Yves M

Q: Time Machine will not backup my Home Library Folder

After having upgraded my El Capitan system to Sierra, I decided to wipe clean my Time Machine external disk so as to start a new series of TM Sierra backups.

 

The problem is that Time Machine now stops backing up when it gets to the Library folder in my Home folder.

It used to work flawlessly when I ran El Capitan.

 

I then have to cancel the backup process which came to a halt at about half of the job (201.85 Gb out of 360 Gb).

 

If I dig into the Time Machine "In Progress" file in the Backups.backupdb folder, I find my Home Library folder tagged with a red button with a Minus sign in its lower right corner.

 

There seems to be an odd authorization problem here.

 

Any explanation of what is going on here ? Any solution ?

iMac, macOS Sierra (10.12), Core i7, 1 TB SSD, 24 GB Ram.

Posted on Sep 27, 2016 12:37 PM

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Q: Time Machine will not backup my Home Library Folder

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  • by trevoz,Helpful

    trevoz trevoz Sep 28, 2016 6:40 AM in response to Yves M
    Level 2 (459 points)
    Mac OS X
    Sep 28, 2016 6:40 AM in response to Yves M

    I'd run Disk Utility -> First Aid on the drive and partition just to be sure it's not a file system inconsistency.

     

    If that doesn't fix it, I'd then check the console logs (applications > utilities > console.app) to see if it's reporting the issue during the backup.

     

    If you still have no joy, I'd start trashing folders from your Library folder (don't empty the trash so you can put them back) until I found what was causing the issue. To get to Library in Finder, use menu bar Go and type in Library.

  • by Yves M,

    Yves M Yves M Sep 28, 2016 6:57 AM in response to trevoz
    Level 1 (18 points)
    Mac OS X
    Sep 28, 2016 6:57 AM in response to trevoz

    You gave me a good hint, Trevoz.

     

    I found out in the Console logs that at a certain point, the "bird" process blocked the "backupd" process by sending back a notice of unauthorization. I'm probably using the wrong terms here (I should have copied the lines from the Console log), but this is roughly what was reported there.

     

    And then, since the "bird" process is related to iCloud, I disconnected my iMac from the Internet (by disabling WiFi) and Time Machine immediately got back to work and finished backing up the remaining 157 Gb !

     

    I'll try a further TM backup with WiFi enabled and see if I can trace those lines in the Console logs.

     

    The problem is not solved, but I got to bypass it for the moment.

     

    Any hint on what iCloud has to do with Time Machine getting to a halt in its backup process ?

  • by trevoz,Solvedanswer

    trevoz trevoz Sep 30, 2016 12:55 PM in response to Yves M
    Level 2 (459 points)
    Mac OS X
    Sep 30, 2016 12:55 PM in response to Yves M

    After upgrading to Sierra, my system log was being spammed by iCloud-related processes every few seconds. This was odd because I'd NEVER used iCloud EVER, but the only way to stop it was to login to iCloud for the first time, then logout again. I notice there's a whole bunch of processes running taking up memory and CPU cycles for things I've disabled/not enabled and never use (eg iCloud, Siri and the list goes on). I looked into using launchctl to "unload" them, but that required booting into the Recovery Partition, disabling system integrity protection, making the changes with launchctl, re-enabling SIP, rebooting etc. I may yet do it, but the system is not memory constrained (16GB) or CPU constrained (i7 quad core) so I've let it slide.

     

    Anyway, back to your issue. Perhaps your files are being moved/copied to iCloud (the new Sierra "space optimisation" and especially if you're low on disk space) and TM waits for that to complete?

     

    I'd wait till the TM backup is finished, then let iCloud do its thing again.

  • by Yves M,

    Yves M Yves M Sep 30, 2016 12:54 PM in response to trevoz
    Level 1 (18 points)
    Mac OS X
    Sep 30, 2016 12:54 PM in response to trevoz

    Trevoz

     

    I found the problem, though I cannot explain the "mecchanics" of it.

     

    Long time ago, while in El Capitan, I had denied outgoing connections to an "nsurlsessiond" process, with Little Snitch, because it was unexplainably consuming a lot of bandwith. As I never noticed any ill-effect of this blocking, not even with my Time Machine backups, I left it this way until upgrading to Sierra.

     

    This is where Time Machine stopped working. I then allowed outgoing connections back to nsurlsessiond, and everything came back to normal.

     

    Looks like Sierra (or Time Machine) now needs this process to rely on outgoing connection to work.

     

    You are probably right in pinpointing this new Sierra "space optimisation" feature having something to do with the problem.

     

    Thanks