Mojave time machine back up failing

I have this problem too and have read various "solutions" - involving deleting files from the library and excluding items from backups, all of which I've tried and none of which have worked. I STILL cannot back up to time machine with Mojave. It looks like Apple have addressed this problem in recent weeks or am I wrong? If anyone can suggest a definitive solution to this problem I'd appreciate it.

Not fixed yet. In fact, while I was typing this reply, my system completely froze and I was forced to do a hard reboot. I forgot that I had turned Time Machine back on to test something and didn't turn it off. I was able to complete a manual backup, but automatic backups are still causing random freezes for me.

Maybe the Time Machine developers were all repurposed to work on Apple's autonomous driving efforts...

Updated yesterday to 10.14.2 without beeing able to backup via TM, always excluded the sharded folder, added appcleaner exclusion, still doesnt backup, will stop after a few gigs.

And btw - Apple Support removed my earlier post because i was criticizing Apple´s quality change over the last 21 years.

My Diag and my solution

I saw that in console at the moment that Time Machine fails:

par défaut 09:42:29.051621 +0100 powerd Process backupd.1538 Summary PreventUserIdleSystemSleep "Time Machine backup" age:00:05:21 id:4295001047 [System: PrevIdle DeclUser kDisp]

par défaut 09:42:29.051799 +0100 powerd Process backupd.1538 Summary BackgroundTask "Time Machine backup" age:00:05:21 id:47244674006 [System: PrevIdle DeclUser kDisp]

erreur 09:43:53.726169 +0100 backupd Error: (-48) SrcErr:NO Copying /Volumes/com.apple.TimeMachine.localsnapshots/Backups.backupdb/japet/2019-01-22-093709/Macintosh HD/Users/jj/Library/Containers/com.nektony.App-Cleaner/Data/Library/Application Support/App Cleaner & Uninstal‌ler to /Volumes/TM Interne/Backups.backupdb/japet/2019-01-22-093709.inProgress/10E5ACEA-B435-419D-A126-45CA262B5521/Macintosh HD/Users/jj/Library/Containers/com.nektony.App-Cleaner/Data/Library/Application Support

erreur 09:43:53.734225 +0100 backupd Stopping backup.

erreur 09:43:53.734351 +0100 backupd Error: (-8062) SrcErr:NO Copying /Volumes/com.apple.TimeMachine.localsnapshots/Backups.backupdb/japet/2019-01-22-093709/Macintosh HD/Users/jj/Library/Containers/com.nektony.App-Cleaner/Data/Library/Application Support/App Cleaner & Uninstal‌ler/News2_v22/news.html to (null)

erreur 09:43:53.790576 +0100 backupd Copy stage failed with error:11

erreur 09:43:54.948295 +0100 backupd Backup failed with error 11: 11

par défaut 09:43:54.953121 +0100 backupd MessageTracer: load_domain_wh

The problem is "App Cleaner & Uninstal‌ler" creates directories and or files that are not accepted by MacOS and then can't be copied. MacOS stops time Machine

I note that "App Cleaner & Uninstal‌ler" from Nektony is'nt in Apple Store. Prehaps some others Apps have the same problem

Solutions:

Exclude the directories: /Users/jj/Library/containers/com.nektony..... from TimeMachine (use Options to see all the directories)

OR/AND

Delete : all the directories begin with /Users/jj/Library/containers/com.nektony/App Cleaner

Deinstalled App Cleaner manually from Applications and Library containers, restarted and after backing up 6 mb from 250 gb it stopped working with the well known error log. Will Apple pay me for using my precious time trying to fix their problem? ;)

I've been having this problem recently, think it started when I updated to 10.14.2. Just updated to 10.14.3, and I managed to complete a manually initiated backup successfully, although it did insist on doing a complete backup (took a couple of hours). So I think the latest update has fixed the bugs (fingers crossed)?

Alex

No! I updated to 10.14.3, erased the external 1TB USB3 disc and started a (first) backup (130 GB to backup).

It took the whole night and in the morning the backup finished, but the backup disc was full !!!

Only 4.81 MB !! available!

No more (incremental) backups possible!

The TM **** still doesn't work!!!

Unbelievable!

Updating to 10.14.3 did not help me. The backup job starts, thinks for a long time, actually writes for about 20 MB, then stops. The error message says that it could not backup to the backup drive, which is the TM.

10.14.3 doesn't change anything.

Still growing up forever.

Got an answer from Apple though, after using BugReport. They told me to run a TimeMachine diagnostic command while the symptoms occur. At least that shows that they read the bug reports and don't ignore problems... yet.

But then they said it's normal it's growing up as new data is written to the hard disk.

This is totally wrong: TimeMachine is using RSnapshot. As the name tells it, it makes a snapshot of the disk and backups up this image. This is to avoid endless backup while data is dynamic. It's actually the exact opposite of what they say.

So I submitted the new diagnosis files. We'll see.

It work for a couple of days. Backups were being made and completed. Tonight, it locked up again in the middle of a backup. Cursor moves and iTunes continued playing music, but everything else is frozen.

Letting it sit to see if it "unfreezes" itself. Had to switch to my backup computer...it's sad to need more than one, just in case the Mac locks up.

Hello mensadoc,

Why do you use Norton or any other security software? Many writers have said that security software causes problems. I ask only because I really want to understand and you seem knowledgeable. Thank you.

Thanks, but not all of us are computer nerds who are capable of understanding your ingenious

procedure. It is supposed to work without all this "techno-fiddling" work around -- says

this 83-year-old !! SUPER DUPER does, so I'm going to stick with that! At least until TM works like it should.

Again I invested a day of work into this Apple bug in MacOS 10.14.3.

1) Erased the external USB volume with the following file system:

Mac OS Extended (Case-sensitive, Journaled) and renamed the volume.

2) Disabled Security: csrutil disable

3) Disabled Spotlight:

sudo launchctl unload -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.metadata.mds.plist

+

sudo mdutil -a -i off

4) Started the initial backup

--> The backup should have been stoped after 181 GB.

But TM took hours and almost filled the 1TB volume completely.

No more incremental backups possible.

TM almost useless.

I created an official Bug Report with tmdiagnostic attachment.

This appears to be due to the new security mechanism in Mojave & I have been able to 'fix' it on my machine.

There are many posts on the web that describe booting into safe mode and using a command to turn off the new mechanism. I did not do that, but rather used a brute force method. In hindsight, I probably should have tried it...

In Time Machine, under Options, you can exclude things. There are four folders in the main HD on my mac. I excluded the contents of each, not by adding the top level folder, but by including those directly under them.

For example, instead of putting /Library in there, I put /Library⁩/Application Support⁩ and all of its siblings. Then I did the same for the other three folders.

Then, I removed the items in the exclude list one at a time. It took a while, but I found those places that were causing the problems and either updated their permissions or kept them in the exclude list until the end and then changed the assigned permissions.

Note that there were a few times that I needed to go one level deeper. That only happened on a couple of folders, though.

Also, some of the permissions changes needed were made obvious by the exclude list in that some folders had list red circles with negative signs. I made it to that I had read access to those & that problem was solved very easily.

It turns out that the fault isn't Apple's, or at least not completely. The files that caused the inability to backup via Time Machine was due to another vendor's (Waldorf Largo and PPG Wave 3) software that I had not updated recently. It seems the clash between Mojave expectations and that software's *something* caused the failure.

So, updating that software in addition to what is described above resulted in my being able to perform full back ups with no problem.

Total time spent was about 3 hours, but it works now.

Two or three posts earlier in this string, Kolrasten tells us he is 82 and is fed up with Time Machine not working as it should. I am 88 and have used Apple computers for 30 years for all common domestic purposes, for editing photos and for work as a composer — typesetting my musical scores — precisely because Apple's design philosophy used to be directed towards intuitively straightforward procedures for common tasks, leaving subtleties and intricacies to be explored and dug into to those who specialize in such things. I know highly intelligent and competent people of my generation who use their computers for correspondence, accounts, booking tickets and buying things online and do not even know what a browser is.

Backing up one's disk should be a routine procedure of such simplicity that one can get into the habit of doing it almost automatically while one gets on with more interesting tasks. To expect 90% of Mac users to have to go through what Fopsy describes is nonsense. Like Kolrasten, I have given up on Time Machine; I now use Carbon Copy Cloner, which does basically the same as SuperDuper, and, like the latter, does its job very simply and quickly and without being affected by other running applications. It is time for Apple to pull its socks up, stop trying to emulate other designers of computer systems in trying to make every possible refinement and option equally accessible in every system and application, and get back to making their own native apps — like Time Machine — just work.