what do red circles with minus sign mean?

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Level 1

72 points

what do red circles with minus sign mean?

Just set up time machine on my new Mac Pro, and on the first backup it made, several of the folders have red circles with a minus sign in them on the backups. When I try to open them off the backup it tells me I don't have permission. I am the only user. I use TM on my Macbook, and have never seen this happen.

It seems I can "enter time machine" and restore the files in those folders if I need to, but I'm wondering why I can't just directly open them off the disk.

Doesn't seem this is normal, and am wondering if "repair permissions" will do anything.

Mac Pro, MacBook Pro, iMac, G5, G4, Mac OS X (10.4.8)

Posted on Oct 23, 2010 8:30 AM

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Answer 1

Kappy

Level 10

361,741 points

Oct 23, 2010 9:50 AM in response to John Hall3

They mean the item is not accessible to you. If these items are in your Home folder then repairing permissions won't help.

A usual cause is from transferring via Setup Assistant or Migration Assistant from an old user account to a new one with a different username.

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Answer 2

Pondini

Level 8

38,863 points

Oct 23, 2010 4:02 PM in response to John Hall3

John Hall3 wrote:
. . .
It seems I can "enter time machine" and restore the files in those folders if I need to, but I'm wondering why I can't just directly open them off the disk.

That's not the way to access your backups. Use the +Star Wars+ display to view or restore selected items. Time Machine backups have special +deny everybody everything+ permissions to prevent us mere mortals from messing about with them, since that can hopelessly corrupt them.

Doesn't seem this is normal, and am wondering if "repair permissions" will do anything.

No. You can only repair permissions on an OSX volume, and only on files installed by the OSX installer or Apple apps.

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Answer 3

Whitecity

Level 2

344 points

Oct 23, 2010 4:11 PM in response to Pondini

Time and time again I see people messing up tm backups because this isn't at all obvious, and it is easy to use the wrong (finder) interface to get to tm backups. It would be nice if Apple put the TM into something like an app bundle that launched the star wars interface to make it obvious that it was different from a normal folder.

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Answer 4

John Hall3 Author

Level 1

72 points

Oct 23, 2010 4:16 PM in response to Pondini

I hate the Star Wars display, actually. It's fine for backing up my Macbook that I will only access in an emergency, but my studio machine I do to a portable drive that I take with me, and often need access the backups at home.

Ended up going back to Carbon Copy Cloner, which seems a lot more straightforward. It did some of the same things with the minus signs, so I ran repair permissions and backed it up again, and everything worked fine.

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Answer 5

Pondini

Level 8

38,863 points

Oct 23, 2010 4:20 PM in response to Whitecity

Whitecity wrote:
Time and time again I see people messing up tm backups because this isn't at all obvious, and it is easy to use the wrong (finder) interface to get to tm backups. It would be nice if Apple put the TM into something like an app bundle that launched the star wars interface to make it obvious that it was different from a normal folder.

Or just put up some sort of warning (because on rare occasions, an "in.Progress" package needs to be deleted, or when the backups are corrupted and all else has failed, copying via the Finder may recover some data, as a last resort).

But don't hesitate to make that known here (as many of us have done): http://www.apple.com/feedback/timemachine.html

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Answer 6

Oct 23, 2010 6:41 PM in response to John Hall3

John Hall3 wrote:
Ended up going back to Carbon Copy Cloner, which seems a lot more straightforward.

TM works well at providing a "consumer" level set and forget backup system which, although it still has glitches, is far better than no (regular) backups - which is what the default is for most non-tech users. Those with more sophisticated requirements, as in your case, will usually want a mixture of backup methods. Cloud storage, disk cloning, off-site media, RAID arrays, ......

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