Repairing Permissions on Time Machine backup.
I used Time Machine as the backup to a PPC iMac. I then used the backup for Migration Assistant to an Intel iMac. This created issues.
I exchanged the iMac yesterday for the NEW iMac that came out Monday.
Knowing there are issues, I decided to import User info manually and reinstall the apps. Yeah, I know, it's going to take some time.
The original backup now won't let me open the folders I need due to permissions issues. I'm opening them one at a time, but that's getting tedious. Since I have another three users to add, I'm wondering if someone knows of a terminal command that will allow me to change ALL the permissions at once on the backup.
As always, your help is greatly appreciated.
I assume you are doing a Get Info on each folder, unlocking the Sharing & Permissions, and changing the Privilege to Read & Write.
After selecting the “admin” line (for example) and changing the Privilege to Read & Write (or whatever you want), below that window is an icon with what looks like a sprocket and a triangle on it. Pull down the triangle and select Apply to enclosed items. It will pop up a window asking if you are sure, click OK and the permissions will be applied to all enclosed folders and files.
I think you can create a new folder, put all the other locked folders in it, and then do the above procedure to change the privileges on all the enclosed folders all at once.
Similar Messages
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I have a WD 1TB external hard drive that I use as my time machine backup drive as well as to store a number of things including my iphoto library (due to its size of about 85 GB) as well as documents. I began using the WD 1TB external drive with my 2007 13" MacBook and when I purchased a brand new 13" MacBook Pro in 2013 I used the WD to transfer what I wanted to the new laptop. My new MacBook Pro is running OSX 10.8.4 (2.9 GHz Interl Core i7 with 8GB 1600 MHz DDR3) (not the retina display). The WD 1TB product # is WDBACX001... and it's only about one year old so I'm super bummed that it's failing and trying to take my life with it It has only ever been used with my two MacBooks, never with a PC.
The external WD was working fine until this week when I noticed that it wasn't appearing on my desktop. I rebooted, unplugged and replugged the WD drive in each USB portal, and still nothing. I ran Disk Utility to verify and repair the disk, which did force it to show up on the desktop again, though it made everything painfully slow. After running the repair function Disk Utility told me that the drive couldn't be repaired, and that I should backup whatever is on it and restore the WD drive. I managed to pull off most of the documents before it decided to freeze up my laptop (I had a couple of folders with a few documents each left), but I wasn't able to move the iphoto library over before the drive disappeared again. I got it back by running the repair option in disk utility, with the same message that the WD drive is failing and to back it up, and tried to move the iphoto library. It told me it would take 180+ days, and kept going up. I left it up anyway for about a day to see if it would change, and instead it gave an error message, and moved nothing. I can't open the library in iPhoto- it tells me it's on a locked disk. I checked the permissions and it's set to Read & write by me (the admin user) but then under that it says read only for "everyone." I can't get into the library to pull out my pictures, which I cannot afford to lose.
I would appreciate any help or advice on how to crack into my iphoto library on this failing drive to remove the pictures. I read a lot about DiskWarrior but I also read that it won't work on newer macs (anything after June of 2012 supposedly), so I'm wondering if that's true or not, and if not is that a good program to use?
I can't afford to take it to a professional right now, so any help or advice would be so greatly appreciated! Also if anyone then could suggest the best way to back up in two places (digitally and perhaps a better brand of external drive) it would be amazing.
If you need more info let me know!If you're very lucky, you might be able to salvage the drive mechanism, and the data, by removing it from the enclosure and installing it in another one, or in a drive dock.
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How to repair a corrupt Time Machine Backup
I have been Googling & searching also here in the support community about how delicate Time Machine is. I think I've broken so many Time Machine "don'ts" that I NOW know what I did and where I need to do things differently. Moving forward.
I have a Time Machine backup on an external HD. I have also recently re-installed Mountain Lion and now need to restore my files from Time Machine.
This is where the problem starts. Time Machine won't restore, and when I (yes, I NOW know it's a no-no, please hold your foul comments) go into the Backups.backupdb folder manually, all the folders are now shortcuts, and they lead no where.
I have tried to no avail:
To repair permissions with Disk Utility
To repair the drive with DiskWarrior
Does anyone have any (constructive) suggestions? This backup contains the usual personal documents & photos that we can all agree are most important, but also I have stuff pertaining to legal matters that I can not lose under any circumstances. Having invested $99.95 on DiskWarrior just really burns me up at this point because that was the recommended fix for this problem.
Any advice or assistance I can get from anyone would be deeply appreciated!When I go into the "star wars" Time Machine screen, all the backups are blank & black. My Backups.backupdb folder has gone from 483Gig, to 4.72TB on a 2TB drive. When I use the finder to manually look in the Backups.backupdb folder, all the folders inside are alias' and when I double-click them, they say that the alias is broken, do I want to delete it or fix it.
I know that all the Backups.backupdb is just a database that links to the files stored on the hard drive, and I need a utility that will repair the links to each file. If no one has something that does this, perhaps this is a great opportunity for someone to create such a utility.
I'm going to try using Data Rescue to just restore the drive completely and pick through it manually. -
2012 Macbk air, with OSX 10.8.5. See my question above. Mavericks won't install on my Air's HD, says that both the HD - AND - the external HD (which has a different name from the laptop HD) are used for time machine backups. I've deleted my time machine plists, restarted, repaired permissions, turned time machine off, repeatedly selected the external drive in time machine preferences. HELP. (Install went perfectly on my desktop Mac, which also has an external HD for time machine).
I need to add that the only place I have the "Backups.backupdb" folder is on my backup external disk, and it's not on my HD :-( . If it were, I'd delete it!
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HT3275 Reuse Time Machine Backup after moving to new Machine
So I've been using TIme Machine for ages, and usually the restore are fine, but one thing has always bugged me:
When I restore (say for a new hard drive) or bought a new machine (in this case i got the Retina MBP)... and i turn on Time Machine again... I haven't been able to find a way to use the old backup disk on my Time Capsule.
Looking into the support info, I found this:
Message: Time Machine starts a new, full backup instead of a smaller incremental backup
There are three reasons why this may occur:
You performed a full restore.
Your Computer Name (in Sharing preferences) was changed--when this happens, Time Machine will perform a full backup on its next scheduled backup time.
If you have had a hardware repair recently, contact the Apple Authorized Service Provider or Apple Retail Store that performed your repair. In the meantime, you can still browse and recover previous backups by right-clicking or Control-clicking the Time Machine Dock icon, and choosing "Browse Other Time Machine disks" from the contextual menu.
Reading that, I'm led to assume that's just one of the quirks and I can't do anything, and deleting Time Machine backups is quite a hassle as it is.
Is there really no way for my new Retina Macbook to use my old MBP time machine backup and just keep adding incremental data to it? It seems redundant then as say a week ago I deleted something... I actually have no way of getting to it now if I deleted the backup and started again. At the moment, my Time Capsule doesn't have enough space for a complete new one, so i'd HAVE to delete the old one.
Is there a way around this?
Thanks.ladines wrote:
My account name is the same in both systems.
The account name isn't what controls the permissions; it's the automatically-assigned and mostly-invisible User ID number, also called a UID. The first user account you create is number 501, the next 502, etc. So if you ever had more than one user account, the one(s) you have now may be different. See the pink box in Problems after using Migration Assistant for a detailed explanation.
You really can't change the permissions on Time Machine backups (that would kinda defeat the purpose).
Try creating another account, and see if it has permission to the backups. If it does, you have a couple of options:
* Copy everything now on your system to the new User Account you created above. That's tedious and error-prone, but can be done. See Transferring files from one User Account to another.
* Your existing user account should be able to see and restore from new backups (done from the new drive). When you need to view or restore things from the old backups, use the new account. Eventually, as the older backups are deleted, the problem will fade away. -
Time Machine backups taking extremely long time and disrupting other computing activity
I have an iMac running the latest version of Lion (10.7.4) and which I have upgraded to a one terabyte hard drive and full memory capability. I back up to a My Book 2 terabyte external hard drive using Time Machine. My iMac is often very sticky, though I've done most of the diagnostics I know of and preferences etc. are seemingly all OK and fcuk -fs gives a positive result! The Mac is often hard to wake from sleep and in particular seems to spend a lot of time backing up very-very slowly, with the result that it frustratingly seems to be backing up most of the time with the consequent effercts on using other programmes. Also the whole thing seems to grind to a halt after a hard days work with quite a few applications open. I'm wondering what can be causing this and what I can do to overcome this very frustrating and debilitating problem?
Hi
I would try the following for now and I am sorry, yes you were clear that it's an external drive.
Rebuild Spotlight
-Rebuild the spotlight index as per http://support.apple.com/kb/ht2409 as a first step. Spotlight indexes play a role in healthy backups so this is why this could be a good thing to do.
- When conducting the next backup, after the spotlight re-index, consider connecting to your mac only the external hard drive and disconnect all other devices to rule out other devices affecting things. I suggest connecting devices back one at a time followed by a triggered backup until the issue fails to reproduce itself.
General Performance Issues
- Some performance issues can also be cured through an SMC reset. This article can help in this regard, note that the steps differ depending on the model mac you use: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3964
--In terms of the mac's general sluggishness
- SMC can help
- open Activity Monitor and check to see if CPU usage is abnormally high or any particular process is consuming an elevated amount of CPU cycles, see http://support.apple.com/kb/PH5146
Check External HD (backup drive)
- If you've run disk utility and have done a repair permissions and repair disk as per user "Radiation Mac" then there is no point doing it again but this should just be a reminder incase you missed it.
-- on a related note to disk utility try;
1) Mount your external hard drive.
2) In Disk Utility, locate your external backup drive. Your backup drive should mount in the Disk Utility sidebar when attached to your Mac.
3) Select your external backup drive.
4) Click Repair.
Test Time Machine backups against a different drive
--If you have a spare hard drive or even a small USB stick, you could back up only a very small amount of data to this second hard drive or USB stick as a test. This article outlines how to exclude from backups, http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1427
Further Ideas
Seeing the logs would be useful if the issue persists. There maybe a reason for the issue but it appears only in the logs which we may eventually need.
I almost forgot
-make sure everything is uptodate with Apple software/firmware and any firmware for your drive if applicable.
If anything is unclear, feel free to let me know, I will provide more details. -
Can't restore Time Machine backup after iMAC (Lion) Refresh
I recently did a refresh of my iMAC with OSX Lion. I have been using time capsule to back up my iMAC as well as my Mac Mini for the last 6 months with what I perceived to be no issues.
When I got to the part in the MAC start up to restore from backup it couldn't seem to find the iMAC backup, only the Mac Mini backup so I skipped that part. I then tried to use Migration Assistant later and the same thing, I couldn't find it. I used finder to locate the Time Capsule and was able to find the backup, but when I double clicked on it said "Mac OS X can't repair the disk "Time Machine Backups". you can still open or copy files on the disk, but you can't save changes to the files on the disk. Back up the disk and reformat it as soon as you can".
Even though it said that it open a new finder window and I was able to find the backups and I proceed to copy of the files over. All seemed well until I opened iPhoto and it wouldn't open (just hung). I did a library restore/repair by clicking Option + Command when opening and after it ran iPhoto opened. When I browsed around though some recent pics that I uploaded either weren't there or corrupted and all my faces were gone.
I did a fresh install again and tried all over and the same thing happened. Any help on getting back my old backup? Seems to be corrupted or something, but I'm not sure.
See previous post before this... I was told to post my problem here - as I originally posted on the iPhoto forum before I realized I had a time machine / capsule problem.
https://discussions.apple.com/message/22248885?ac_cid=op123456#22248885
Help would be appreciated.lonniebrunet wrote:
Hi there,
I had a look through and I tried to do option A5 - which is repair or verify disk. I dragged the sparebundle for the mackup to disk utility and after trying to do a repair I got the message "disk utility stopped repairing "Time Machine backups".
Does this mean that my backup is corrupted and useless for a restore with time machine?
Yes.
And that also means copying via the Finder may not get everything. Corrupted is corrupted.
Assuming you copied from the most recent backup, you might want to try copying just the iPhoto Library from an earlier one -- that might not be damaged. If you have room, put it somewhere else, like your desktop. Or if you have an external HD, that would work. -
Some more history - I'm not too techie so added everything in I thought might be significant!
- Installed Mavericks on iMac in October 2013
- experienced regular low memory issues - used Memory Clean app as a workaround
- last week decided to upgrade installed memory from 4gb to 16gb. Faster loading but still running out of memory - just takes longer to do so.
- also last week purchased 2gb Time Capsule (to back up 660gb on 1TB drive)
- one successful Time Machine backup completed last weekend.
- I decided to try and clear some space, tidy my folders, old music files, delete duplicates etc (Not system files)
- then tried out 'time machine restore' just to test it out. Deleted files and folders recovered ok using Time Machine menu (the one that looks like outta space)
- yesterday, Avast Anti-Virus flagged virus detected (sorry, I didn't manage to capture details) and quarantined file, but I couldn't get any windows to respond so forced Mac to shutdown.
- attempted regular reboot , system hanging on white/ apple symbol screen.
- attempted Safe reboot - reboot stalls at mess 'BootCacheControl: unable to open /var/db/BootCache.playlist no such file or directory.
(I don't know if this is significant)
- attempt NPRAM reset, reboot hanging at Apple symbol still
- attempted reboot into Disk Utility. HD drive verified ok. Permissions checked and Safari permissions fixed (only)
- finally attempting restore from Time Machine Backup via Disk Utility. Stalls at 'select a backup source'. Menu is 'searching for Time Machine Backup....'
Nothing is listed, after a few mins machine just goes to sleep.
My Time Capsule and networks are all switched on. No idea what to try next!Most of the problems like this that people report on this forum are due to bad "utilities" like Memory Clean and Avast.
Your Mac probably didn't have a virus. There has never been an OSX virus "in the wild". Third party antivirus software is of very dubious utility on Macs. Macs are not PCs. OSX has anti-malware protection built into it already.
Do you have any other third party "utilities" on your Mac, such as CleanMyMac or MacKeeper?
Is the RAM you installed the recommended type of RAM for your Mac?
Take a look at this page: Mac OS X: Gray screen appears during startup
But your OS may be damaged beyond repair, or beyond what disk utility is able to repair.
In that case you have a few options:
There is a small chance that a (reputable) third part utility like Techtool Pro 7 may be able to fix your OS.
Try to boot into single user mode (restart, hold down ⌘S until you see a black screen with white text) and repair your hard drive. Here's a reference with directions: Repair Your Hard Disk in Single User Mode | Everything Macintosh
bite the bullet, boot into the recovery partition or internet recovery, and erase your HD, reinstall Mavericks from scratch, and start over. Your documents are probably still on your Time Machine Backup. I wouldn't reinstall the documents via a migration- you don't want to reinstall bad system files along with your documents- but you could copy them one by one back to your internal HD. And most importantly- don't reinstall any third party "utilites" like Memory Clean or Avast (or any other third-party antivirus software, for that matter). -
Sorry to elaborate a bit more.
I have used time machine since owning my mac book pro with no issues. i keep the timemachine backups on an external hard drive made by Verbatim. This has not external power source.
Recently i decided to use up some of the available space on the external verbatim disk drive to store some movie files which were sitting on my macbook pro.
Therefore i created a new folder outside of the time machine backup folder and stored the movie files in there.
From then on Time machine failed... and a few days later i noticed it was not mounting in 'finder'
Therefore i used disk utility to see if it was recognising it. Which i was. However when i try to repair it the repair process fails.
In disk utility i am presented with 1 TB Samsung HN M10 which has a child called Verbatim HD.
The 1TB Samsung hardware appears fine, but the verbatim disk i am unable to fully verify and fix.
Does this mean i have lost all my back ups?
Have I lost all the media that i put on there?
Is there any way to fix this?
Any help would be appreciated.
didier07...To summarize: You used an external Verbatim HD for your TM backups. Then, you stored some movie files on the "spare" space on the Verbatim drive. Now, Disk Utility isn't being recognized, and repair is disabled. Your home Samsung drive is working fine, but the Verbatim cannot be verified.
The problem, I believe, is that the external Verbatim drive wasn't partitioned. There should be two partitions: one for TM backups, the other for video. That way, you can perform backups, and still retain some space for video or somesuch.
Frankly, I don't know how to fix this except through the following. (1) Erase the Verbatim drive, (2) Create a new blank space and format it, (3) Make two partitions - one for backup, the other for video. (4) Run TM through one partition, but switch to the other for your videos. The better solution might be to have one dedicated drive (perhaps the Verbatim) for backups, and another dedicated drive for video backups; that way, you'll have plenty of space for expansion.
I hope someone will correct me if I'm incorrect, but I believe you've essentially lost your backups and media. I don't know how you can retrieve that clump of the now-undifferentiated data on the Verbatim drive. To retrieve any lost data, you're going to require another external drive that's larger in capacity, as well as data recovery software; don't expect encouraging results. If you're desperate, there are firms like Drive Savers that can offer a more comprehensive solution - at a cost.
Post if you have questions, or additional concerns! -
My Western Digital external hard drive which I use as a Time Machine Backup stopped working. I tried repairing the disk using the Disk Utility program,but got the message that the utility can't repair the disk and to erase and reformat the disk. When I try that, I get the message the operation can't be completed because "Resource Busy", even though Time Machine is turned off. Any suggestions for repairing the drive/disk?
Thank you.See Pondini's TM FAQs for starters.
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I am upgrading my MacBook Pro (17"; Intel Core Duo; Speed 2.16 GHz; 2 GB 667MHz DDR2 SDRAM) from Leopard (10.5.8) to Snow Leopard (10.6.8). I successfully Time Machine to make a backup to an external LaCie drive. Some issues appeared when I ran a "disk verify," and need to change the startup drive to boot up and use "repair disk." When I tried to change the startup drive (in System Preferences) the drive with the Time Machine Backup was not recognized. Can I even use Time Machine to create a bootable drive? I use Carbon Copy Clone with my iMac (and can boot from the clone), but that is not an option when running OSX 10.5.8.
Only if the backup was created by Mac OS X 10.8 or newer. Use the Mac OS X 10.6 install DVD instead.
(121333) -
Disk Repair reported that it could not repair the HD Disk. I am to reformat the disk and restore backed up files. OSX Utilities give me a choice of restoring from time machine backup (which I have on MyPassport) but no information on reformatting the disk, which I assume I have to do first. How do I reformat the HD ...or does the restore from Time Machine do both things?
Boot OS X Recovery and use Disk Utility.
If Disk Utility reported the disk cannot be repaired though, you should replace it with a new one. -
Why is repair disk grayed out for Time Machine backup?
I am running Mountain Lion on an old MacBook Pro 15" Late 2008 with 6GB ram.
I am using (or trying to successfully use) Time Machine with a 2TB Time capsule (about 4 months old). I also have an old WD 500GB usb drive attached to the TC.
After being away on vacation for a week or so, I got the dreaded "Time Machine need to create a new backup" message.
I have searched the great Pondini's very helpful website and I've got to the point of using disk utility to try to repair the backup.
After running disk utility it gave me this message:
Invalid sibling link
The volume Time Machine Backups was found corrupt and needs to be repaired.
Error: This disk needs to be repaired. Click Repair Disk.
Well, I can verify the backup, but the Repair Disk button is grayed out.
Pondini,
I need your help.... again.
Thanks,
DeanDeano8000 wrote:
After being away on vacation for a week or so, I got the dreaded "Time Machine need to create a new backup" message.
That message means what it says: Time Machine will not back up to that sparsebundle again.
As detailed in #C13 of Time Machine - Troubleshooting, you may be able to recover selected files, or even restore an entire backup, but that's it.
Well, I can verify the backup, but the Repair Disk button is grayed out.
OSX does that when it's already determined it can't repair it.
If you have DiskWarrior, it might be able to fix it, but I doubt it. I don't recall any posts saying it did. If you don't, I'd not recommend spending $100 ro find out. -
I had to restart by resetting the NVRAM/PRAM. Now I have a window showing OS X Utilities. My options are restore from Time Machine Backup (which I could do), Disk Utility to repair or erase, get help online or reinstall OS X. What should I do? The problem began when I tried to restart my computer and the only thing I saw was the grey screen, Apple logo, and the timer; the computer wouldn't restart from there.
I searched through trouble shooting options on the Apple Support page and was able to make it this far.
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Permissions issue with Time Machine backup store
I am struggling with a Time Machine permissions issue on an iMac running OS X 10.10.2 + OS X Server 4.0.3, and backing itself up to an external USB disk.
Backups complete successfully, but I am unable to carry out any user-level operations such as accessing the "time travel" interface via Enter Time Machine from the menu bar. Invoking Enter Time Machine fails with the error Can't connect to a current Time Machine backup disk. Likewise, although tmutil will correctly list the backup destination, tmutil listbackups produces an error:
$ tmutil listbackups
2015-02-05 16:53:19.413 tmutil[29181:2324148] Error enumerating (null): The file “Backups.backupdb” couldn’t be opened because you don’t have permission to view it.
No machine directory found for host.
My system logs are full of similar error messages from Finder.
On the back volume, the permisisons to the store are set to owner root and group wheel, and there is an access control list applied to the directory and Backups.backupdb:
$ ls -lae
total 2688
drwxrwxr-x 12 root wheel 476 Feb 4 22:29 .
drwxrwxrwt@ 9 root admin 306 Feb 4 11:57 ..
0: group:everyone deny add_file,add_subdirectory,directory_inherit,only_inherit
drwxrwx---+ 6 root wheel 204 Jan 30 13:49 Backups.backupdb
0: group:everyone deny add_file,delete,add_subdirectory,delete_child,writeattr,writeextattr,chown
-rwxr-xr-x@ 1 root wheel 115716 Nov 13 02:43 tmbootpicker.ef
The problem is clearly the drwxrwx--- permissions applied to the store. I can temporarily revert these with chmod, after which all the user-level operations described above work correctly. But on the next backup, backupd will revert the permissions to give wheel write access and remove rx privileges for everyone else. It doesn't leave anything in the system log to suggest why it is making this change.
I have a MacBook also running OS X 10.10.2, without the Server pack. This also backs up to a (different) external volume. On this volume the owner, group and access control list for the store are set as above, but the permissions are (and remain) what I would have expected, drwxr-xr-x.
Is there any obvious reason why backupd should be modifying the permissions in this way — and is there any way to stop it?Thanks - I was seeing exact same problem on one of my client's machines (10.10.2 with OS X Server). I could see wrong group of "wheel" but wasn't certain that just changing to "staff" would be enough - but seems to have sorted things out
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