HELP: Can't read many files after BigSur Upgrade (due to Time Machine extended attributes)

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HELP: Can't read many files after BigSur Upgrade (due to Time Machine extended attributes)

I upgraded to BigSur (11.0.1) from Mojave, and now I can't read files due to extended attributes placed apparently by Time Machine on files. I can't even remove these attributes as root!

For example:

drwx---r-x@ 183 <myusername> staff 5856 Nov 29 09:16 Documents

com.apple.metadata:_kTimeMachineNewestSnapshot -1

com.apple.metadata:_kTimeMachineOldestSnapshot -1

I did a sudo to become root (sudo su - root), and then tried to clear the attributes:

MBP-Retina:<myusername> root# xattr -c Documents

xattr: [Errno 1] Operation not permitted: 'Documents'

I can't read critical data I depend on, on my laptop, due to this issue.

I am on Big Sur 11.0.1

MacBook Pro 15″, macOS 11.0

Posted on Dec 6, 2020 7:54 AM

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Answer 1

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devang102 Author

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Dec 6, 2020 8:39 AM in response to devang102

I tried some more experiments and I found if I use "Terminal", I can do what I need from the CLI - no permission problems. But from "iTerm2" (which is a replacement for Terminal from a third party, not Apple), I have this problem. So the problem is restricted to access of these files with extended attributes, when I use the CLI from a "iTerm2" session.

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Answer 2

devang102 Author

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4 points

Dec 6, 2020 8:22 AM in response to devang102

However, I am able to browse through and access these files through the "Finder" point and click interface ...so I was able to retrieve some critical files I needed, that way. But from the terminal CLI, I can't. Very weird.

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Answer 3

devang102 Author

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4 points

Dec 17, 2020 7:01 AM in response to HWTech

Thanks a lot!! This solved my problem. Really appreciate the response...

Out of curiosity, do you know why this happened on upgrade? iTerm2 wasn't in the list of apps granted "Full Disk Access" earlier but it used to work fine in previous releases....

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