Different Time Machine Problem

Hi Glenn,

It looks like bad files on the source Hard Drive.

The -8088 error is particularly bothersome because Time Machine would trip on this error and then quit but declare success. Any file that would have been backed up after this error occurs will simply not be in the backups set. Fortunately, the Console error message provides the ENTIRE path to the offending file and it can be easily located and deleted or excluded. However, since Time Machine trips on the FIRST bad file that it finds, it has to be run again and again to grind through all of them until it completes without errors. Note, than in 10.5.2, Time Machine may declare a -8088 error, but at least it doesn't choke on it.

http://www.girr.org/mac_stuff/backups.html

Glenn Boley wrote:

. . .

Error: (-8088) SrcErr:NO Copying /Library/Frameworks/TSLicense.framework/Versions/A to /Volumes/TimeMachine HD/Backups.backupdb/NewG5/2011-12-24-024737.inProgress/CD3715CD-EBA1-46E6-A17B- FF4D7971A012/Zebra HD/Library/Frameworks/TSLicense.framework/Versions

All the messages are for the TSlicense framework, which apparently is an old Windows Server system.

Try just excluding the entire TSLicense folder from backups, per #10 in Time Machine - Frequently Asked Questions.

Glenn Boley wrote:

. . .

Time Machine errors from previous System log:

Dec 26 15:22:12 NewG5 mds[173]: (Error) Import: importer:0x8ee400 Importer start failed for 501 (kr:268435459 (ipc/send) invalid destination port)

. . .

Your Time Machine Backup drive may be conflicting with Spotlight Search indexing.

Click on the Help Button and find “Importer Start failed”, for help on this topic.

. . .

No Time Machine Errors to report in the current log.

Try the previous log

Last Successful Backup Message:

Dec 27 09:38:18 NewG5 /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[13296]: Backup completed successfully.

Most of those aren't really Time Machine messages. Are you using a 3rd-party utility that claims to show what's going on with Time Machine? If so, at least one of them does not do a very good job, and in some cases acually generates some messages of it's own! Some of them are inaccurate or spurious.

I'd strongly recommend the Time Machine Buddy widget, per #A1 in Time Machine - Troubleshooting. It just extracts the actual messages from your logs.

Thanks, and YeeHa!!

Great! Glad it's sorted out.

Good news Glenn, thanks! 🙂

For my money TM is the worst backup solution outside of no backup at all! 😟

How wonderfully helpful.

How can we ever thank you enough for that constructive assistance?

Glenn Boley wrote:

Time Machine Buddy is EXACTLY where I got the generated info.

The ones in your first post, yes.

But not the ones quoted in my previous post. There's nothing wrong with them, exactly, but some weren't sent by Time Machine and may be misleading.

Glenn Boley wrote:

. . .

It IS amazing how one, seemingly completely unrelated file (TSLicense) can bring TM to its knees

That may seem to be a disadvantage, but usually the damaged item(s) it finds are recently-acquired music, photo, or video files, or a spreadsheet you thought you were done with for a few weeks or months.

Would you rather Time Machine find those problems on the next backup, when you may still have a chance to fix them, or (like most other backup apps) just blindly copy the good, the bad, and the ugly, so you don't know there's a problem until you try to use the file?

Glenn Boley wrote:

Happy New Year. I appologize for not responding sooner. Two things:

1. ALL the data I posted was from TM-Buddy - both sets of data. Don't know where it got it from (I would assume the System logs), but I copied them straight from TMB.

Sorry, but no, they're not:

Dec 26 15:22:12 NewG5 mds[173]: (Error) Import: importer:0x8ee400 Importer start failed for 501 (kr:268435459 (ipc/send) invalid destination port)

That message was sent by mds, not Time Machine, and will not appear in Time Machine Buddy. Among other things, TM Buddy does not show the date, time, and computer name (in the first part of the message)

I've never seen these:

Your Time Machine Backup drive may be conflicting with Spotlight Search indexing.

Click on the Help Button and find “Importer Start failed”, for help on this topic.

or this one:

No Time Machine Errors to report in the current log.

Try the previous log

That sounds like a different utility (the name of which I've forgotten, but is SIMILAR to Time Machine Buddy).

The Time Machine Buddy display is like this:

2. It is DEFINITELY a disadvantage handled the way it is. First of all, there was no real warning (other than from TMB) that WEEKS worth of backups were incomplete! TM didn't tell me they failed.

In almost all cases, Time Machine fails when it can't copy a file. It sends either "An error occurred while copying files to the backup volume" or "Aborting backup because indexing a file failed." On occasion, it just says "Backup failed" without any further explanation. But in those cases, there are messages in the system.log (which TM Buddy will display), naming the file in question.

Perhaps somehow it knew it could just skip those particular files and continue, but it's very rare.

Glenn Boley wrote:

Ooops! Mea culpa. It was from TM Error Logger, not TMBuddy.

Ah, yes, now I remember the name. Haven't heard about it in quite a while. The problem with it is, it tries to "interpret" the actual messages and convert thm into something easier to understand, but in many cases makes it harder.

this leads me to the conclusion that you have seen it fail an awful lot.

I've used it for several years, including lots of testing, and have had it fail only once for me (other than hardware problems or during beta testing).

But with several million folks using it, yes, as with any app, a few will have problems. Most are things people don't understand, or have done things they shouldn't (at least partly because there isn't good, easily found documentation); or hardware problems or damaged/corrupted files (also often hard for the casual user to figure out because of the inadequate messages and documentation).

No app is perfect (even the ones I wrote 😉 ).

I've got good TM Bckups, but not one good restore... I can't figure out what Apple was thinking with TM!???

A dozen other backup apps don't seem to have these problems.

Pondini IS the TM master here, & I laud his works, but...