Sierra and Time Machine

Same here ...

Got always the same problems on 3 different machines with 2 totally different backup targets.

So I have NO more a backup for all this machines since I updated to Sierra.... *** 😟

targets

a) Linux /Netatalk based TimeMachine Server (over AFP)

b) Apple AirPort Extreme (of course AFP)

in both cases I found tons of such messages in the console log

AFP_VFS afpfs_vnop_ioctl: afpfs_FindForkRef failed -1

and a huge load of backupd (99%) and logd (40%)

Backup hangs always with the state "Preparing Backup ..."

I am not sure it is a Sierra problem I tried to do a back up before upgrading and I use a my book live it was painfully slow this time and after two days I was only third of way through so I then excluded some of the files to try and quicken it up and it restarted process again, got half way through and then did same again, leaving it with that same issue preparing update message, I then had had enough and stopped it, found my small storage device and attached to computer and backed up to that, it took me 20 minutes to do a complete backup. I wasted four days of trying to get the thing to work before that. Very frustrating. Made installing Sierra seem a doddle lol.

It's definitely a Sierra Prob as the timemachine backups runs on all of my machines very smooth until I started the upgrade to Sierra . Since this point I cant make backups ...

@arizonadonn

No this did not help ....

Exclude my TM Drive from the spotlight indexing

But I got the same behavior as before.

AFP_VFS afpfs_vnop_ioctl: afpfs_FindForkRef failed -1

and a huge load of backupd (99%) and logd (40%)

jurkuipers wrote:

I mailed "pondini" via his website a few hours ago...

Sadly, 'Pondini' (James Pond) died a couple of years back. The website has been left online because of its value as a resource, but obviously it's not going to get updated.

Hi Roger,

Sad...

I did not know that ... obviously...

RIP James Pond.

Just tried what arizonadonn suggested (turning off Spotlight indexing of Time Machine drive), and the backup has speeded up noticeably. It's now projected to complete in 21 hours. This is a fresh backup of the entire HD, since I erased the TM drive after making a copy of the system HD with Super Duper.

Congratulations.

You nailed it!

Jur Kuipers, The Netherlands.

Hi, I had the same issue with extremely slow time machine backup after upgrading to Sierra. For me the issue wasn't indexing of backup drive. The issue was antivirus software. I use Sophos home for mac, 1.2. I turned this off and suddenly Time machine is now backing up like a a rocket ship.

Try turning off your anti-virus app if time machine is slowed to a crawl on Sierra. Remember to turn it back on after backup.

perhaps Sophos needs an update since Sierra was released??

I had the same issue TM was stuck for hours preparing backup, then stuck after backing up... 750kb ! TM appears to be up and running now, here is what I did:

1. Reset the SMC/PMU as per instructions given by @arizonadonn
2. added my TM disk to Spotlight's privacy list, then removed it
3. Removed my TM disk from the list of TM disks, then added it back
4. rebooted with the TM disk plugged in, waited until Spotlight was done with it (monitored through Activity Monitor, mds processes).

So far so good 🙂

Don't know if this is related, but my clean install (created a USB boot drive and completely wiped my iMac HDD) would start the Time Machine backup and constantly stall at around the 170Gb mark. No error messages, no failures reported.

After some command line snooping (can't recall the exact web site I got the tmutil script from) it appeared that a Mail prefs file was always the last file listed before stalling. No matter how many times I stopped the backup and restarted it, the prefs file was listed at stall point.....

Opened Mail whilst backup was stalled and Time Machine continued. Tested this 3 times and the only way my Time Machine would properly complete is if Mail was running during the initial backup. Subsequent backups continue with no issue so the prefs file doesn't appear to change once Mail is setup and seems to be locked when Mail is not running causing Time Machine to wait for it indefinitely until it is available to copy.

Well, this worked for me.