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Time Machine backup fails in macOS 10.13.3 (High Sierra)

I have a Macbook Pro running macOS High Sierra 10.13.3 which stopped being able to do a Time Machine backup on two distinct network shares. One of those server is running macOS 10.13.3 and the other is a Synology DS218+. Backups were running fine before the upgrade.


I also have a Macbook, which is still running 10.13.2 which is able to back up to both of these network shares.


Thus I suspect an issue with 10.13.3.


Anyone has got the same issue?

MacBook Pro with Retina display, macOS High Sierra (10.13.3)

Posted on Feb 3, 2018 7:58 AM

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Posted on Feb 5, 2018 8:10 PM

And answering my own question, hopefully it can help. The problem seemed to be with the backup drives (both of them) being still mounted. So at the terminal, I unmounted all drives that had to do with backups and then removed the leftover mount points in /Volumes.


mount -a

sudo umount /Volumes/{backup drive name here}

sudo rm /Volumes/{backup drive name here} (as long as the drive has been unmounted)


Links that pointed me to the solution:

smb - Adding a Time Machine destination fails with OSStatus error 17 - Ask Different

How to forceably unmount stuck network share in Mac OS X? - Super User

Similar questions

22 replies
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Feb 5, 2018 8:10 PM in response to fil000

And answering my own question, hopefully it can help. The problem seemed to be with the backup drives (both of them) being still mounted. So at the terminal, I unmounted all drives that had to do with backups and then removed the leftover mount points in /Volumes.


mount -a

sudo umount /Volumes/{backup drive name here}

sudo rm /Volumes/{backup drive name here} (as long as the drive has been unmounted)


Links that pointed me to the solution:

smb - Adding a Time Machine destination fails with OSStatus error 17 - Ask Different

How to forceably unmount stuck network share in Mac OS X? - Super User

Feb 4, 2018 7:54 AM in response to fil000

Since 3rd of Feb '18 I am having the same problem. I am backing up on a mac backup bundle on a synology server which worked fince since years. Suddenly it reports the same error message as mentioned before "The network backup disk does not support the required capabilities" or, in German "Das Backup-Volume im Netzwerk unterstützt die notwendigen Funktionalitäten nicht." which appearently addresses the same error.


Any advice how to overcome the problem?

Feb 9, 2018 11:50 PM in response to macofant59

1) I usually back up manually to my external hard drive LaCie. I couldn't, using the new OS 10.13.3, installed after several attempts on Feb. 7. Even attempting to eject the La Cie via dragging to the trash didn't work. Finally, I was able to eject, and shut down my MacBook Air as well.

2) Then I disconnected the backup drive and reconnected it, as you did.

3) Forced a manual backup? How do you force a manual back up? Simply clicking on 'Back up now' makes it show the double arrow on the back up circle symbol, but only briefly, and still shows my last back up being Jan. 1'18.

Help!

Feb 10, 2018 6:24 AM in response to Pauline Counihan

Hi Pauline,

with disconnect I meant that in the Time Machine System Setup I chose "Select Volume", then clicked on my backup volume in the top and selected "do not use this volume" - it then still is in the list of available volumes. I do not use a detachable usb hard drive but i am backing up to a Synology server which can offer a suitable drive volume.


After that, I again chose my backup drive from the list and then pressed "backup now" to force the backup now - it took more time than usual, but it finished successfully and after that performed automatic backups as before.

Kind regards,

macofant59

Feb 19, 2018 9:35 AM in response to fil000

Thanks very much for the hint. I tried terminal but got some permission related stop. before I went into details for it, I figured I would try the Disk Utility app. I use USB drive for backups. So I renamed, unmounted, and erased the drive. Please note that rename was just my choice to make naming easier. Anyway, after unmounting and erasing in Disk app, the backup is flying now. Showing 3 hours for 220GB full backup. I erased as I did not care about the past backups. I'm pretty sure that unmount then mount will do the job. Big thanks to OP. Cheers!

Feb 19, 2018 11:04 PM in response to iMac644

@Marco g: I didn't try to solve the problem by trying to fix the smb error. I switched in my Synology to afp protocol, see: https://www.synology.com/_images/tutorials/back_up_time_machine/mac_file_service .png

And this article but you have to choose for afp

DiskStation Manager - Knowledge Base | Synology Inc.




@iMac644 You should go into sudo mode on your terminal so:
sudo su

mount (and see which mount are there to your synology)

umount -f com.apple.TimeMachine.2018-02-13-103927@/dev/disk1s1


Last commando removes the mount where the last part for you specific is. The -f parameter does a force of the umount commando.

Feb 21, 2018 11:51 PM in response to fil000

I'm using a disk connected to a Netgear router. Previously worked fine. Now Time Machine can't see the network volume. The previous method of getting the network share to appear when selecting a backup disk in the time machine control panel was to mount the volume using the location "smb://readyshare". That worked fine in the past but the volume won't show anymore in the control panel.


VERY frustrated with Apple.

Feb 27, 2018 11:26 AM in response to fil000

To clarify: I was unable to unmount the drive because it was in use by the SMB daemon. I turned off sharing over SMB, and was able to unmount and run Disk First Aid to verify that the drive itself was okay.


As it turns out, I found some other threads where people were having similar issues backing up to networked Time Machine drives over SMB. Turning off SMB sharing and using AFP only seems to have fixed my issue.


Could SMB be the issue in 10.13.3?

May 10, 2018 5:12 PM in response to fil000

Whenever I get the error message (The network backup disk does not support the required capabilities) from Time Machine I check with

ls -al /Volumes

and get a "Permission denied" for my backup volume.


I then check with

mount
for a line like:

//user@Mac._smb._tcp.local./Backups on /Volumes/Backups (smbfs, nobrowse)

Then I issue this command, which is the only thing that worked for me (and it has worked every time):

sudo umount -Af -t nfs,smbfs


This solved the issue. (Another check with

mount
and the line above is gone.)

Jun 3, 2018 7:45 PM in response to kkpryor

In my case unmount did not work. I turned on Hidden files view, went to the Volumes folder in my system SSD.

There was a folder called com.apple.TimeMachine.localsnapshots in the Vloumes folder.

I deleted this folder, connected my backup HD, Time machine asked me once again if I want to use that disk for backup, I said yes and everything went back to normal.

I think the problem happened after an eject error of the backup HD.

Jun 11, 2018 5:34 PM in response to fil000

My Time Machine connection to my NAS Synology RS815+ (SMB) was working great for years, then out of nowhere, TM stopped working. I deleted the TM connection and relinked to the NAS folder and got this message when typing in user name and password (The selected network backup disk does not support the required capabilities) which was frustrating because it made no sense. The only changes that I had was an OS update to 10.12.6.

The final fix for me was to use my NAS admin login when typing in user name and password for TM to connect to my Synology NAS. The original NAS user account that I setup, that was only for the TM backup, for some reason, when using the credentials would produce the TM error message. The error did not provide much detail either as to the issue.

Not sure this will work for everyone, but after a long internet search on this topic, my solution was not listed anywhere so I hope this might help the few that may have this challenge.

Time Machine backup fails in macOS 10.13.3 (High Sierra)

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