El Capitan time machine problems

I am likewise having problems with Time Machine backups to a 2TB Time Capsule. All had been working fine from Oct 2012 until I upgraded to El Capitan on 17-Dec-2015, since when things are not fine...

I have two macs & a 3TB Time capsule here:

• iMac Retina 5K, 27-inch, Late 2014, with 3TB fusion drive, 4 GHz Intel Core i7 and 32GB men. with ~ 756 GB of disk used.
• MacBook Air (13-inch, Mid 2013) purchased early 2014, with 500GB SSD, 1.7GHz Intel Core i7 and 8GB mem. with ~ 396 GB of disk used.
• 2TB time Capsule running in Bypass mode with iMac connected directly via cable and MBA using 5G WiFi. with ~34GB free

As above, both ok until I upgraded to El Capitan.

iMac just won't back up, generally sits there saying "Preparing Backup" and never finishing that. Although I left it doing that for ~ 18 hrs overnight and when I got up, it said "Stopping ...", but I did't see it stop and a couple of hours later it was "Preparing Backup" again - it has not successfully backed up since 17-Dec - this confirmed by checking the backups by "entering time machine"

MBA appears to be performing backups if I look via "entering time machine" and I have been able to restore a file from a recent backup, however...

Both macs are indicating;

even though the MBA is backing up.

I know I'm short of space on the TC now. I have been able to delete an early backup on both macs, but it takes a long time to get to that point and having deleted one backup, an attempt to pick another one hangs and I have to reboot either mac with a power cycle.

I'm also using Backblaze, so if push comes to shove, I'll erase the disk and start again.

Now going to contact support since I have AppleCare on both machines.

iMac just started an auto backup again:

03/01/2016 16:06:11.099 com.apple.backupd[14465]: Starting automatic backup

03/01/2016 16:06:11.506 com.apple.backupd[14465]: Network destination already mounted at: /Volumes/Moria

03/01/2016 16:06:25.740 com.apple.backupd[14465]: Disk image already attached: /Volumes/Moria/Anduril.sparsebundle, DIHLDiskImageAttach returned: 35 (Resource temporarily unavailable)

03/01/2016 16:06:34.979 com.apple.backupd[14465]: Disk image /Volumes/Moria/Anduril.sparsebundle mounted at: /Volumes/Time Machine Backups

03/01/2016 16:06:35.284 com.apple.backupd[14465]: Network destination already mounted at: /Volumes/Moria

03/01/2016 16:07:05.898 com.apple.backupd[14465]: Disk image already attached: /Volumes/Moria/Anduril.sparsebundle, DIHLDiskImageAttach returned: 35 (Resource temporarily unavailable)

03/01/2016 16:07:14.735 com.apple.backupd[14465]: Disk image /Volumes/Moria/Anduril.sparsebundle mounted at: /Volumes/Time Machine Backups

03/01/2016 16:07:16.807 com.apple.backupd[14465]: Backing up to /dev/disk4s2: /Volumes/Time Machine Backups/Backups.backupdb

-- David

Update:

Although there were backups for Yesterday and today available, as of now they have disappeared - I can't see why.

Support asked me to run a backup in Safe mode, which I'm currently doing - it's been almost 6 hrs and it's still trying to find space to backup 107GB, currently deleting old backups to make space - but hasn't moved on in 90 mins

Further Update:

Although the first successful backup since the upgrade took over 24 hrs in Safe Mode, it did indeed complete and so did a few after that (at which point I returned from a business trip and put the Mac back into 'normal' mode). I then put the MBA into Safe mode and performed a successful backup on that. The iMac in normal mode has not really backed up successfully since, nor has the MBA in normal mode.

Since I'm traveling again I put the iMac into Safe mode last night and again it backed up successfully many times, including one I saw before leaving this morning, that only took 20 mins.

So backups are working as expected in Safe mode. It must be something that runs in normal mode - that a lot of utilities, plug-ins and extras to track down. Most likely culprit is ClamXav, but it is set up to ignore Time Machine Backups.

Being away a lot makes testing this a laborious process, so it may take some time. I'll update again.

I'm having the same issue, as are innumerable others from what I see on the forums. I'm using 10.11.2. I followed your Console instructions. When I entered *starting* in the find field it returned zilch. Here's a few typical lines of what showed up after I returned to Show All Messages:

1/19/16 11:59:11.449 AM xpcproxy[20533]: LaunchServices: received XPC_ERROR_CONNECTION_INTERRUPTED trying to map database

1/19/16 11:59:11.451 AM com.apple.xpc.launchd[1]: (com.sweetpproductions.Cookie.Helper[20533]) Could not find and/or execute program specified by service: 155: Refusing to execute/trust quarantined program/file: com.sweetpproductions.Cookie.Helper

1/19/16 11:59:11.453 AM com.apple.xpc.launchd[1]: (com.sweetpproductions.Cookie.Helper) Service only ran for 0 seconds. Pushing respawn out by 10 seconds.

1/19/16 11:59:14.906 AM Boom 2[496]: tcp_connection_destination_perform_socket_connect 16892 connectx to 52.25.169.107:443@0 failed: [64] Host is down

1/19/16 11:59:21.462 AM xpcproxy[20534]: LaunchServices: received XPC_ERROR_CONNECTION_INTERRUPTED trying to map database

1/19/16 11:59:21.463 AM xpcproxy[20534]: LaunchServices: Database mapping failed with result -10822, retrying

1/19/16 11:59:21.463 AM xpcproxy[20534]: LaunchServices: received XPC_ERROR_CONNECTION_INTERRUPTED trying to map database

1/19/16 11:59:21.466 AM xpcproxy[20534]: CFPreferences could not connect to its daemon.

Preferences using the connection 0x0 will be volatile and will not be persisted to disk.

1/19/16 11:59:21.498 AM xpcproxy[20534]: LaunchServices: received XPC_ERROR_CONNECTION_INTERRUPTED trying to map database

1/19/16 11:59:21.498 AM xpcproxy[20534]: LaunchServices: Database mapping failed with result -10822, retrying

1/19/16 11:59:21.498 AM xpcproxy[20534]: LaunchServices: received XPC_ERROR_CONNECTION_INTERRUPTED trying to map database

1/19/16 11:59:21.500 AM com.apple.xpc.launchd[1]: (com.sweetpproductions.Cookie.Helper[20534]) Could not find and/or execute program specified by service: 155: Refusing to execute/trust quarantined program/file: com.sweetpproductions.Cookie.Helper

EtreCheck gives a bunch of red results (marked here with *). I have no idea what action is necessary to deal with any of these.

Internet Plug-Ins:

*PMCADownloader: Version: 1.2.1998.896 - SDK 10.5

*AdobeExManDetect: Version: AdobeExManDetect 1.1.0.0 - SDK 10.7

*PepperFlashPlayer: Version: 20.0.0.286 - SDK 10.6

*SharePointBrowserPlugin: Version: 14.4.4 - SDK 10.6

*Silverlight: Version: 5.0.61118.0 - SDK 10.6

Launch Agents

*[failed] com.adobe.ARMDCHelper.cc24aef4a1b90ed56a...plist

Launch Daemons

*[failed] com.adobe.fpsaud.plist

Problem System Launch Daemons:

* [failed] com.apple.logd.plist

Kernel Extensions:

* at.obdev.nke.LittleSnitch (4356 - SDK 10.8)

*com.globaldelight.driver.Boom2Device (1.1 - SDK 10.10)

Top Processes by Memory:

*934 MB Safari

Hello Cary,

I suggest you start your own thread and download a recent version of EtreCheck.

Hello Everyone,

Well, since El Capitan upgrade I had huge issues with Time Machine (extremly slow, to the point it was a useless backup system).

I digged all I could to find a solution, and tried almost all I could :

- Formatted backups then restart from scratch

- Destroyed then rebuild all spotlight indexes

- Edited some kernel settings (net.inet.tcp.delayed_ack, debug.lowpri_throttle_enabled, ...)

- Tested backups on another Time Capsule

- Tested in WiFi and cable

- Resetted PRAM and SMC

- And so on ...

None of these changed anything ...

But today I found the solution (at least for me), so I'm sharing it with you (found it randomly to be honest) as I'm pretty sure it might work for some of you guys.

So my issue was due to MenuMeter. Since El Capitan upgrade, I've installed MenuMeter 1.9.1.

This version, when disc monitoring is ON makes hard drives performances to crumble.

So I've disabled it (in fact I completely removed MenuMeter, which is a shame 'cause I love this tool ...) and everything came back normal.

My backups are now all good, as they used to be 🙂

The source : https://github.com/yujitach/MenuMeters/issues/19

Hope this helps some of you (I'm sure many of you are using MenuMeter) !

Best Regards,

LittleBigFox

Ok, I've just disabled the disk monitor on the iMac and menu meters completely on the MBA - both been causing this problem for ages and I have a L3 guy with this case. Not a problem in Safe mode, but then menu meters don't run then, so lets see. WTS.

Thank you for the pointer.

Been running the iMac without Dist or Network Menu Meters enabled and MBA without any. both macs appear to be backing up as they should do at last, it's been over 3 months. So looks like LittleBigFox has found the problem. Thank you very much.

(I’m sharing my solution on several forums where this issue has been posted.)

After upgrading from Mountain Lion to El Capitan on a Mac Pro, I saw a speed reduction of over 90%

in the Time Machine backup process. I use an external USB3/FW800 backup drive; both interfaces exhibited the problem. I followed other users’ advice, disabling virus scanning and Spotlight on the target drive, disconnecting peripherals, stopping & starting, setting Sleep to “Never,” etc. (I did not try any of the Safe Mode procedures or Terminal system hacks.) I got negligible improvement.

Here’s what worked. I disconnected from the network, in my case by unplugging the ethernet cable but others may need to turn off wifi. Then I turned off the full-time virus monitoring on the whole machine. (I use Sophos, where that function is called “On-Access Scanning”.) The full speed was immediately restored.

Obviously this won’t work for anyone who backs up over their network or wifi — you’d be vulnerable while virus monitoring is off. Or for those who use the continuous Time Machine scheduling. But if, like me, you use Time Machine for occasional manual backups (I go once a week), you’ll be happy.

And perhaps with this clue Apple can modify its Time Machine code to improve its dismal performance.

Hello earlyzee,

Whether or not you have virus scanning turned on or off is irrelevant to your vulnerability to malware. What you have described is the only recognizable outcome when running antivirus on a Mac. I see many similar complaints from people with antivirus software on a Mac. The funny thing is that I also see many people with both malware and antivirus software installed on a Mac. Most Mac antivirus software scans for Windows malware - and ONLY Window malware. At this time, I do not know of a single Mac antivirus software that is effective in keeping your Mac from being infected with Mac malware. There are a couple of products that are effective at removing malware after you become infected. But when I say "a couple", I mean exactly two: MalwareBytes and my own EtreCheck.

Hi, Etresoft,

Thanks for your response. I don't want to start a war here, because (unlike you) I have no vested interest in these antivirus applications. But you've written something which is just not true: "At this time, I do not know of a single Mac antivirus software that is effective in keeping your Mac from being infected with Mac malware. There are a couple of products that are effective at removing malware after you become infected. But when I say "a couple", I mean exactly two: MalwareBytes and my own EtreCheck."

Over the past few years Sophos has blocked, quarantined or removed a number of Mac-specific pieces of malware from my systems. A number of independent reviews cite Sophos and other companies for their success. Here are just two examples:

http://www.av-comparatives.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/avc_mac_2016_en.pdf

http://www.tomsguide.com/us/best-antivirus,review-2588-6.html

http://www.tomsguide.com/us/sophos-antivirus-mac-home-edition,review-2345.html

I will look into EtreCheck, and may end up adopting it. But it is not the only choice out there.

Hello again earlyzee,

I shouldn't have even responded at all. I should have just scolded you for resurrecting a thread that had been dead for 5 months.

But since you brought it up, I did a quick search for "sophos adware etrecheck site:apple.com" in Google and the majority of the EtreCheck results show Sophos installed right alongside adware. It was results like this that inspired me to add adware removal to EtreCheck itself.

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/7102880?start=0&tstart=0

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/7069811?start=0&tstart=0

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/6845117?start=0&tstart=0

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/7018319?start=0&tstart=0

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/6786438?start=0&tstart=0

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/6860251?start=0&tstart=0

Unlike some people, I'm not ready to write off all Mac anti-malware software. I do think it is possible to write great Mac anti-malware software and do it well. I also think we Mac users are in desperate need of such a tool. I know some people who also used to be very fond of Sophos, but as they learned more about malware, they stopped using Sophos. Sophos, or any Mac anti-malware tool, could improve and I would be happy to recommend any that could demonstrate they solve more problems than they cause. At this point, there are only two that meet that criteria.