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Lion Time Machine problems

I am having this problem with Time Machine on Lion. I just got a new Mac Mini Server, I attached a external USB 2.0 1TB drive to use as a Time Machine target drive. Time Machine is working fine on the local Mac Mini, but a network attached Macbook is running very slow and the backupd and syslogd processes are taking 90+ percent of both CPU cores. kernel.log is filling up with the following messages.


Jan 10 09:50:00 My-MacBook kernel[0]: hfs: set linkcount=1 on vol=Macintosh HD cnid=31872362 old=2

Jan 10 09:50:00 My-MacBook kernel[0]: hfs: clear hardlink bit on vol=Macintosh HD cnid=31872362

Jan 10 09:50:00 My-MacBook kernel[0]: hfs: set linkcount=1 on vol=Macintosh HD cnid=31872362 old=2

Jan 10 09:50:00 My-MacBook kernel[0]: hfs: clear hardlink bit on vol=Macintosh HD cnid=31872362

Jan 10 09:50:00 My-MacBook kernel[0]: hfs: set linkcount=1 on vol=Macintosh HD cnid=31872362 old=2

Jan 10 09:50:00 My-MacBook kernel[0]: hfs: clear hardlink bit on vol=Macintosh HD cnid=31872362

Jan 10 09:50:00 My-MacBook kernel[0]: hfs: set linkcount=1 on vol=Macintosh HD cnid=31872362 old=2

Jan 10 09:50:00 My-MacBook kernel[0]: hfs: clear hardlink bit on vol=Macintosh HD cnid=31872362


This only seems to happens after several hourly backups cycles have occurred and then my Macbook gets very slow and I find the described symptoms. I find the only solution is to hard reboot the Macbook.


Anyone eles had this problem?

MacBook, Mac OS X (10.7.2)

Posted on Jan 10, 2012 9:22 AM

Reply
14 replies

May 16, 2012 8:26 AM in response to Symm-Man

I suspect many people are having this problem, but lack the diagnostics skills to identify it properly. There are other threads that seem related to this and receive helpful tips such as "re-install Lion" and "replace your hard drive".


We have two Macs in the house, both Lion, both on Time Machine via Time Capsule, and they both have this issue. I'm having the issue right now, hopefully I can find a solution before the problem disappears. If so, I'll post here.

Sep 4, 2012 8:21 AM in response to Symm-Man

I had the same problem on 2 seperate Macbook Pros. I took the system to the Apple store in which they replaced the hard drive at my request. Once I got the system home it booted into the stored installed Lion with no problem. Once I restored from Time Machine the problem manifested itself again. So this problem is software related and if your system is doing this it will do it again from any of your previous Time Machine Backups. I hope Apple comes up with a resolution to this

Sep 10, 2012 5:21 PM in response to EP_Apple

Like others on this thread, I have become a victim of the following error flooding my system logs:


9/10/12 7:45:31.000 PM kernel[0]: hfs: clear hardlink bit on vol=macosx cnid=8038958

9/10/12 7:45:31.000 PM kernel[0]: hfs: set linkcount=1 on vol=macosx cnid=8038958 old=2

9/10/12 7:45:31.000 PM kernel[0]: *** kernel exceeded 500 log message per second limit - remaining messages this second discarded ***


The first time I went through Apple Support, both back and forth online, then in person at a not so nearby Apple Store for a session at the Genius Bar. I was asked to leave my MacBook Pro. Two days latter I got a call that problem was resolved, and to come in and pick up my MBP. I was told that my disk was not replaced, as it was a software, not hardware issue. The details on what was done to repair the issue was not disclosed, even after asking 'nicely' a couple of times.


The second time this happened, about month after the first time, I decided to just reinstall Mountain Lion clean, use Migration Assistant, and the problem again went away.


The third time this happened was today, about 30 minutes ago. Although I love all of my Apple products, this issue, which appears to be both a OSX software defect and failure of Disk Utility to fix it, comes at the worst time. I'm traveling tomorrow, so I guess I'll take my iPad instead of my MacBook Pro.


😢😠😟

Nov 23, 2012 8:58 AM in response to Symm-Man

This is happening to me as well. At least once per day. It seems to be some unholy alliance between Time Machine, Finder, DropBox and/or saving a large file. I've found two ways to make the machine bootable again.


1 - each time, I know what file I was saving when things went south. I can locate it in the Finder, and see that it has an indeterminate icon, as if it's about to show an icon but hasn't yet. Any attempt to manipulate the file in question using the Finder or the Terminal will crash said app. However, hard rebooting into single user mode, mounting the file system, and deleting the file the hard way cures the problem completely. After doing this, Disk Utility (and therefore fsck) report no problems with the drive, where before it was apparently irreparable.


2 - DiskWarrior can deal with it. Boot from a DW drive and let it repair the problem.


This is completely new to me. Never happened before installing Mountain Lion. Needless to say, it's made my machine quite a craphsoot. I'll likely try to downgrade.

Dec 3, 2012 2:11 PM in response to Symm-Man

A mate's having this trouble on Lion. Thanks everyone for your inputs as it's helped us weed out some trouble.


We think this related to a word document which had become enormous (180MB), and sure enough the file system had generated errors for some failed auto-recover copies, and those auto-recover copies had got sucked into the mobile time machine backups. Grr.


So steps to resolve were:

1 - as delCavallo said, Disk Utility reports the hard drive needs repair, and highlighted the files which were corrupt. All of them related to microsoft word temporary files or corrupted preferences, and their mobile backups.


2 - We could delete the word documents from the live system fine


3 - we then had to use

sudo tmutil disablelocal
in the terminal to disable the local time machine backups.


4 - restarting the computer deleted the mobile time machine backups


5 - now the disk utility just reports a corrupt file count and we're hoping this can be resolved by running disk utility from the recovery disk. I'll keep you posted when my friend has found her recovery DVD!


Hope that set of steps is helpful. And hope apple / microsoft have a fix in the works...

Dec 4, 2012 9:41 AM in response to Symm-Man

I suggest looking at this (very long) thread. It has been going more than a year.

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3504333?tstart=0

Go to about page 9. Ignore the denials that it is happening.


The problem there has been stated to be:

Time Machine turned on

Microsoft Word 2011

MS Word Auto-save turned on

Large and complex document being worked on.


This is consistent with my experience. I had my SSD replaced, reinstalled the OS twice, and no fix.

More details in the other thread.

Good luck to all of us!

Dec 6, 2012 12:15 AM in response to Reegor

Time Machine turned on

Microsoft Word 2011

MS Word Auto-save turned on

Large and complex document being worked on.


That was exactly the scenario that caused this same disk corruption for me twice over the last two days. I've taken to editing that document under Word 2010 in Fusion...I can't afford any more white-knuckle downtime.


Is this issue going to get fixed or is this a bid to get us all using Pages?

Dec 6, 2012 10:45 AM in response to Bob Bracalente

Answer: The latter. 👿 It's corruption in the OS, and it's been going on a while. 😮

But there is a workaround. And it works!!


In decreasing order of importance:


1. Turn off either MS word auto-save, or Time Machine. Remember that TM is on even when you are not connected to your network or backup disk!!! You must turn it off in the Preferences. (All I have tested personally is turning off Word auto-save.)


1b. Manually back up your active document often. It is taking me a long time to get in the habit again. All the usual flakiness in Word that causes crashes from time to time is still there.


2. Run disk util/Verify Disk (or console: diskutil verifyVolume /dev/disk0s2 ) often. Some people suggest running Verify permissions also.


3. Clean up your old document by "doing the Maggie" ie. copy/paste everything into a new document, except the final paragraph mark. The final paragraph "contains" the information that tends to get corrupted.


For more information, I suggest looking at the long thread I referenced.

Season's Greetings! 😀


By the way, are you on a machine with a SSD?? I am, and either 100% or a high percentage of people with this problem are too. Apple, this should help you solve it!

Dec 6, 2012 10:49 AM in response to delCavallo

I just looked at Disk Warrior, based on your advice. It looks "dicey." $100, and no updates for more than a year. If you have more information to share about it, please PM me or post here.


In any case, following the procedure I outline (or looking at the other thread) will prevent recurrence. NOT following that procedure will guarantee recurrence. 😠

Dec 6, 2012 11:01 AM in response to Reegor

Well, I just started having this problem 3 days ago. Neither Disk Utility or booting into single user mod & running fsck would repair my disk. Bought Disk Warrior and 20 minutes later I was working again. The only casualties were a couple of Word temp files. Since we have 3 Macs in our house plus family members with Macs, seems like a good investment...it works. I also think I'm likely to have this issue again, so now I have a tool in hand to fix it if it does happen again.

Dec 6, 2012 2:47 PM in response to Reegor

DiskWarrior is an ancient and venerable disk repair tool. I've used it professionally since the 90's. In fact, here's an old article about it;


http://tidbits.com/static/html/TidBITS-486.html#lnk2


It's often the only thing that can repair wacky directory corruption. It is a bit long in the tooth, but then so is HFS+, hence the lack of updates, I'd expect. I wouldn't be without it in my arsenal, and no I do not work for the company or benefit from them in any way.

Lion Time Machine problems

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