time machine permissions problem

See Pondini's TM FAQs for starters.

Sorry, I missed that at the post's bottom. I've not used TM, preferring bootable clones made with Carbon Copy Cloner (never archiving anything), since I've not had any need to recover something I deleted or changed since I started using computers in the 60s.

Try the workaround in #E10 in Time Machine - Troubleshooting.

As Pondini says on his website (http://pondini.org/OSX/MigrationProblems.html), this might happen as a result of:

When you skip Setup Assistant and create a user account, it's assigned #501. If you then use Migration Assistant to transfer the 501 account from another Mac, it cannot keep the 501, so it's assigned the next available number, usually 502. The user account name, password, data, etc., will all be identical to the old Mac, but the UID will be different.

That means that the transferred user account is treated as a different account when trying to access files in other places, such as backups: it's #502, but the files belong to #501, so you'll see the "no entry" icon and/or messages about not having permission to the files/folders.

So, one alternative is to get back full access to the time machine archive, is to change your OS X user ID to the one being used by the Time Machine archive. It's not a one click solution, but it worked for me in Mountain Lion:

http://www.inteller.net/notes/change-user-id-on-snow-leopard/

That's not what's happened here. The UID on the backups hasn't magically changed. It was almost certainly some permssions on individual files.

And the workaround in my previous post most likely fixed it; the OP hasn't posted back, but since it's been nearly 4 months, it's unlikely to still be a problem.

The solution you posted may work for some other problems, in the hands of an experienced user, comfy with UNIX and Terminal, but I certainly wouldn't recommend it to anyone else.

You're right. My bad, I read too quickly the post and since I had problems with "time machine permissions" I just went into it and decided to post a solution when I found one that worked for myself. I'll add a note to the post.

scheeko wrote:

As Pondini says on his website (http://pondini.org/OSX/MigrationProblems.html), this might happen as a result of:

When you skip Setup Assistant and create a user account, it's assigned #501. If you then use Migration Assistant to transfer the 501 account from another Mac, it cannot keep the 501, so it's assigned the next available number, usually 502. The user account name, password, data, etc., will all be identical to the old Mac, but the UID will be different.

That means that the transferred user account is treated as a different account when trying to access files in other places, such as backups: it's #502, but the files belong to #501, so you'll see the "no entry" icon and/or messages about not having permission to the files/folders.

So, one alternative is to get back full access to the time machine archive, is to change your OS X user ID to the one being used by the Time Machine archive. It's not a one click solution, but it worked for me in Mountain Lion:

http://www.inteller.net/notes/change-user-id-on-snow-leopard/

NOTE: as Pondini says above, my solution is not for the originally stated problem. It's also one that can go wrong if you're not comfortable with Terminal and UNIX commands.

Gerard

Could I ask - did you manage to find a solution to this problem? Unfortunately I am also facing exactly the same problem which has also now been referred to Apple Care after a bunch of failed attempts to resolve this myself. It seems there may be a problem with Mountain Lion which means that TM backups with ML are completely messed up with permissions issues. See https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4221595?answerId=19316771022#19316771022

I found that the files that gave me the permission error where assigned to the 'wheel' group:

joe >> ls -al

total 40

drwxrwxrwx@ 5 joe admin 272 Apr 23 23:33 .

drwxrwxrwx@ 3 joe admin 102 Apr 23 23:33 ..

-rwxrwxrwx@ 1 joe wheel 11873 Apr 1 21:03 COPYRIGHT

-rwxrwxrwx@ 1 joe wheel 847 Apr 1 21:03 PR.template

-rwxrwxrwx@ 1 joe wheel 2462 Apr 1 21:03 README

drwx---rwx@ 16 joe wheel 816 Apr 1 21:03 doc

drwxrwxrwx@ 3 joe wheel 136 Apr 1 21:02 erts-5.9.1

drwxrwxrwx@ 56 joe wheel 1904 Apr 1 21:02 lib

The files that copied fine where assigned to admin. So I changed the group of the files using chgrp and it stopped giving permission errors:

joe >> chgrp -R admin *

joe >> ls -al

total 40

drwxrwxrwx@ 5 jo admin 272 Apr 23 23:33 .

drwxrwxrwx@ 3 jo admin 102 Apr 23 23:33 ..

-rwxrwxrwx@ 1 jo admin 11873 Apr 1 21:03 COPYRIGHT

-rwxrwxrwx@ 1 jo admin 847 Apr 1 21:03 PR.template

-rwxrwxrwx@ 1 jo admin 2462 Apr 1 21:03 README

drwx---rwx@ 16 jo admin 816 Apr 1 21:03 doc

drwxrwxrwx@ 3 jo admin 136 Apr 1 21:02 erts-5.9.1

drwxrwxrwx@ 56 jo admin 1904 Apr 1 21:02 lib

I dont know why timemachine changed the group but changeing the group to admin worked for me.

My issue is related/similar -

I chose to backup my iOS devices to my iMac thinking TM would give me multiple backups in the event of corrpution. Tonight I tried to recover a TM backup of my iPad and get the permissions error. I tried your E10 procedure without success.

Some months ago I tried to merge my iPhoto and Aperture libraries and found I was unable to recover via TM - at that time I did not know about your Time Machine Tips and since I could recover through a SuperDuper clone - just ignored the problem.

Now I know I cannot recover any iOS backups or my Aperture (and iPhoto) Libraries. (I was trying to merge the libraries, and had been assured I would not get duplicates - I had many thousands of dups.)

I have tried creating a new iPhoto library and that does not help with that problem.

My question - I do not have a data recovery issue, but I need to "fix" what ever is broken so TM will give me Backups that can be recovered. I don't want to delete TM and start over, but I will if that is needed. It seems to me the permission issue in in my iMac, not in TM, but I may be wrong.

Gordon

Atlanta, GA

Twocybers wrote:

. . .

I chose to backup my iOS devices to my iMac thinking TM would give me multiple backups in the event of corrpution. Tonight I tried to recover a TM backup of my iPad and get the permissions error. I tried your E10 procedure without success.

I don't have any iOS devices, so am not familiar with how their backups work.

Does your user account have permission to see and copy the "original" backups -- ie, the ones now on your internal HD? If not, that may be at least part of the problem -- if you don't have permission to the originals, you won't have permission to the backups in Time Machine.

Do you have more than one user account on your Mac? If so, try using a different one.

Can you restore other, more common files & folders? It sounds like, at least for iPhoto, you can't.

Have you upgraded/migrated from another Mac, and/or an earlier version of OSX? (Your profile says you're running Mountain Lion, but this is the Snow Leopard forum.) That sometimes causes permissions problems, as the default permissions changed. If so, you might want to try resetting the permissions on your home folder to the (new) defaults, per Resetting Password and/or User Permissions. That probably won't help restore from existing backups, but should for new backups, with the new permissions.

Thanks for getting back.

The issue is restoring folders generally. In addition the iPhoto and Aperture library. I tried repairing permissions before I posted last night.

Today I spend about 80 minutes with a Senior tech in Applecare. We tracking the start date to be when I upgraded form Aperature 3.? to 3.3 last summer about July as I recall. Steven said he believes something went wrong there which messed up Permissions on my Home Folder.

We have used the "Fetching" type permission repair on my Home Folder. Then we did a Reset in the Repair consule. At the present time I am waiting for TimeMachine to make a fresh backup. It has been about 20 minutes and the backup finally started. I have about 15 GB backedup.

Once this is complete, my instructions are to call the Steven back and he will walk me through repairing permissions in TimeMachine (assuming I can restore folders generally from the newest backup that is made after Home Folder Permission fix). If I cannot restore I am also calling Steven back as which time he said "You have a very uncommon issue with your Home Folder."

I will get back to you again with the final resolution.

Kind people like you must hate it when a solution is obtained and you never hear back.

To answer other questions - this iMac was purchased 6/10/2011 with SnowLeopeard installed. I "copied" over all my files and programs via a TM restore at the first boot. About a week after Lion came out, I upgraded (not clean install). And about a week after 10.8.x can out I also upgraded there (not a clean install).

Sorry for not making my OS clear. I merely replied on the SL board because this was the exact problem I was having.

Again I will get back - and if you have questions that might be helpful to you, I would be happy to give you any information I can.

I fully expect this will be my last post, unless you have questions.

A few items not previously covered- instead of the "Fetching" item in Sharing and Permissions, I had "wheel" this was reset as you describe in your E10 Trouble shooting piece.

Once that was done, the new TM backups were restorable with no issues. I believe I said previously no folders could be restored. But after the permission reset all new backups (folders and files) behaved nicely.

I am currently over 3 hours into resetting the permissions for all the files and folders contained in my entire TM drive. I have been told by AppleCare once this is done I will be able to work with all backups without issue.

This operation, resetting TM permissions, is done through a terminal commond. The command:

"sudo chmod -RN"

without the quotes was entered into terminal. Next my desktop TM icon was dragged into the terminal window and the path to that drive was automaticially entered.

I was told this operation will some "significant amounts of time" -- when I asked if this was 1, 10 or 100 hours, the guess was 1 to 12 hours.

Gordon

Atlanta