Something is locked and blocking my time machine backup

Hello again and thank you for you very quick answers. I tried the other string, and this is what it says:

Peters-MBP-M2-Max:~ peter$ log show --predicate 'subsystem == "com.apple.TimeMachine"' --info --last 4h|grep "Operation not permitted"

2024-11-15 06:25:27.416560+0100 0x39fc91   Error       0x0                  289    0    backupd: (TimeMachine) [com.apple.TimeMachine:FileProtection] Failed to acquire device lock assertion for '/Volumes/com.apple.TimeMachine.localsnapshots/Backups.backupdb/Peters MBP-M2-Max/2024-11-15-055749/Macintosh HD - Data/Users/peter/Library/Biome/streams/restricted/ProactiveHarvesting.Mail/local/752462791393167' (assertion state: <dropped>), error: Error Domain=NSPOSIXErrorDomain Code=1 "Operation not permitted"

Peters-MBP-M2-Max:~ peter$ 

While removing the widget will get rid of the TM error, it is suboptimal. The better solution is to add the offending directory to TM's exclusion list like so:

tmutil addexclusion ~/Library/Containers/com.apple.findmy.FindMyWidgetItems/Data/SystemData/com.apple.chrono/timelines/com.apple.findmy.FindMyWidgetItems

jwhitt wrote:

I ran that and Apple will not allow me to post the result. Now what do I do? The result is long.

How do I "exclude that directory or file from the backup"

I found from Terminal that I was getting an error because of my Google Drive. It said, "Data/Users/xxx/Library/CloudStorage/GoogleDrive-xxx" (xxx = my name). So I excluded it using the Time Machine settings.

To do that you go into Time Machine settings and click on Options and then click the + to add what you want to exclude. Then you navigate to the item. In my case, I excluded the Google drive. Also my Dropbox drive and iCloud since all three of them are backed up on the cloud anyway. You have to exclude each item one at a time. I still have to test to see if that solves it. Will report back.

Thanks for this. Giving Time Machine the Full Disk Access via System Settings has worked for me. (I did not try any Terminal commands.)

At the end of the article about Biome, Howard Oakley writes

deleting the contents of the Biome folder shouldn’t result in any data loss.

Try deleting the Biome folder like so:

rm -rf ~/Library/Biome/

and then manually start a TM backup and report the result.

Have you tried this? In System Settings, go to Privacy & Security and next in Full Disk Access. Add Time Machine and give it full access. I had no issues since I did this, even though Apple Tech told me my Time Machine drive should be twice the capacity of my internal SSD drive and that it would never work... Hope this helps!

There is only one solution but unfortunately thread is filled with some fluff, but Focker has posted the solution on the first page. First run the following command in terminal to find what directories or files TM is getting stuck on, then either use the time machine settings to exclude that directory or file from the backup or run the second command and exclude the directory or file:

log show --predicate 'subsystem == "com.apple.TimeMachine"' --info --last 4h|grep "Operation not permitted"

tmutil addexclusion ~/Library/Containers/path.to.problem.directory

You need to run these three commands separately then try back up again:

tmutil addexclusion ~/Library/Daemon Containers/E8568DA5-629C-42D6-A799-93E78C67C0B1/Data/com.apple.milod/milo.db-wal

tmutil addexclusion ~/Library/Daemon Containers/E8568DA5-629C-42D6-A799-93E78C67C0B1/Data/com.apple.milod/milo.db-shm

tmutil addexclusion ~/Library/Daemon Containers/E8568DA5-629C-42D6-A799-93E78C67C0B1/Data/com.apple.milod/milo.db

so there you have it, you found the offending directory. Now all you need to do is to add it to the TM exclusion list like so:

tmutil addexclusion ~/Library/Biome/streams/restricted/ProactiveHarvesting.Mail/local/752462791393167

See this article for an explanation about Biome.

I've been trying to resolve this exact issue, but NOTE that my setup might be unique: M2 Mac mini, booting off of an external TB3 NVME SSD. After a bunch of trial and failures (including double checking the logs and exclusions, disabling sleeping, cleared all local snapshots, reformat and start a new TM backup...etc), the thing that worked for me was the moment that I realized that I had, for reasons unclear to me, mounted the internal SSD "Macintosh HD." This is all the while, booting and running off of the external SSD. As soon as I ejected/unmounted the internal SSD, I was able to successfully complete a previously failed TM backup...

Somehow, with my particular setup, if the internal SSD is mounted, it confuses the OS or TM and as far as I know, I couldn't add the entire internal SSD to the exclusion list, at least via the GUI...

As a side, if you ever boot from your internal SSD, don't TM backup it on the same HDD. At least for me, that seems to confuse TM. When I boot back into the external SSD, the next TM session seems to be a full, from the scratch backup!

I have an M4 Mac Mini and I boot from an external NVME SSD. As "mcpeteSF" previously mentioned, the only thing that worked for me was actually unmounting the internal hard drive from the Mac Mini. Once unmounted, I was able to back up my hard drive with Time Machine without any problems.

I unmounted it using Disk Utility.

I hope this works for you!

Macos Sequoia 15.3.2

Well All these solutions are piecemeal. I tried them and got nothing. Mostly because find my was never in my widgets. But I noticed something. I did a Get info on Biome before deleting it and it only had two groups listed. Me, and everyone. Everyone has no access. So I deleted Biome and suddenly it has Me, Staff, and Everyone when recreated. Again everyone has no access. Staff has read only access. So I started checking all the folders that I've seen mentioned and none of them has Staff in the list of who could access it.

I went through my home folder and got info on everything then option clicked +. Then searched staff, added the group and copied permission to all enclosing items. This seems to have worked... For now. We'll see if it still works tomorrow.

At the moment I'm calling this a widespread permissions issue that only Apple can fix, especially since the fix permission utility is gone.

Keep you Mac running overnight if it isn't using a HD. Don't let it go to sleep.

What's the output of

ls -l ~/Library/Biome/streams/restricted/ProactiveHarvesting.Mail/local/752462791393167

Had the exact same issue. No need to go in Terminal to resolve this issue. In System Settings, go to Privacy & Security and next in Full Disk Access. Add Time Machine and give it full access. Just did my first backup with no issue and no error message. Spent 1 hour on the phone with Apple and they didn't know this... Hope this helps!