM

Close

Q: UPDATED: Serious Time Machine bug on Mountain Lion

  • All replies
  • Helpful answers

first Previous Page 12 of 12
  • by koagul8or,

    koagul8or koagul8or Apr 17, 2014 1:19 PM in response to rxbudp
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Apr 17, 2014 1:19 PM in response to rxbudp

    rxbudp wrote:

     

    This IS a known issue with Apple.  I have Apple Care and opened Case #443758601 way back in May 2013.  The senior advisor who worked with me was John Chappell.  For almost 8 months I kept calling him back for an update on the issue and his primary response was " The engineers said it would be fixed in the next update".  Well, 3 to 4 Mountain Lion updates later and now Mavericks, there is still no fix and you were told that this is NOT a known issue with Apple.

     

    Can't say I'm particularly shocked to hear this.    Given the number of posts on the subject I was surprised to be told that I was the first person.  Maybe it's taken out of context.  Perhaps he meant his team in Ireland were not aware of it.  Maybe he didn't use the correct search terms when/if he searched their database.

     

    For the record, my case number is #583231959.  I don't expect to hear anymore about it unless I can recreate it.  I suppose one of my older machines I could try to break by unplugging the backup disk mid-backup or killing the process or something but I like to think Apple might have already tried that themselves.

     

     

    rxbudp wrote:

     

    I look forward to reading future posts concerning your progress with your case #.

     

    You'll be the first to hear if I discover anything.  To be honest I'm resigned to just manually checking once a week.  Even if I wrote a script to do the checking then I'd have to worry that there were no errors in my script!  ")

     

    J

  • by beldenfox,

    beldenfox beldenfox Apr 18, 2014 9:43 PM in response to koagul8or
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Apr 18, 2014 9:43 PM in response to koagul8or

    J,

     

    This was not a fresh Mavericks install; I upgraded from Mountain Lion. The backups made under Mountain Lion were clean (at least the weeklies that were still around). The backup I made just after I upgraded to Mavericks failed dropping top-level system directories and various bits inside Applications. After Mavericks was installed AND I reset my Time Machine prefs AND I popped in a clean backup drive I got good backups for a few weeks and then stuff started dropping out of my Preferences folder. This happened twice.

     

    Based on what fs_usage is telling me once a file is dropped from a backup it will be dropped from every following backup. This might even be by design. When I saw that I decided there was no point in continuing to invest time in tracking down the original problem. Time Machine's a mess.

     

    beldenfox

  • by TheBarrister,

    TheBarrister TheBarrister Apr 22, 2014 2:37 AM in response to Pondini
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Apr 22, 2014 2:37 AM in response to Pondini

    Variation on what seems to be this same problem.  I've probalby read 20-30% of the posts in this and the original thread, so apologies if this is not new.  It relates to my old Mac that I gave to a friend.  We'll call him Bob.

     

    Situation:

    Bob has a 3-year-old'ish (Mountain Lion? dunno) install that was backed up to an external disk via Time Machine.

    Disk dies.

    Bob goes to Apple store, where Apple installs a new disk with Mavericks.*

    Boot up Mavericks for the first time, use Migration Assistant to restore from the TM backup.

    MA says "Bob's Home Directory does not need to be restored".  Shows backup of 0Kb.

    Bunches of other things are restored, but no home directory.

    Check TM Preferences on Mavericks post-restore.  Exclusion List shows ~.  (listed as ~, not /users/bob)

    Remove ~ from the Exclusions.  Save

    Open TM settings.  Exclusion List shows ~.

    Rinse.  Repeat.

     

    I found this thread after discovering the reappearing ~ in Exclusions phenomonon at Bob's house tonight, so I have not checked anything else.  I will investigate more when I stop by again.

     

    I wanted to post it here because A) ~ as the affected directory seemed new; B) the affected directory was indeed displayed in Preferences; C) you could remove the affected directory from the Exclusion list in Preferences, but it immediately returned upon reopening Preferences.

     

    Apologies if this has been covered in a section that I lacked time to read.

     

    -G

  • by AlWil,

    AlWil AlWil May 14, 2014 8:40 AM in response to TheBarrister
    Level 1 (0 points)
    May 14, 2014 8:40 AM in response to TheBarrister

    I was affected by this bug: as with most users, I was completely unaware of the problem until I wanted to restore. For Apple to have known about this since at least 2013 and not fixed it is appalling. I understand that commercially software houses rate bugs by their seriousness of their effects and by the number of users affected: in this case the seriousness is very high since users can't restore from a supposedly good backup. The number of users affected is undetermined since you don't know you're affected until you try to back up.

     

    At the least Apple should release an easy (preferably automatic) check on the exclusions list, to warn users they might be affected.

     

    I've now lost faith completely in Time Machine and am installing Carbon Copy Cloner: for a modest cost, it not only provides reliable backups, it also creates a bootable backup; so the loss of the hard drive is no problem - just boot from the backup drive and continue working as normal.

  • by crbennett,

    crbennett crbennett Jun 1, 2014 12:48 PM in response to Pondini
    Level 1 (15 points)
    Wireless
    Jun 1, 2014 12:48 PM in response to Pondini

    I am sad to report that I have just experienced this issue. Several of the suggestions in this thread seem to be helping me recover anything that was stored in user directories, though there is much work ahead.

     

    I chime in only to say that this happened on a new machine that shipped from the factory in March 2014 so it's never known anything but Mavericks.

  • by okka_gois,

    okka_gois okka_gois Jul 11, 2014 5:58 PM in response to Pondini
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jul 11, 2014 5:58 PM in response to Pondini

    hi,

    i have a similar problem. i had a full back up on my time machine and were able to do migration to my 'new' macbook pro running on mountain lion.

    it seemed that it copied all my files, i had all the files on my macbook. after deleting the user, which i had to create for the first steps, it deleted all my private files, not the applications. the hard dics volume is about 450gb less, which is about the volume i was backing up.

    after that, i inherited my time machine. now all the files are gone, i can't reach the old backups.

    there should be a way to get to my files.

    if it's going to be possible, that i can reach my demolished macbook via firewire hard disc connection, pressing T while both macs are connected and launching, i might be able to copy all my files. if not, i'm not used to revocer files from terminal. i would appreciate to get some advices how to get to my files. thanks in advance!

first Previous Page 12 of 12