Time Machine backups keep failing

LindaRB21 wrote:
Tried turning off and backup now with same results. In response to second question, I have never altered TM via any 3rd party software. Here is what the console said after my last attempt yesterday:

Sep 1 17:58:35 Linda-Bannings-Computer com.apple.launchd.peruser.501[115] (com.apple.pbs): Throttling respawn: Will start in 10 seconds

Rats. Not a clue to your TM problem. This is something else, something of Apple's. The reference is to a *Launch Agent* in OSX, at /System/Library/LaunchAgents/com.apple.pbs.plist Sorry, but I don't know what it is or what may be wrong with it.

There was nothing else in the log for that period?

In spite of what the web site says Time Machine Buddy works fine on my 10.6 system and has done so for several months while testing TM. YMMV.

Steve

Steve Holton wrote:
In spite of what the web site says Time Machine Buddy works fine on my 10.6 system and has done so for several months while testing TM. YMMV.

That's quite strange. There are several reports of problems, including a couple of it locking-up the entire dashboard! Perhaps it's a permissions problem -- we'll ask the next person who has a problem with it.

Thanks for the feedback!

LindaRB21 wrote:
Nothing else in the log even for todays failed backups-which I thought was strange. Since I had no problem with TM Buddy I went back to that and here is the full text I got for the last failed backup today:

Starting standard backup
Backing up to: /Volumes/TM:Backups/Backups.backupdb
Event store UUIDs don't match for volume: Macintosh HD
Forcing deep traversal on source: "Macintosh HD" (mount: '/' fsUUID: AA567D9C-4CF1-343F-81E3-5CD4EF3A4748 eventDBUUID: 0B6F7070-D78B-489F-8946-1B94682F5720), {1, 1, 1, 0}
Node requires deep traversal:/ reason:must scan subdirs|require scan|
No pre-backup thinning needed: 28.90 GB requested (including padding), 59.68 GB available
Error: (2) setxattr for key:com.apple.backupd.SnapshotVolumeUUID path:/Volumes/TM:Backups/Backups.backupdb/Linda Banning’s Computer/2009-08-31-112356.inProgress/471F6639-ACBC-47DB-9FC9-89E8B12238E6/Phot o/ Storage size:37
Stopping backup.
Copied 0 files (15 KB) from volume Photo/ Storage.

Do you have an external disk, partition of your internal disk, sparse image, or disk image named +*Photo/ Storage+* ?

If so, which is it? Try doing a +*Repair Disk+* (not permissions) on it, via Disk Utility (in your Applications/Utilities folder).

Same problem, after upgrade.

Verify backup disk, Repair backup disk.
Check size required for backup remember extra space is required while backup is working.
Delete time machine.plist under as previously mentioned.
Reselect backup drive
Start backup.
Did this twice and all worked. took about 1hr 25min for 320GB backup.
Checked backup files all present and correct.

Good Luck

Was experiencing these issues exactly. Console logs indicated that Parallels (4.03846) and Aperture (2.1.4) were implicated. Checking the "Do not backup with Time Machine" in the General option of the Virtual Machine Configuration within Parallels, and excluding the Aperture Library (for better or worse) from the Time Machine backup, provided a total resolution.

rohan_moore wrote:
Was experiencing these issues exactly. Console logs indicated that Parallels (4.03846) and Aperture (2.1.4) were implicated. Checking the "Do not backup with Time Machine" in the General option of the Virtual Machine Configuration within Parallels, and excluding the Aperture Library (for better or worse) from the Time Machine backup, provided a total resolution.

Yes, TM should not be used to back-up Windoze data. But I thought the Aperture problems of a few months ago had been fixed?

LindaRB21 wrote:
I did a repair on the external drive PhotoStorage, but that didn'y fix the TM problem. Pretty sure I know what is happening now.

My external drive named PhotoStorage has a bootable backup of 10.58 on it.

Is it in the same partition as your other data? If so, that's probably not a good idea. If you make a separate partition for the "clone" and exclude it from TM, you should be ok.

Do you have (or can you borrow) another drive big enough to copy the photo data, "just in case"? If so, you may be able to delete the clone and partition the drive without actually erasing the photo data. See item #6 in the Frequently Asked Questions *User Tip.* (That's for partitioning a TM drive, but it will work here, too.)

Are you using the same TM drive for you backups as you did for Leopard?

Did you upgrade, or did you choose for a fresh installation of Snow Leopard? I am asking this because one of the errors is because of a drive mismatch, presumably due to a name change/new format/new partition!

Another thing; do you have drives listed in the privacy tab of Spotlight? Please note that Time Machine need to index your drives, or it will nag you time after time i.e. do not add your TM drive in the privacy tab 😉

Further to my resolution:

I also did a permissions repair and closed all anti virus software and Hazel.

Once all these steps were completed backup worked great and yes faster than in 10.5

If you are using one of the unsupported NAS Drive backup hacks, you may need to rerun the terminal command:

'defaults write com.apple.systempreferences TMShowUnsupportedNetworkVolumes 1'

hope that helps...

Cheers,
Di

Message was edited by: Di4Mac

Message was edited by: Di4Mac

This may be related to a problem with Spotlight. I just tried this suggestion from at Spotlight thread over in the Finder and Dock section:

___________________

Forget the Safe Booting - I found the culprits: 3rd Party Spotlight Importers
located in:

/Library/Spotlight

and

username/Library/Spotlight

I moved all 11 of them to the trash, Typeit4me included, and indexing started immediately - approx 20 minutes for >200GB. Hooray!!!

_______________

Not only did this fix my stuck Spotlight, but also my stuck Time Machine.

Michael

I was having the same problems with TM backups failing in 10.6 (and 10.6.1). I tried all of the suggestions in this thread—throwing away preferences, reformatting hard drive, disk repair etc.—and nothing was working. I finally got mine to work. It turned out that TM was getting hung up on certain files inside packages, either installers or applications. I was able to trace them down by having console running at the same time and when the backup failed it would point me to the culprit. For instance...
9/10/09 3:43:56 PM com.apple.backupd[709] Error: (-41) SrcErr:NO Copying /Applications/Transmit.app/Contents/Frameworks/FTPKit.framework/Versions/A/Head ers to /Volumes/Backup HD/Backups.backupdb/jscott/2009-09-08-093350.inProgress/42948351-27F0-4EB3-8605 -276275EB9746/Macintosh HD/Applications/Transmit.app/Contents/Frameworks/FTPKit.framework/Versions/A

This error pointed to my Transmit application. I deleted Transmit and ran a TM backup and it got a bit further until it hit another snag file. Rinse and repeat until the backup finally completed. In all there were 4 files TM couldn't get through. Deleting the package or updating the Application allowed TM to complete the backup. Good luck everyone!