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Restore Quicken from Time Machine - Permissions Problem

I use Quicken 2005. I had a problem with my Quicken Backup Folder, which has all the data files. When I go into Time Machine to restore the folder, or the individual files, I get the message "The operation cannot be completed because you don't have permission to access 'Quicken Backup Folder' ".

I checked the permissions on the file and I have Read & Write privleges, while "_unknown" and everyone have Read only permissions.

I checked the folder permissions and all three users have Read and Write privileges.

I am apparently having the same problem with at least some of the other folders.

When I go to the Time Machine disk, I note that the Time Machine folder has System as Read & Write, but everyone is Read only. Same is true of the subfolder.

iMac, Mac OS X (10.6.7)

Posted on Oct 9, 2012 10:39 AM

52 replies

baltwo

Level 9

62,362 points

Oct 24, 2012 11:41 PM in response to Lawrence Hammer

Sorry, I got the file format confused. From Pondini's FAQs:

Backups made to an internal or directly-connected external HD are stored in a single Backups.backupdb folder at the top level of the drive. If you back up multiple Macs to the same volume (by connecting it to each Mac in turn), they're all in the same Backups.backupdb folder.

However, for backups made over a network (Ethernet or wireless), the Backups.backupdb folder is inside a container called a sparse bundle disk image. See the pink box below for details.

Thus, you need to backup the Backups.backupdb, wherever it's located to another place before trying to run those Terminal commands.

Oct 25, 2012 10:52 AM in response to baltwo

Well, one of the challenges is having a spare hard drive sitting around that can fit Backups.backupdb on the drive. Well, I happen to have the older one that I used to use for TimeMachine and it still has enough room.

However, when I try to copy it, I get the message:

"The backup can’t be copied because the backup volume doesn’t have ownership enabled."

The drive I am trying to copy the TimeMachine file to does have Ignore Ownership on this Volume checked.

And by the way, I saw this conversation:

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4139916?start=0&tstart=0

If I follow this accurately, it says I have to copy everything over to a new user and start all over again to fix my problems. I am not certain what that means. If I have to duplicate everything, then I do not have enough room on my internal hard drive. If it means copy everything in my user file, I might be able to do that, but am not certain how to do so.

baltwo

Level 9

62,362 points

Oct 25, 2012 11:19 AM in response to Lawrence Hammer

Interestingly, I found this one: http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=12608677#12608677, it might help.

Pondini

Level 8

38,863 points

Oct 25, 2012 3:17 PM in response to Lawrence Hammer

Lawrence Hammer wrote:

. . .

The drive I am trying to copy the TimeMachine file to does have Ignore Ownership on this Volume checked.

Remove the check. (It's confusing -- Disk Utility reports "Owners enabled" as yes and the Finder reports it backwards -- "Ignore Ownership" not checked).

If you're not sure how to do that, click the padlock on the Get Info panel and enter your Admin password. Then remove the check mark.

You still may not be able to copy the whole backup set, however. The backups are all linked together, so if there's a problem anywhere, the whole thing may be suspect, and the Finder and/or Disk Utility may refuse to copy it. You can probably still restore or copy individual files and/or folders, and even a full backup, as long as you don't hit the damaged area.

Longer term, it does sound like there may be a problem with the drive, or perhaps something in the connection to it. For best results, use another drive, preferably with a different backup app, to keep "secondary" or "redundant" backups. See Time Machine - Frequently Asked Question #27 for details and some suggestions.

baltwo

Level 9

62,362 points

Oct 25, 2012 5:25 PM in response to Pondini

Thanks for popping in. Greatly appreciated.😀

Oct 27, 2012 1:39 PM in response to Pondini

"Remove the check. (It's confusing -- Disk Utility reports "Owners enabled" as yes and the Finder reports it backwards -- "Ignore Ownership" not checked)."

The drive I am borrowing for this backup was checked "Ignore ownership" which for me, means that the drive will ignore permissions? I will need to return this drive to its previous state as it has my iTunes library on it that I run on an older Mac.

I removed the check and was able to finally backup Time Machine.

So now you are saying, I should type the following into Terminal (the name of my Time Machine drive is, strangely "Time Machine"):

sudo chflags 0 /Volumes/Time Machine

sudo chmod a+rx /Volumes/Time Machine

So "chflags 0" changes the file flags to zero - whatever that means.

chmod a+rx changes permissions to read? a+r would be read. Not certain what a+rx would be. I guess that Time Machine would be able to remove files anyway as needed? Why not change permission to allow read and write?

Assuming this is successful, when I want to restore the backup drive to my iTunes older Mac, I should just go back in and check ignore permissions?

Thank you, both of you.

Pondini

Level 8

38,863 points

Oct 27, 2012 2:12 PM in response to Lawrence Hammer

Lawrence Hammer wrote:

"Remove the check. (It's confusing -- Disk Utility reports "Owners enabled" as yes and the Finder reports it backwards -- "Ignore Ownership" not checked)."

The drive I am borrowing for this backup was checked "Ignore ownership" which for me, means that the drive will ignore permissions?

Yes, it it says "Ignore ownership," then permissions won't be checked. That's why you couldn't copy the backups to that drive, as Time Machine requires ownership (permissions) to be enforced.

I will need to return this drive to its previous state as it has my iTunes library on it that I run on an older Mac.

Just put the checkmark back.

I removed the check and was able to finally backup Time Machine.

Great!

So now you are saying, I should type the following into Terminal (the name of my Time Machine drive is, strangely "Time Machine"):

sudo chflags 0 /Volumes/Time Machine

sudo chmod a+rx /Volumes/Time Machine

So "chflags 0" changes the file flags to zero - whatever that means.

chmod a+rx changes permissions to read? a+r would be read. Not certain what a+rx would be. I guess that Time Machine would be able to remove files anyway as needed? Why not change permission to allow read and write?

Sorry, but no, that was Baltwo. I'm not sure what that will do, but you'll need to enclose the name in double quotes since it contains a space.

Assuming this is successful, when I want to restore the backup drive to my iTunes older Mac, I should just go back in and check ignore permissions?

No. OSX won't (or shouldn't) let you do that on a Time Machine volume . . . ownership must be enforced.

But now you may be able to restore the folder from the new backups to a location that doesn't enforce permissions, as per #E10 in Time Machine - Troubleshooting. That's not a certainty, however, since Disk Utility gave you different results from Repair Disk on the original backups. Hopefully, that was the result of a problem with the old drive, and the new one will behave better.

Oct 27, 2012 4:00 PM in response to Pondini

Pondini wrote:

I will need to return this drive to its previous state as it has my iTunes library on it that I run on an older Mac.

Just put the checkmark back.

Interestingly, when I went to that external drive that has Time Machine backed up to it (but is not used as my Time Machine Disk), there was no checkmark option under the Get Info. I was worried I was screwed, or I would have to delete the Time Machine backup from it. But when I plugged that USB drive into my other Mac that I used for iTunes, it turns out that the checkmark is there. I did not have to do anything. That Mac is running 10.4.11

That means, to me, that in my older Mac, that I use for iTunes, it sees the disk as being checked to ignore permissions. But in my newer Mac that has Time Machine, it does not ignore permissions - there is no option to check to ignore permissions.

The best of both worlds!

Pondini

Level 8

38,863 points

Oct 27, 2012 4:04 PM in response to Lawrence Hammer

I suspect that's because Tiger (10.4.x) does not support Time Machine -- it was introduced with Leopard -- so doesn't realize it should keep you from disabling ownership.

Note that you'll not be able to do much (if anything) with the backups there, as the Tiger file system doesn't understand the features added with Leopard to support Time Machine.

Thus, don't do anything at all to the backups from your Tiger Mac; don't even try to display them.

Oct 28, 2012 3:59 PM in response to Pondini

I tried an experiment. I went into Time Machine and deleted all backups of a folder that I could not restore because of permissions problems. I then instructed Time Machine to run a backup. I went back into Time Machine and confirmed that all previous backups of that folder were gone. I then tried to restore that folder from the most recent backup - the only backup in Time Machine where that folder was located - and it should be a new 'pristine' backup.

I still got a permissions error.

Note that there are many folders and files that I can restore. But if the permissions problem was due to a disk problem in Time Machine, then a brand new backup of that folder should not have the same permissions error problem.

Something else is going on.

BTW, I have turned off Time Machine, rebooted, then run Disk Utility on the Time Machine drive and it reports that the disk is OK.

Pondini

Level 8

38,863 points

Oct 28, 2012 4:16 PM in response to Lawrence Hammer

Lawrence Hammer wrote:

I tried an experiment. I went into Time Machine and deleted all backups of a folder that I could not restore because of permissions problems. I then instructed Time Machine to run a backup. I went back into Time Machine and confirmed that all previous backups of that folder were gone. I then tried to restore that folder from the most recent backup - the only backup in Time Machine where that folder was located - and it should be a new 'pristine' backup.

I still got a permissions error.

How old is this folder, and the files in it? Could it have been created under a previous version of OSX?

I'm a bit out of my comfort zone here, but I understand there were differences in the default permissions on older versions, and that some of the users assigned there no longer exist. Perhaps that's what's confusing Time Machine.

Does the folder in question show the _unknown or fetching... users? If so, let's try an experiment:

First, of course, copy the folder somewhere safe, "just in case."

Then remove the _unknown or fetching... user(s) from the folder's permissions. Then click Apply to enclosed items, and confirm (it may take a few moments if there are lot of enclosed items).

Then delete all backups of it, run a backup, and try to restore the folder.

If that doesn't work, and the folder shows everyone No Access, and is not one of the default folders (Desktop, Documents, Downloads, etc.), change that to Read Only and try again.

Pondini

Level 8

38,863 points

Oct 29, 2012 10:32 AM in response to Lawrence Hammer

I see you've marked my previous post as "helpful."

Does that mean you've managed to fix it? If so, could you let us know just how, so other users can benefit?

Oct 29, 2012 12:13 PM in response to Pondini

Pondini wrote:

How old is this folder, and the files in it? Could it have been created under a previous version of OSX?

I'm a bit out of my comfort zone here, but I understand there were differences in the default permissions on older versions, and that some of the users assigned there no longer exist. Perhaps that's what's confusing Time Machine.

Does the folder in question show the _unknown or fetching... users? If so, let's try an experiment:

That is an interesting question. Many of my folders were migrated over from 10.4.

I tried your experiment and deleted user "_unknown" and copied to all for a folder. Interestingly, when I tried to restore this time, I got "The Finder can’t complete the operation because some data in “filename” can’t be read or written. (Error code -36)". The portion it did restore has (Me) with "Custom". Then, in place of "_unknown" it has (Me) a second time with "Read & Write". Then everyone with Read only.

Interestingly, I was able to recover a different folder of documents from 10.4, but not a folder of spreadsheets from 10.4. When I tried recovery, I sent them to a new folder, so as not to replace an existing folder.

I did a get-Info of the exisiting and recovered via TM folders. The original has "_unknown" with Read only permissions. The failed replacement (which has several nested folders), does not have a "_unknown" but instead has an "admin" in its place with Read only. Both have "everyone" with Read only, and me with Read & Write.

The folder that I was able to restore successfully also has "_unknown" most with Read only, a couple with "_unknown" with Read & Write. So it appears that folders with "_unknown" can be successfully restored from TM.

I restored a documents folder (not the User "Documents" folder), from the beginning of Time Machine backups to the new folder successfully with 3.68 GB of data. It retains the "_unknown", in this case, Read & Write.

I can restore THE entire user Documents folder from the most recent backup (which has 23.76 GB) without a problem. But here is where it really gets odd: when I try to restore a subfolder of the Documents folder, I get a permissions error. This is despite having successfully restored all that data when I restored the user Documents folder. It appears to hiccup on a folder where "_unknown" has Read & Write, but "everyone" has no access. It also hiccups on the next folder where there is not an "_unknown" user, but "everyone" has Read & Write - although the first file within that folder has "everyone" with no access.

When I go back and look at that file that I successfully restored when I restored User Documents, that file still maintains"_unknown" with Read & Write, but "everyone" with no access. So in this case, "everyone" having no access correlates to being unable to restore from TM. [However, the other folder, which is now missing "_unknown" does have "everyone" with Read only and it cannot be restored from TM. I was looking back at the 10.4 computer where these files came from. While most have been deleted, those few that remain have a Group (unknown) with Read & Write access, with Others as no access.]

It seems my permissions are a convoluted mess. I have run repair permissions from Disk Utililty. I have also run it from AppleJack. Is it time to repair permissions from the original Mac 10.6 boot DVD?

Pondini

Level 8

38,863 points

Oct 29, 2012 12:41 PM in response to Lawrence Hammer

Lawrence Hammer wrote:

. . .

It seems my permissions are a convoluted mess.

Yup. 😟

I have run repair permissions from Disk Utililty. I have also run it from AppleJack. Is it time to repair permissions from the original Mac 10.6 boot DVD?

No. Those won't repair permissions on user files & folders, only files installed by OSX or the OSX installer. See About Disk Utility's Repair Disk Permissions feature for details.

Unless you've intentionally granted one user permission to another user's files, you might want to try resetting your user permissions to the (current) default values. See Resetting Password and/or User Permissions.

Oct 29, 2012 4:18 PM in response to Lawrence Hammer

Addendum: I tried to restore a folder, with two subfolders and a simple file in it. When I did the restore, I got the error "The Finder can’t complete the operation because some data in “filename” can’t be read or written. (Error code -36)". However, the folder, two subfolders and the single file contained in the folder were all successfully restored.

I am finding some of the files have the following permissions:

(me) - Read & Write

everyone - Read only

(me) - No access

_unknown - No access

everyone - No Access

I cannot make any changes to the last three. I cannot delete the second "me". I cannot change the status of the _unkown and everyone.

Restore Quicken from Time Machine - Permissions Problem