time machine not backing up system files

Great!

Just for sake of getting closer to the source of the issue, do you have Microsoft Silverlight installed?

No Microsoft Silverlight.

Thanks again.

This just happened to me too. Wanted to restore something and found out that all my system files were somehow excluded using the ExcludeByPath array.

Going through my backups the system files were excluded somewhere in January. Considering the modifications of /var/db/receipts I had installed the following in the time period where the change happened:

Sony Reader

HP Printer Driver Update (Software Update)

AirPort Utility update (Software Update)

RAWCameraUpdate4 (Software Update)

iTunes update (Software Update)

RC Mini Racers (Appstore)

Text Wrangler update (Appstore)

SizzlingKeys update (Appstore)

SolarWalk update (Appstore)

GrowlTunes update (Appstore)

Transmission (In-app update)

I would like to compare this list of installed items to other victims of this bug. Just go through your Time Machine backups to find out where it went wrong and check /var/db/receipts for installed stuff in the time period from the last complete backup to the one without system files.

I also saw that I had a HUGE list in the IncludeByPath array filled with direct paths to files in download folders, even to disks that were excluded.

I trashed com.apple.TimeMachine.plist and re-added my own exclusions and all is well again.

Very strange. Luckily I found out in time. Time to check my other computers...

This bug just hit me too.

I went back into my Timemachine backup and saw that on Sept 6th my System, Application, Library, etc folders were being excluded from the backup. Unknowing to me.

I went into the /var/db/receipts folder and did install some stuff on that day. The two that stick out are the MacOS 10.8.4 Combo and the Security Update after that.

I went into my com.apple.TimeMachine.plist and sure enough System, Application, Library, etc folders were in the Excluded list. In the TimeMachine Options they did not show they are being excluded. So I used TextWrangler to edit the plist and removed those lines. Rerunning my TimeMachine backup and now it's back to backing everything up.

Very strange. Luckily this was not a catastrophe for me because I do use SuperDuper also.

Dana

For some reason, during the installation of Mac OS the installer temporarily excludes system files.

Example:

"Jul 27 10:41:47 bobine.grafisis.lan install_monitor[79853]: Temporarily excluding: /Applications, /Library, /System, /bin, /private, /sbin, /usr"

Maybe something goes wrong the moment this temporary exclusion is undone?

Some extra information can be found here: http://pondini.org/TM/D10a.html

Sophos is mentioned in the above link. I did have this anti-virus product on my Mac in the past.

Ernst.

Today I noticed this happening again. "/Applications, /Library, /System, /bin, /private, /sbin, /usr" were excluded again in my com.apple.TimeMachine.plist.

Had to manually remove these inclusions to get my Time Machine backup complete again.

Latest update I ran was Mail Update For Mavericks.

Users, beware... This issue has not yet been resolved, even under Mavericks.

Correction: Removing the unwanted exclusions didn't work. They would return every time I switched Time Machine back on. Apparenyly something has changed under Mavericks. I'll dive into it. Manual changes to com.apple.TimeMachine.plist do not hold apparently.

What did help was deleting /Library/Preferences/com.apple.TimeMachine.plist, rebooting, and setting up Time Machine all over again, including my own exclusions.

The next backup was huge, because all those unjustly excluded items are concidered new stuff... 117.23GB extra to back up...

Further investigation showed that the latest Mavericks updates could not have been the cause. The ommission of system files happened at an earlier stage, as can be seen in the image below. Somewhere between those two backups. I've got the system.log of that day but so far I haven't found anything suspicious in there (yet).

The only thing I seem to have installed that day was DenyHosts (which uses setup from distutils.core) which I can not imagine has anything to do with Time Machine.

(For those intersted, off-topic, it is possible to get DenyHosts working neatly inconjunction with pf on 10.9)

im having exactly the same issue where time machine always gets this exact new folders of exclude paths into this plist file.

i think i need to get CCC for migrating my mac

//edit:

right now i think its maybe working. 135gb remaining for backup.

i just deleted the plist and REBOOT! very important

Hello,

I found this in my TM.plist, but it seems not possible to remove this, I never sayd to skip any system files, I omitted only the private/var/vm folder, as I diw on all my macs.

<key>ExcludeByPath</key>

<array>

<string>/Applications</string>

<string>/Library</string>

<string>/System</string>

<string>/bin</string>

<string>/private</string>

<string>/sbin</string>

<string>/usr</string>

<string>//Users/Shared/adi</string>

</array>

<key>SkipPaths</key>

<array/>

<key>SkipSystemFiles</key>

<false/>

The partial TM copy occured only on one of my (server) machines.

After deleting the com.apple.TimeMachine.plist, TM did a cleanup, andn now even deleted my last TM backup where my systemfiles were in, leaving me with only the ones where they are omitted in the backup.

Message was edited by: dolfke

Same deal with me. Crash and I wanted to restore via TM. NO backups available, even though I had months of backups in TM. Luckily, I had a CCC clone built from a few days prior.

I deleted the plist following the instructions on Pondini -- http://pondini.org/TM/A4.html -- and it now appears to be running. It's taking forever for 200 GB (says 15 hours), but I'm fine with that if it gives me a full backup! After it is done, I'll test it using Restore.

Likewise, I found a bunch of extra entries in the ExcludeByPath array identical to dolfke. Deleting them and then rebooting, which I didn't do the first time, seems to have worked.

To add to anyone who may come across this and have a bright idea, these are the things that were installed between the last correct backup (Jan 9th) and the subsequent partial backup (Jan 19th):

Twitter (19th Jan)

Raw Camera Update (17th Jan)

Final Cut Pro update (17th Jan)

Google Voice and Video (10th Jan)

Google Keystone (10th Jan)

Does anyone have any idea what the //Users/Shared/adi entry is for? All that seems to be in that directory is a file adi.pb.lck, which has zero bytes - given the extension perhaps it's some kind of locking file? The last modified date was 3rd Jan, so given I have a correct backup from 9th Jan I'm not sure that can actually have anything to do with it, but the // at the beginning rather than / seems strange.

Edit: Seems to be something to do with App Store stuff: http://galvanist.com/post/66313155502/users-shared-adi

Message was edited by: adriantoll

Are any of you having this problem in conjunction with using Screen Sharing? I had the same problem that several of you have described: tried backing up with TM; system files not backed up; turned TM off, edited the plist file, rebooted, backed up again, etc. Once again only partial back up and the plist files reverted back to the "Exclude by Path" of system files causing the problem.

I was doing all this while logged in as a wheel group admin user using Screen Sharing. Finally I connected a screen and keyboard directly and re-edited the plist, etc. Voila! I know have a 63GB, 3 hour back up underway.

The host I was trying to back up is running Server under Mavericks 10.9.1. As far as I am concerned Screen Sharing was the problem. Why that should be I have no idea.

As an added note, while logged in via screen sharing, BBEdit that I use did not recognize I am a member of the wheel group. This suggest that OS X did not recognize me as a member when using screen sharing and thus is the root of the problem.

HTH,

Dr. Wo