Time Machine prohibits networked drive access in Mountain Lion

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Level 2

318 points

Time Machine prohibits networked drive access in Mountain Lion

I have Time Machine (TM) set to use an external networked drive for it's backup, (at some point after a successful backup, I think) the drive will become unavailable. After that, trying to mount the drive again results in the warning that the drive (in fact the entire computer it's physically attached to on the network) is no longer available due to too many users logged in! There are at the most three connected!

I've heard other known troubles exist in this regard with smb connectivity and ML. Is this true? My connectivity is AFP, I think.

The drive is left mounted on the computer being backed up by TM and goes off line as described above by itself. There are other physically attached drives physically attached to the same other computer (MacMini) computer mounted on this computer's desktop. I've never had the same problem on Lion or Snow Leopard and I've been doing backups in the same way for years. Has anybody had this problem??

Should I upgrade the Mini from it's current 10.6.8 OS to Mountain Lion also? Will this make life better or worse in this regard?

I connect the problem to ML because:

Just went on ML very recently.
Happens consistently now and hasn't done before.
Other computer that hosts these drives in running 10.6.8 and this may an incompatibility between OS's.
Heard of similar issues with smb network connectivity.
On backup using CCC this problem does not occur.
The work-around is completely turning off both computers and restarting them, logging in the backup drive all over again. The problem eventually recurs.
Logging out and in again on the client computer (MacPro) does NOT fix the problem, however.

Advice appreciated.

Mac Pro, Mac OS X (10.7.3), (1,1) 9GB RAM, 500GB+250GB HD int.

Posted on Jul 30, 2012 11:26 AM

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Answer 1

HenryS Author

Level 2

318 points

Jul 30, 2012 2:28 PM in response to HenryS

Here's the error screen when trying to access TM...

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Answer 2

Pondini

Level 8

38,863 points

Jul 30, 2012 5:26 PM in response to HenryS

HenryS wrote:

. . .

My connectivity is AFP, I think.

Yes, that's the only way TM works over a network.

Should I upgrade the Mini from it's current 10.6.8 OS to Mountain Lion also? Will this make life better or worse in this regard?

You'll likely have the same problem.

It sounds like some odd networking issue, where the NAS doesn't realize a backup has finished and thinks the user is still logged-on. So after one (or several) backups, it chokes.

Check with the maker of your NAS, to see if there's an update, or if they know of the problem. I've not seen this particular issue reported, but I haven't seen all the posts. I don't do networking, but have seen a number of posts about updates to NetATalk which mignt be involved here.

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Answer 3

HenryS Author

Level 2

318 points

Jul 30, 2012 6:04 PM in response to Pondini

Pondini wrote:

Check with the maker of your NAS, to see if there's an update, or if they know of the problem. I've not seen this particular issue reported, but I haven't seen all the posts. I don't do networking, but have seen a number of posts about updates to NetATalk which mignt be involved here.

Maybe I misled you. I have a FW drive attached to my Mac Mini, simply access the drive over the network. When this problem happens, the drive remains accessible/mountable in the Finder. It's just when TM tries to log into it that it fails. I have the error log from the TM widget... As follows. Does this help?

Starting manual backup

Failed to get NSURLVolumeURLForRemountingKey for /Volumes/MobileBackups, error: Error Domain=NSCocoaErrorDomain Code=4 "The file “MobileBackups” doesn’t exist." UserInfo=0x7fbe71404b30 {NSURL=file://localhost/Volumes/MobileBackups/, NSFilePath=/Volumes/MobileBackups}

Attempting to mount network destination URL: afp://bubba@BubbaMacMini._afpovertcp._tcp.local/LaCie_Backup%204-3

NAConnectToServerSync failed with error: 80 for url: afp://bubba@BubbaMacMini._afpovertcp._tcp.local/LaCie_Backup%204-3

Attempting to mount network destination using URL: afp://bubba@BubbaMacMini.local/LaCie_Backup%204-3

NAConnectToServerSync failed with error: 80 for url: afp://bubba@BubbaMacMini.local/LaCie_Backup%204-3

Backup failed with error: 19

I have no idea what the first two lines refer to. The fourth line and onward refers to the correct drive. I tried setting it up three times with the same drive selected. No change. All I know is this used to work.

I went back to a working log output, and tried to compare with this...

Starting automatic backup

Attempting to mount network destination URL: afp://bubba@BubbaMacMini._afpovertcp._tcp.local/LaCie_Backup%204-3

Mounted network destination at mount point: /Volumes/LaCie_Backup 4-3 using URL: afp://bubba@BubbaMacMini._afpovertcp._tcp.local/LaCie_Backup%204-3

Disk image /Volumes/LaCie_Backup 4-3/GenieMBP.sparsebundle mounted at: /Volumes/Time Machine Backups

Backing up to: /Volumes/Time Machine Backups/Backups.backupdb

Using file event preflight for GenieMBP HD

Will copy (47.4 MB) from GenieMBP HD

Found 459 files (47.4 MB) needing backup

1.88 GB required (including padding), 27.52 GB available

Copied 59 MB of 59 MB, 8169 of 8169 items

Copied 10760 files (65.9 MB) from volume GenieMBP HD.

Using file event preflight for GenieMBP HD

Will copy (39.4 MB) from GenieMBP HD

Found 255 files (39.4 MB) needing backup

1.87 GB required (including padding), 27.52 GB available

Copied 5038 files (55 MB) from volume GenieMBP HD.

Created new backup: 2012-07-30-091033

Starting post-backup thinning

Deleted /Volumes/Time Machine Backups/Backups.backupdb/GenieMBP/2012-07-29-061129 (9 MB)

Post-back up thinning complete: 1 expired backups removed

Backup completed successfully.

Ejected Time Machine disk image: /Volumes/LaCie_Backup 4-3/GenieMBP.sparsebundle

Ejected Time Machine network volume.

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Answer 4

Pondini

Level 8

38,863 points

Jul 30, 2012 6:24 PM in response to HenryS

HenryS wrote:

. . .

Maybe I misled you. I have a FW drive attached to my Mac Mini, simply access the drive over the network.

Ah, sorry, I took "networked disk" to mean a NAS (a lot of threads about them here).

Failed to get NSURLVolumeURLForRemountingKey for /Volumes/MobileBackups, error: Error Domain=NSCocoaErrorDomain Code=4 "The file “MobileBackups” doesn’t exist." UserInfo=0x7fbe71404b30 {NSURL=file://localhost/Volumes/MobileBackups/, NSFilePath=/Volumes/MobileBackups}

Is the name of the backup drive/partition MobileBackups? If it is, change it (that might be the problem -- that's the name of the folder where your Local Snapshots are kept, so may confuse OSX in trying to connect.)

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Answer 5

HenryS Author

Level 2

318 points

Jul 31, 2012 8:48 PM in response to Pondini

No, it isn;t. Don't know how that gets in there. The drive is this one:

afp://bubba@BubbaMacMini._afpovertcp._tcp.local/LaCie_Backup%204-3

I may have figured it out. The secret was the Sharing settings (System Preferences). Remote Management won't work. I had to set the Mac Mini (OS X 10.6.8) to Screen Sharing, and File Sharing turned on. Same for the other machines. Time Machine seems to operate properly then.

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Answer 6

Aug 19, 2012 8:50 AM in response to HenryS

I'm having this exact same problem, I have never used remote management..I have always set it up as screen sharing and file sharing. I am now restricting file sharing access to only my user name, and that doesn't help. It is only time machine that is doing this and its making me crazy! I will wake up in the morning and it won't have completed a backup because it claims there are too many users logged in! I have 2 computers that can log in to it!!! 2!!! The limit is 10....this makes NO SENSE.

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Answer 7

HenryS Author

Level 2

318 points

Aug 19, 2012 2:42 PM in response to rservello

In personal file sharing EACH SHARED DEVICE counts as one share.

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