FileVault sparsebundles lost converting to Lion

I had an external disk doing TimeMachine backups of snow leopard home directories encrypted with FileVault (ie into sparse bundles). I could get to the disk and extracted most of what I needed from a computer running Lion, so I know they were good when the left 10.6. However, when I started to use the disk as a Time Machine disk on Lion, it converted all my sparse bundles to directories (not sparse bundles) with no permissions (probably still encrypted, too).
$ ls -l
total 0
dr-x------+ 3 503 staff 102 Dec 16 2009 erik
$ sudo chmod g+rwx erik/
chmod: Unable to change file mode on erik/: Operation not permitted
$ sudo chown kastman erik/
chown: erik/: Operation not permitted
I tried to chown and chmod, but get an operation not permitted. This seems like a horrible design flaw, but I can't find any other help toipics where this has happened.I'm currently verifying permissions in case there was something that broke, but I'm lost on how to recover the bundles now. Any ideas to get my backups back?
Erik

Permissions finished verifying correctly, so that's not it. Anyone have any ideas? Otherwise I'll open a ticket with Apple proper. Thanks in advance,
Erik

Similar Messages

Can't copy some files from FileVault Sparsebundle in Time Machine backup

I've got filevault turned on for my mac Mac Mini (10.6.2). I'm using Time Machine to back up to a firewire drive. There's plenty of space - my Mini hd has 250 Gb of 500 used, and I'm backing up to a 750Gb partition on the external drive. The initial backup went OK, and when I logged out it backed up my filevault-protected home directory. When I logged back in, I was able to browse the Backups.backupdb on the external drive, go to the users directory, and open the sparsebundle that was my filevault-protected home directory (after entering the password). I can browse through this backup of my home directory. However, when I try copying files from the backup of the home directory, I get an error:
The Finder can't complete the operation because some data in "(filename)" can't be read or written. (Error code -36).
I get this error for some files, but not all of them. I've tried running BatChmod to reset permissions on all files in my home directory, and then erasing the backup drive and having Time Machine recreate the backup. However I'm still having this problem.
I have also tried restoring the entire hard drive (to a 3rd external HD) by booting from the 10.6 DVD and going through the full-restore process. All of my files are fine when I restore using this method.
Is there something I should do so that I can restore individual files from the backup of my filevault sparsebundle? It is extremly inconvenient to have to do a full hard drive restore if all I want is a file or two, and of course if the motherboard on my mini dies and I can't get a close enough replacement computer, then I could really be up a creek.
Thanks,
John F
New York

feinberj wrote:
I've got filevault turned on for my mac Mac Mini (10.6.2). I'm using Time Machine to back up to a firewire drive. There's plenty of space - my Mini hd has 250 Gb of 500 used, and I'm backing up to a 750Gb partition on the external drive. The initial backup went OK, and when I logged out it backed up my filevault-protected home directory. When I logged back in, I was able to browse the Backups.backupdb on the external drive, go to the users directory, and open the sparsebundle that was my filevault-protected home directory (after entering the password). I can browse through this backup of my home directory. However, when I try copying files from the backup of the home directory, I get an error:
The Finder can't complete the operation because some data in "(filename)" can't be read or written. (Error code -36).
I get this error for some files, but not all of them. I've tried running BatChmod to reset permissions on all files in my home directory, and then erasing the backup drive and having Time Machine recreate the backup. However I'm still having this problem.
I have also tried restoring the entire hard drive (to a 3rd external HD) by booting from the 10.6 DVD and going through the full-restore process. All of my files are fine when I restore using this method.
Is there something I should do so that I can restore individual files from the backup of my filevault sparsebundle?
Don't try to restore files individually by hand using finder. TM backups are protected by very restrictive ACLs and are not designed to be accessed that way.
you can restore the whole sparse bundle with the home directory from TM interface. you should be logged in as a different user when you do this. the easiest is to be logged in as root so as not to deal with any permissions issues.
another thing you might try is doing it from command line instead of finder. this is also not the designed way but might work where finder copy doesn't.
to do this run the following terminal command after you mount the sparse bundle with backups of the home directory
ditto --noacl path/to/source/file /path/to/target/directory
here path/to/source file is the path to the file in the sparse bundle you want to restore and path/to target directory is the path to the folder where you want to copy it to. an easy way to get the path to an item is to drag that item to the terminal window. make sure that you have all the spaces correctly in the command.
It is extremly inconvenient to have to do a full hard drive restore if all I want is a file or two, and of course if the motherboard on my mini dies and I can't get a close enough replacement computer, then I could really be up a creek.
Thanks,
John F
New York

My Macbook Pro with 2.16GHz Intel Core Duo (Mac OS X v10.4 Tiger) can convert to Lion?

my Macbook Pro with 2.16GHz Intel Core Duo (Mac OS X v10.4 Tiger) can convert to Lion?
Toyoo

These are some of the most common Questions (Q) and Answers (A) about Lion:
Q: What are the system requirements of the Lion upgrade?
A: Core2Duo, Core i3, i5, i7, and Xeon Intel CPUs with 2 GB of RAM in a Macintosh computer with 2 GB of RAM, and 4 GB (7 GB after installed) for downloading from the Mac App Store (Available in 10.6.6 and later). Unofficially, past upgrades have arbitrarily also required an additional 15% of the hard drive to be free for data.
Q: What applications are compatible with Lion?
A: http://roaringapps.com/apps:table provides a nice third party editable listing for people to include the compatible applications. Many of these compatibility entries came from before Lion's release. Please verify they are correct now that it has been released, and help edit it for more accurate data. Be sure to include any update version of Lion post release that you have found is or is not compatible with it, for the help of others who may be upgrading to Lion the first time. Additionally, as it was released, there is no Rosetta. This means any application that is stated to be PowerPC in the System Profiler, will not work with Lion, and needs a comparable application or upgrade to be compatible. The System Profiler is in Apple menu -> About This Mac -> More Info. Intel and Universal applications are on the whole supported, though may still need some tweaking before every feature is compatible.
Q: Are there any pitfalls to watch out for?
A: With all upgrades, backing up your data at least twice has been a given. Hardware can fail independently of downloads and upgrades, though may happen simultaneously. Software may be found to be incompatible that has not been tested with the new upgrade, or combination of other software that might be installed with the upgrade. It is also strongly recommended once your backup is complete, to shut down your computer, remove all but Apple wired keyboard and mouse (notebooks remove all input devices). Then once done, reboot, and go directly to the upgrade distribution system available. Third party system tools, modification, and "maintenance" applications should be verified as compatible, or removed until known to be compatible. Check with developers how to remove if it is essential to use Lion before those applications become compatible. Most "maintenance" tools that deal with system cache, prebinding, are not really maintenance tools. Ask on forum when are the appropriate times to use them before assuming they should be used for upgrades or otherwise.
Q: How can I get from 10.4 or 10.5 to 10.6.6?
A: Purchase a 10.6 retail installer from an Apple retail or third party reseller. It has a picture of a Snow Leopard on the DVD, and does not say Upgrade, Dropin, or OEM. Install it, and then install the 10.6.6 combo update from:
http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1349
Q: Is it true that I can only get it from the Mac App Store?
A: Presently this truth is based on current documentation as of the writing of this article. It may change, but we can't speculate as to its change. It has a better chance of changing if users request something different at:
http://www.apple.com/feedback/macosx.html
Q: What limitations might one encounter if it doesn't change?
A: First off the 7 GB space limitation on the hard disc after it is installed. Secondly, the size of the download file requires significant time, unless you have a high speed broadband connection. Times expected are below -
4 GB at:
5Mbps is 2 hours.
at 1 Mbps is 10 hours.
at 384 kbps is 27 hours.
at 56k kbps is 184 hours (nearly 8 days).
If you include the 10.6.6 combo update of 1.06 GB
add 29 minutes for 5 Mbps
145 minutes (2 and 25 minutes) for 1 Mbps
6 and a half hours for 384kbps
A 24 hour day and 15 hours (for a total of a minimum of 39 hours) for 56kbps
Remember the retail 10.6 currently does not include the App Store, and those upgrading from 10.5.8 or earlier will need to both buy the retail 10.6, and download the combo 10.6.6 update, not to mention ensure they have the correct processor and 2 GB of RAM. Finally once it is available, you'll have find out how long approximately it takes to install after the download is complete.
These times do not include installation time, which on a MacBook Pro 3,1 15" installing on a Firewire 800 Newertech Voyager with WD10ACS-322J80 drive, 10.6.7, took 1 hour and a half to complete the installation from double clicking the install command to the registration screen. These times may vary by connection speeds from a non-dedicated connection, or background application usage of the internet. Any applications running when the installation process begins might interfere with the installation itself, and they should be quit first.
The installer just before it starts has in its package contents an InstallESD.dmg file a DVD burnable image to install on additional computers in the home without downloading over again. So if you desire to reinstall without an extra internet download, extract that file, by selecting the installer in the dock, and control-clicking it, and revealing it in the Finder. Next Control-mouse click it, and select show package contents. Inside that folder is a Shared Support folder. That's where you find the DMG.
Q: If I purchased a Mac recently, can I get it cheaper?
A: Yes, visit http://www.apple.com/macosx/uptodate/ for details.
Q: When will Lion become available?
A: It became available July 20, 2011.
Q: Which Macs can run Lion?
A: Look at Apple menu -> About This Mac -> More Info, and see if you meet the Machine ID and RAM requires under the hardware. 2 GB is required for all These Machine IDs will run Lion:
Mac Mini 2,1 and later
MacBook 2,1 and later.
iMac 5,1 and later.
All MacBook Air.
MacBook Pro 2,1 and later
All MacPros.
The Macs with the Machine IDs below will not run Lion (x can be any number):
Mac Mini 1,x or PowerMac x,x
MacBook 1,x
MacBook Pro 1,x
iMac 4,x, 3,x, 2,x, 1,x
Authored by a brody

Pdf problems when converting to lion

Interactive Pdf documents scrunched when converted to Lion operating sytem. Just upgraded to lion, my children have interactive day planners which were saved on the desktop as PDF documents, the writing is now scrunched when viewing or printing. Any suggestions?

If you are using Adobe Acrobat for PDF files read here > Apple Safari 5.1 and Adobe Reader/Acrobat Advisory

I am using an I-mac series 4 with a 2GHZ processor, I tried to convert to Lion and the rresponse was the chip was not fast enough, can I upgrade the chip or do I need to purchase a new computer?o

I am using an I-mac series 4 with a 2GHZ processor, I tried to convert to Lion and the rresponse was the chip was not fast enough, can I upgrade the chip or do I need to purchase a new computer?

Unfortunately yes, but Snow Leopard is still a great OS in the meantime so don't rush in too quick if you really don't need to.
Good Luck
Pete

Chmod in mounted FileVault sparsebundle does not work?

I wanted to change my UID to match the NFS server, so all permissions & ownerships are right. So, I followed this stuff: http://www.inteller.net/notes/change-user-id-on-snow-leopard But this did not take into account users that had FileVault turned on, and I discovered this afterwards, naturally.
So, after completing the above (but not logging back in as my regular user, ie. still logged in as root) I mounted the FileVault sparsebundle, opened a shell and tried to chown all files in the mounted volume.
This did, however, not work. The chown exited with status 0 (meaning OK) and no error message, but doing a ls -nl showed that the ownership was still my old 501, rather than the new 1000 (I did "chown -R 1000 Documents", for example).
I tried "touch test", and it worked. So I had write permissions to the volume.
So I tried "su - username". And then ls -nl. Viola! The uid's where all 1000! So, exit, back to root. Then ls -nl again. Now all uid was back to 501!?
Then I unmounted the volumed, log out and log in as the user, but this created problems since all files were owned by 501. So I tried "sudo find -xL . -uid 501 -exec chown 1000 {} \;". Now all files seemed to be OK, log out, log back in, works.
So, I fixed the problem. But I'm still very curious about this behaviour. Why could I not change the ownerchip, when logged in as root, on a mounted FileVault sparsebundle.
Any ideas?

I had this same problem, went through same process and got same result. Then tried disk on another Macbook Pro, ran Repair in disk utilities and this time was told disk was not repairable and that I had to reformat it. Based on a recommendation in another forum, I bought DiskWarrior. DiskWarrior was able to repair the drive, which was a huge relief since I had irreplaceable files on that drive (thought it was safe because it was RAID).
I am now copying files off that drive in case this happens again. I have not turned the drive off yet, just in case it doesn't come back online again. I recommend trying DiskWarrior if you're in this situation.

Are all the files I created in AppleWorks lost after loading Lion?

Just loaded Lion - AppleWorks is incompatible - have I just lost all that data?

tommccandless wrote:
Just loaded Lion - AppleWorks is incompatible - have I just lost all that data?
No, data is not lost. Problem is, depending on which data, you may not have an easy upgrade path in Lion:
Last call for AppleWorks users
If you have a copy of iWork, you can easily open your word processing, spreadsheet, and presentation files in Pages, Numbers, and Keynote respectively. Select an AppleWorks word-processing file in the Finder, press Command-I to bring up the Info window, click on the Open With pop-up menu, and choose Pages from the list that appears. Click the Change All button and now all your AppleWorks word processing documents will open in Pages. Do the same thing with any AppleWorks spreadsheet files except choose Numbers instead. Similarly, for the six people who created and still keep AppleWorks presentation files, you can use this trick to open them in Keynote.
Regrettably there’s no path nearly so easy for your AppleWorks database files. FileMaker has a tutorial that tells you how to move these files to Bento, but it’s inelegant. Essentially you save your file as ASCII text and add a .tsv extension to it. Then within Bento you choose File -> Import -> File, click Choose in the resulting Import window, and then select your .tsv file. You’ll lose your AppleWorks templates, but your data will move over.
AppleWorks painting files can be converted to a variety of graphics formats including jpeg, .png, and TIFF. Regrettably this is something you have to do via a Save As command. You can’t simply change the file’s extension.
And AppleWorks drawing files can be opened and edited with the $95 EazyDraw. It’s not an inexpensive option, but it’s one that doesn’t require that you futz about with converting files.
Although this should go without saying, if you’re still using AppleWorks today to generate files and wish to stay current with Apple technology, it’s time to set AppleWorks aside and start using up-to-date tools. Continue using it and you’re only generating more work for your future self.

Lost mail in lion and air book

My 4 month old Mac Air started to freeze intermittently. Having been told at Tech Support "oh they do that", I went to the Genius Bar, passed all the hardware tests, and agreed to a wipe and restore of lion, secure in the knowledge I had backed everything up before going.
It transpires however, that no mail on this Mac Air has been backed up. I can only restore from the backups I have from my previous Macbook.
Which means that all the mail on this new computer has been lost, which is a pain to say the least, but how do I make sure I am backing up my mail from now on?
Any ideas?
Thank you

Thanks, we're getting closer.
I am only at this stage setting up accounts, rules, prefs etc in Mail (being a Eudora user hitherto) so couldn't use the setup assistant option when installing Lion
I am currently sometimes in Lion, sometimes in SL, so simply transfering the Mail folder later does not help now. Looking at the two Mail folders they seem to be structured differently. In SL everything is at same level. Under Lion, the Mail folder has a subfolder V2 containing most the settings and a separate folder for Lost and Found items.
I have just tried making alias to V2, naming it as Mail and putting in the SL Library, and that seems to work. But that doesn't give access to the Mail Lost+Found folder. I suppose I can live without that if all it contains are old settings.

Lost iTunes with lion

I purchased Lion from the app store to use the cloud and now I lost Itunes. If I reinstall it will I lose my library?

After trying a few things (as suggested by the Apple website) and going nowhere...I called Apple. It is free for the first 90 days that you have Lion on your computer. And since Lion had eaten my ITunes library, I qualified for the free help....
In the end, the solution was to go to ADD TO LIBRARY and chose the ITUNES folder. Everything came back. I'll have to redo the individual playlists, though. Oh. Well. Case closed.

Conditional Build Tags lost converting from X5

When I did a trial conversion of an existing RH Office X5 project to RH8 it lost all of the Conditional Build Tags. As the X5 project was made up of 29 Word documents with many tags it would be a big job to go through all of the topics and redo the work. The company for which I work supplies multiple software products using common forms and the wording for each product is different, therefore when I compile help for each product the Conditional Build Tags are very important. Is there any way that the tags could be retained when converting to RH8.

Thanks for the suggestion.
I have created all of the Conditional Build Tags and when I look at the
properties it lists the Topics that they are used in. Howver, when I look at
the properties of the individual topics the check boxes are all clear for
all Conditional Build Tags.
I have also noticed that none of the Content level conditionality has been
preserved during the upgrade. This is a major problem as it would take a
long time to go through all of the documents and re-apply the tags to text
and graphics. If I do upgrade is this something that I would have to do
manually?
I have upgraded to 8.0.2
Regards
Tony Champ

Corrupt FileVault Sparsebundle

Hello,
I'm running into some mighty big issues with FileVault, and would deeply appreciate any help.
(a) It all started when I brought my macbook out of sleep mode and tried accessing my Yahoo mail. Safari came up with an error "Safari can't establish a secure connection to the server". Got the same issue for all https sites. On accessing mail, it said no account configured (though I have been using a couple of them for a couple of years now). iPhoto said no file exists. I got worried that I had had a virus intrusion and ran Sophos anti-virus, but quit it half-way through and rebooted the macbook.
(b) After reboot, the macbook did not allow me to login. It gives me an error "FileVault Protected-home folder is damaged. Press OK to repair or Cancel to login as a different user" On pressing OK, it said Login Failed.
(c) Called Apple Support (India), they tried a couple of hardware resets (Not sure now but I think he tried to reset the PRAM and something else in the boot routine to factory defaults). That did not do much good, so he tried fsck (in single-user mode from the root; since I could not login). That did not do any good either so he directed me to the nearest Apple store.
(d) The apple store pretty much told me that the data's gone corrupt, but helped me install a root user (I just had one user initially; at the apple store, they used the install disk to boot and then added a root user). After logging in through the root, saw that the Users folder in the Macintosh HD had a sparsebundle file (myoriginalusername.sparsebundle; this is about 23.9 GB in size, I estimate I would've had about 45-50 GB of data)
(e) Read through in the discussions forum and have tried the following steps to recover from the sparsebundle:
i. Double-clicked on the sparsebundle file. It asked for password, gave the old password which was accepted but came up with an error "No mountable file systems"
ii. Tried to open the file with disk utility. It opened up (showed on the right side). On verifying with Disk Utility, it comes up with an "Invalid B-tree node size" (I understand that this is one of the worst that can happen to mac users; I'm keeping my fingers crossed)
iii. Took a backup of the sparsebundle. Created a blank disk image with the sparse format, copied the myoriginalusername.sparsebundle file to the disk image. Ran the data rescue (Demo version) quick and deep scans on the disk image. The data rescue scan did produce some files, but they were hardly recognizable.
iv. Created a new user (so that there are 3 users now; myoriginalusername, root & newusername). Copied the disk image created in iii above to the home folder of the new user created. Restarted in safe mode and logged in as the new user. Tried mounting the disk there and ran disk utility. Had the same issues.
I've pretty much run out of things to do to recover this one. Any help would be great. Please note that the sparsebundle shows a folder Bands (containing plain text files of 8MB each), and 3 files - info.plist, info.bckup and Token.

Your sparse bundle is likely toast, but this is worth a read: http://www.thexlab.com/faqs/fixfilevault.html
the sparsebundle shows a folder Bands (containing plain text files of 8MB each), and 3 files - info.plist, info.bckup and Token.
Yes, that's how sparse bundles are constructed. There may be many thousands of the "bands." That's where the encrypted data is. The advantage is, only the changed bands need to be backed-up.

Exclude FileVaults sparsebundle from backup

Hello,
I'm trying to configure Time Machine to backup my Mac on system level without my home folder. The problem is, that my home folder is encrypted via FileVault and regardless of what I'm doing, Time Machine tries to backup FileVault's sparsebundle every time I logging me out. I have tried to add "/Users" or "/Users/.<username>" to the exclude list or edit Time Machine's configuration file manually but nothing helps.
How can I prevent Time Machine from backing up this file?
Thanks and greets,
Jay2Cee

Jay2Cee wrote:
V.K. wrote:
Jay2Cee wrote:
My system files are the only one I really need to backup and I want to use the build in tool for this purpose. But even if I exclude my home directory from the backup in TM settings, at logout it really backups the FV sparse bundle and I haven't found a way to stopping it from doing that.
why do you think that? how did you check? it certainly should not do that. it doesn't back up the sparse bundle when I test it.
The backup takes a very long time
that doesn't mean anything
and the result is big sparse image file in the backup
and that does not mean anything either. it simply reuses the old existing backup of the sparse bundle and hard links to that. the only true test is to delete all backups of the sparse bundle. then log in/out of the filevaulted account and see if the sparse bundle is really being backed up. my bet it isn't.
deleting backups should ONLY be done from TM interface. enter TM, scroll back in time and select the sparse bundle in any backup. then click on the "gears" action button in finder's toolbar and select "delete all backups of ..."

Help. Accidentally deleted filevault sparsebundle image..

Hi all,
I did an incredibly stupid thing today. I went an deleted (dragged to the trash, but did not empty it) the filevault sparse bundle image in my user directory and went and shutdown my Macbook. After a reboot, I could not log in.
Is there a way to recover from this situation?
If you want to know how I got myself in this mess, I was trying to make space on my macbook and found a 44GB file. I didn't know what it was and just tried to drag it to the trash to see if anything bad would happen. After moving to trash, things seemed ok, so I shutdown the machine for a while. So that's how it happened. Now I'm kicking myself.
Thanks for any help.
Nik.

Nik Hisham wrote:
Hi VK,
Thank you for pointing me in the right direction. I logged in as Root, opened a Terminal window and found the sparsebundle image sitting in /.Trashes. I just did a mv to move it back to my user directory. I was able to immediately log back on using my user id.
glad you've fixed it.
It was a good thing I didn't empty the trash after moving the image there.
actually you would not have been able to empty trash because the disk image was in use at the moment.
Nik.

How to repair a filevault sparsebundle with disk utility?

I've been experiencing some oddness with my filevault home directory so I wanted to drop into disk utility and run a check/repair on it. The odd thing is, when I log out and into another account, the sparsebundle says 0k in the finder, and appears to be a directory. When I sudo to cd into the directory, it appears to work, but I remain in /Users/username. When I drag the sparsebundle into disk utility, it appears in the bar on the left side of the screen, but clicking repair or verify causes the progress bar to activate for a split second then stop with no error message. Trying to mount the sparsebundle yields a "No supported socket" message.
I am able to log into the account. When I do that, in /users/.username directory, I can see the sparsebundle with its true size, 35 gigabytes.
I used to repair sparseimages; is the described behavior "normal" for sparse bundles and if so, is there a way to get them repaired in disk utility? Or is this odd behavior on the part of this particular sparse bundle?

Well a bundle and a disk image are both, likewise, "very different things" than actual independent storage devices, but disk utility is able to reason out that it needs to ask for the password for the disk image and open it in order to repair it. There's no reason why it couldn't be as bright when it comes to handling a sparseimage.
You are correct that mounting it first with a terminal command (sudo hdiutil mount -nomount -readwrite /path/to/sparseimage) causes it to be repairable in disk utility. Disk utility can figure out by itself that it needs to open the disk image when you repair a disk image, but apparently not with a sparsebundle. I disagree with your tone above that implies that somehow one would not expect disk utility to function robustly and be actually capable of repairing Apple file system-based virtual disk images (whether a single file or in a directory format, doesnt matter), and that one should be expected to dig up a terminal command and mount it manually before being able to tinker with it. That's not reasonable to expect of the user for a routine task such as repairing a disk image.
However on doing so, disk utility can repair the disk.
See:
http://blog.hardmac.com/archives/how-i-saved-my-corrupted-time-machine-sparsebun dle-image

Encrypted Time Machine Backup Lost in Mountain Lion Install?

Hi,
Operating 10.7.4, I make use of 'time machine' encrypted backups to an external HD. If I wipe the HD and do a fresh install of 10.8, will I lose the encrypted backup? Of course I know my passwrd and I don't rely on the keyring, but if there is some certificate exchange between OS and TM, there is a possibility that installing a fresh OS, I will lose access to the disk? Is there any official documentation that addresses this concern?
Thanks, cheers.

vance.corkery wrote:
Hi,
Operating 10.7.4, I make use of 'time machine' encrypted backups to an external HD. If I wipe the HD and do a fresh install of 10.8, will I lose the encrypted backup?
No. It's password only. You can even access it on a different Mac (Lion or ML) with the password.

FileVault sparsebundles lost converting to Lion

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