I am unable to make a Time Machine backup on my MacBook Pro running macOS Sonoma

Thank you so much for this vital information about troubleshooting Time machine under Sonoma. I had been having a similar problem using two external drives alternating backups on my Mac Studio (G-Drive 6TB and La Cie 10TB both formatted with AFFS). It was very perplexing since one drive would fail and the other would continue to execute backups. I had tried to reformat the drives to no avail.

However, when I read your solution, I found I had the file OSMessageTracer in the login background operation. I disabled it and also several others that I did not recognize from non-approved developers. Since then, I set Time machine in motion again after restating the Mac Studio, and all is now operating correctly.

I think part of the problem is that through the several years I have been a Mac user, I have accumulated quite a bit of software baggage which has not been removed as I incorporated successive macOS updates. Under another Apple Mac forum, I found this note about OSMessageTracer.

OSMessageTracer is a leftover file from a previous macOS update that was supposed to be deleted after the installation process. It is part of the OSInstaller framework, which is responsible for installing system software on your Mac. However, due to a bug or an oversight, this file was not removed and remained as a login item in your system settings.

I am sure the disabling of several other login background items from nonapproved apple vendors could also have contributed to their problem.

Charles

I had that problem also. My fix seems to be resolved, for me the resolution was to disconnect syncing for my cloud services ie google drive, ms one drive, Dropbox etc. I understand that ymmv but for me it wasn’t a big deal as I was going to be cutting those out anyway.

Hope this helps someone, I was going crazy with this issue.

Disabling adobe on background login for one time was enough. My backup was completed and I could make a new one after enabling adobe again on background login. Problem seems to be solved now

I've been looking for a solution to Sonoma and time machine back up for a while. I migrated from a 2017 MB to a 2023 MBAir with Sonoma. I realized after reading through the various posts about this issue that it is not one issue. Very disappointed in Apple's efforts toward a solution on this. For me it was some authentication issue with the shared network drive. I tried various fixes with log in items, background items, terminal commands etc. all yielded no resolution. I hope this helps someone.

My solution that worked:

Turn off icloud drive > Restart > remove time machine drive from system pref> restart> disconnect from Mac mini> reconnect to mac mini using Admin account > restart> mount share drive from mac mini on drive '23MB> go to time machine setting and add mounted shared drive> verify previous backup> restart> back up now option from time machine tool bar menu.

**eureka** it started backing up. It was not a new backup as there was only 4GB of data that was copied. My drive is at 130GB used up so I knew it was adding to the existing back up since its been about a month since I could not update the time machine back up.

I'm so disappointed in Apple's response to this issue as my backup system has files that go back to my 2003 PowerBook. All of a sudden have to trouble shoot this for a brand new device on a back up system thats been working for so long. Since 2014, I have been using a 8TB OWC rack mount raid drive attached to a Mac-mini(2013). Additionally my partner's 2018 MB also backs up to this drive since 2020 as well. This has been used flawlessly for three devices including the mini backing up to its own image on the raid drive. I even restored a machine after soda spill/device replacement under applecare and was very glad to have this system in place.

Both of my Macs did a complete iCloud sync immediately after the upgrade to Sonoma. It took several hours to complete, during which time Time Machine backups were delayed, and if I started one manually I'd get a similar message that some files could not be backed up. But after the iCloud sync was done, Time Machine backups completed normally.

Is something preventing your iCloud files from syncing? Or perhaps it just needs more time to complete?

I'm finding that when this issue happens, for me, bouncing my 3 Mac (all intel) doesn't fix/address the issue. I actually have to bounce my NAS (WD PR4100 80Tb) box ... after which, I'm able to then complete a backup ...

wasn't an issue for the 3 years worth of NAS backups before Sonoma

i bought an entire new external 5TB harddisk, which I formatted and gave it a password for unlocking as suggested by the update to Sonoma. Problem entirely solved and time

machine backups are speedy again. Of course I could have done the same thing to my old backup HD, but I didn’t want to take the risk of having no backup when something went wrong. Hope this was helpfull

Disconnecting from OneDrive + Dropbox was the first I did to solve the problem, but it did not help. Apple support was great, but at last the only working solution was to downgrade to Ventura.

Mike,

I did nothing special. Restarted in an administrator account and clicked in Finder on the icon next to iCloud Drive. It said that sync was completed x minutes ago, but a minute later it showed that files were uploaded and downloaded.

Once no more sync dialogues started, Time Machine came to life, and all was good. I did not have to do anything for Time Machine.

Now all works well in my standard account as well.

Regards,

they fail to attached HDDs and NAS as well.

I „fixed“ the problem by removing iCloud Drive from my Sonoma iMac. Since then I am at least able to run backups with TimeMachine. But I don‘t think that this is a solution. Took me over a week to be able to work again with my Mac. I never imagined that Apple could ever deliver such a faulty „productive“ OS. I‘m really, really angry 😡

Here is my Time Machine log, error is caused by fileproviderd process so i think only an update from Apple can fix it, what is strange is that on my Macbook Pro 13 also on Sonoma i dont have this error at all:

2023-10-13 16:39:50 Checking if file provider is ready for backup at path file:///Volumes/com.apple.TimeMachine.localsnapshots/Backups.backupdb/Mac%20Studio/2023-10-13-163943/Data/

2023-10-13 16:39:50 File provider reported file:///Volumes/com.apple.TimeMachine.localsnapshots/Backups.backupdb/Mac%20Studio/2023-10-13-163943/Data/ is not ready for backup, error: nilError

2023-10-13 16:40:00 Unmounted '/Volumes/com.apple.TimeMachine.localsnapshots/Backups.backupdb/Mac Studio/2023-10-13-163943/Data'

2023-10-13 16:40:00 Unmounted local snapshot: com.apple.TimeMachine.2023-10-13-163943.local at path: /Volumes/com.apple.TimeMachine.localsnapshots/Backups.backupdb/Mac Studio/2023-10-13-163943/Data source: Data

2023-10-13 16:40:00 Evaluating to see if an unmount was responsible for error: Error Domain=com.apple.backupd.ErrorDomain Code=105 "(null)" UserInfo={BackupdResultParts=Elapsed time: Calculating..., NSUnderlyingError=0x14afd7c20 {Error Domain=Foundation._GenericObjCError Code=0 "(null)"}}

2023-10-13 16:40:00 Analytics send failed.

2023-10-13 16:40:02 Evaluating to see if an unmount was responsible for error: Error Domain=com.apple.backupd.ErrorDomain Code=105 "(null)" UserInfo={BackupdResultParts=Elapsed time: Less than a minute, NSUnderlyingError=0x14afd7c20 {Error Domain=Foundation._GenericObjCError Code=0 "(null)"}}

2023-10-13 16:40:03 Unmounted '/Volumes/Backups of Mac Studio'

2023-10-13 16:40:05 Unmounted '/Volumes/.timemachine/Time Machine 2._afpovertcp._tcp.local./7DEB14C9-5F79-4DB4-A4A6-9F511441495E/Time Machine 2'

2023-10-13 16:40:05 Backup failed: BACKUP_DELAYED_FILEPROVIDER_IMPORT_IN_PROGRESS (105)

2023-10-13 16:40:05 Analytics send failed.

2023-10-13 16:40:05 com.apple.TMHelperAgent.DeliverNotification: connection invalid

2023-10-13 16:40:07 Finishing session for '/System/Volumes/Data/Volumes/Backups of Mac Studio' with options: 4

My manual backup also failed to complete overnight -- on MacBook Pro M3 Max running Sonoma 14.5.

Settings need to be set to "Never" turn display off in: System Settings > Lock Screen panel. I had the "Never" option selected in two out of the three options ("Turn display off on battery when inactive" and "Turn display off on power adapter when inactive") -- but *not* on the first / top option ("Start Screen Saver when inactive").

I spoke with an Apple tech this morning and he suggested *also* selecting "Never" for the "Start Screen Saver when inactive" which I had not already done -- as he seemed to recall that the switch to the Screen Saver might have interrupted his backup before.

See my screenshot showing these three "Never" options to set -- keeping in mind that after your backup completes, you likely ought to reset these to your own better-preferred options to save your display life.

After my last post and after trying about every single suggestion I found on the net, I pretty much gave up on Time Machine and switched back to SuperDuper.

Guess what happened? Two days ago, Time Machine suddenly started creating my first backup and successfully performed multiple backups since.

So I guess, the correct solution to this issue is indeed: Just wait.

In my case, if I hadn't tried so hard, including multiple iCloud disconnects, the issue might have resolved itself much faster, but be prepared to wait up to two weeks or even longer, at some point in time it might 'just work'...

After a few hours running, my Mac is now backing up to TimeMachine (just startet a few minutes ago).

It's okay for me if it takes time after a OS release to update / sync everything, but I'd like to see what's happening..

Hope the backup will finish successfully. But looks good for the moment.

Yeah, as far as I can see there is no key solution yet for this annoying issue.

Some benefit from syncing accounts, others from waiting till iCloud stopped bugging and in my case I used another SSD plus another backup programme. There is no sense or any logic sofar why it fails and why different solutions only work for a few . . .

For me I have no major changes on a daily base on my Mac, but many will have because it is used for important work related things. I can imagine it drives you crazy. Fingers crossed Apple will come with a fix soon (if they find the cause).