How can I see Time Machine activity in Console with macOS Sierra.

Curtis,

This was an extremely helpful great idea. I added your script at the end of an Automator calendar alarm workflow I had created to use tmutil to launch a Time Machine backup once every night (see below). Now when the backup is done running each night, your script immediately creates a log output to a file before those entries disappear from the syslog datastore! The end result is oddly what TimeMachine should simply still do by design, let you see the completed backup sessions in a persistent log file in case something goes awry. When there's a will there's a way though!

tmutil startbackup --block --rotation

DATE=$(date +%Y-%m-%d)

log show --start $DATE --predicate 'subsystem == "com.apple.TimeMachine"' --info | grep 'upd: (' | cut -c 1-19,140-999 >> /Users/Shared/BackupLogs/time-machine-log.txt

echo "-" >> /Users/Shared/BackupLogs/time-machine-log.txt

UPDATE--revised the script to limit collection/saving of the log entries to the session of Time Machine run from this script each time:

DATE=$(date +%Y-%m-%d" "%H:%M:%S)

tmutil startbackup --block --rotation

log show --start "$DATE" --predicate 'subsystem == "com.apple.TimeMachine"' --info | grep 'upd: (' | cut -c 1-19,140-999 >> /Users/Shared/BackupLogs/time-machine-log.txt

echo "-" >> /Users/Shared/BackupLogs/time-machine-log.txt

My Solution

I am using a MacBook Pro (Retina, 15-inch, Late 2013) with Sierra 10.12.1 (16B2555). Ever since installing the first version ( not beta) my Time Machine stopped doing anything obvious other than 'Preparing Backup'.

To cut a month long story short, Apple - in all its forms, didn't have an answer for me that worked, but by putting hints form the web together I created a solution that mostly works for me although I am not happy about the stability.

My method is (mostly) quick and easy once I found it. Firstly, check you have enough space on your hard drive to store the hourly local snapshots. If you have less than 20% free space you can't keep a full 24 hour set, the list is trimmed to fit - or so I read. But, I found I stored no snapshots at all. Possibly because the changes on my drive where massive and the space was limited.

So, after moving loads of stuff to a new external drive - I tried again. Still no luck.

The final step was to find the 'UserName.sparsebundle' entry on the backup drive and open it. Look for an entry named something like 2016-11-23-091720.inProgress and delete it. This is ( I think) just a log file of the blocks of data that Time Machine has started working on. None of these will be lost, indeed some will have been created during the interminable 'Preparing backup' stage.

There is evidently some corruption in this '.inProgress' file as when you start the backup system once more, this file is regenerated - and the system works correctly !

However, if it has been several days since the last backup worked, the changes will take several days via wifi to save. Even by direct cable it can take a day and a half, but , after that - it works swimmingly.

I say that, but from time to time I get a notification that I have not done a backup for 60+ days - which is not true as I can restore from both my current day's local snapshots and a few prior days as stored on the external backup.

I am not certain that all days are indeed stored, I think some are lost from time to time and I don't know why - perhaps there was nothing to save.

So far I have not yet seen a weekly restore point.

Hope that helps

I added

might as well move it to trash after looking at it.

You may now do that only using log. Please write back if you would like a suggestion for extracting Time Machine logs.

Thank you for those commands. Now if I was knowledgeable enough to write an automation script to execute them when needed...

Ask and you shall receive. Thank you for sharing.

Curtis,

Can your script be made into an app using automator? I have not done so, but that wouldn't that automate the entire process without having to open terminal?

Been there done that. Best wishes for you and your dog for a safe get away and a no damage return. Regards.

This is good news!

Curtis,

Happy to hear you and Apollo made it though the storm safe and sound. Thank you for the Automator workflow. I will gen it up.

Regards

I like that...I added it to mine also!

Graham -

I just re-read your post...I don't think my suggestions are going to work. These terminal commands retrieve logs for Time Machine, not Sophos.