Time Machine and File Permissions

'Twere I to rate this question's technicality on a scale of 1 through 10, it would rate 8. Just warning you. Unix people will be especially useful for this.
Okay, so, before the problems started, my hard drive had three partitions. One for OS X, one for file storage for Ubuntu Linux, and one called the "Swap" partition, which somehow relates to Ubuntu (the Ubuntu installer put it there, I've no idea what it's for). Here's a makeshift diagram of what my partition map used to be:
I ran out of space in my OS X partition. You see, I've recently had the fortune to obtain some rather fantastic software. The downside is that the software (and it's files) take up roughly 53GB. I won't trouble with you what it actually is (though it should have dawned on some people by now). Between OS X and Ubuntu Linux, OS X prevailed. As far as I'm concerned, Linux will have to wait 'till I have a larger hard drive.
So, I fired up Disk Utility, and tried to remove the two Linux partitions. It told me it was "Preparing to erase [insert Linux partition name]". It told me that for an hour. After one hour, I said screw it, I'll do this the "hard" way.
My initial plan was to back up my data, and completely reformat my drive, reinstall Leopard, and have it restore from my Time Machine backup. Now, my external drive is not big enough to hold a complete system-wide backup. I had to leave some stuff out. Here's the list of exclusions, taken directly from the back up logs:
Excluding System files: 16.3 GB (242143 items)
Excluding /Developer: 0 bytes (1 items)
Excluding /Users/Audacitor/Downloads: 7.9 GB (18 items)
Excluding /Applications/Creative Suite 3: 3.2 GB (13214 items)
Excluding /Applications/Disk Images/Macromedia: 240.5 MB (4 items)
Excluding /Applications/Utilities: 484.2 MB (111 items)
Excluding /Users/Audacitor/.Trash: 97.3 MB (2142 items)
Excluding /System: 108.2 MB (5874 items)
Excluding /Users/Audacitor/Library/Calendars/Calendar Cache: 144 KB (1 items)
Excluding /Users/Audacitor/Library/Safari/WebpageIcons.db: 52 KB (1 items)
Excluding /Users/Audacitor/Library/Mail/Envelope Index: 680 KB (1 items)
Excluding /Users/Audacitor/Library/Icons/WebpageIcons.db: 20 KB (1 items)
I am uncertain as to why it excluded those last four entries. I didn't ask them to be excluded, so I assumed that was something Time Machine does automatically.
The backup worked normally, or so it seemed. After about a half hour, it told me it was done. I hastily (read; stupidly) unplugged the drive and prepared to reformat my drive. So excited was I to reach my new software, that I made the utter and completely foolish move of not double checking that everything I needed was backed up. If I had, I might never have this problem, and even if this problem were destined to happen, I could have at least saved my Pictures folder (fortunately, most of it's contents are safely residing on my iPod).
So, I wiped my drive. Specifically, I booted into my Leopard Install DVD, and went for the Erase and Install option. The install commenced and finished without a hitch. I brought my "new" computer up, enjoyed the theatrics of the intro movie and started running through the setup. I came to the step where it asks if I want to transfer files from another Mac, from another volume on my Mac, from a Time Machine backup, or not at all. I of course clicked for a Time Machine back up. The first sign of trouble was that my backup didn't show up (despite having my external plugged in). I felt a pang of fear, but it didn't worry me too much, and I thought to myself that I'd just use Migration Assistant later on (the Leopard setup sequence specifically stated I could do this if I so wished).
So I went straight to my desktop and fired up Migration Assistant, and went through the steps till it asked me to select a Time Machine backup. But there were none to select from. I waited a full minute, my fear growing steadily to terror. Finally, I realized that my data was gone, and flipped out. My inner geek, which was screaming at me to calm down and look inside my external, was shackled and thrown into a tiny corner of my now completely panicked mind. This lasted for roughly two minutes. After regaining myself, and opened my external. It contained one folder named Backups.backupdb. I opened it, and inside I found Neomiranda (Neomiranda is the name I gave my computer). So far so good. Inside the folder of Neomiranda, I found 2008-02-20-060526.inProgress. Another 30 seconds of flipping out over the idea of .inProgress. After awhile, I had the sense to right click on it, and hit the "Show Package Contents" option.
Inside were three folders, with three corresponding log files. I quickly realized that each one was a backup. The first two were empty, which I anticipated. Those were my two attempts while figuring out what to exclude, so I could get a backup to fit on my external. The third contained another Neomiranda folder, which contained all my data. Everything except my Pictures folder was there.
So, I went back and forth, manually restoring my data. When I'd finished, I started up a few apps to check that everything worked. Not everything worked. Mail wouldn't even get a bounce from the dock, Firefox told me there was a copy of itself already running, and iTunes complained that I had either a locked disk or insufficient permissions. Acting on iTunes' advice, I set out comparing the permissions of various folders I'd copied to the permissions of their equivalents on another, fully functional, system. Everything checked out. Nothing was locked, and everything had the correct permissions. I fired up Disk Utility and had it a run a permissions repair. It spat out a great deal of stuff that it apparently found wrong, and apparently fixed, but ultimately, it had no effect.
I cannot find anything wrong with any permissions, but I've got a feeling that's where the problem is. Why? Because any time I want to do anything to a folder I've copied, or anything inside a folder I've copied, it wants my admin password. Despite no apparent differences in permissions between folders I don't need a password for and between folders I do need a password for, I need a password for folders I have copied from my backup.
I've not looked into file ownership, as I couldn't find a way to even find out who a file belongs to, much less actually change ownership to anything. If I end having to use chown at a bash, fine with me, but I'm not a Unix man. I'll still need help with it (though I do know how to use the man command).

Same problem and for months now. I haven't been able to find a solution, but I suspect that's because I don't know exactly what's wrong.

Similar Messages

My mac 10.8 does no have the file, com.apple.desktop. plist I wentto lIbrary, preference and look for it and it is not where in my mac. I also launch time machine and file is no where on my Mac. How do I get this file back?

My mac 10.8 does no have the file, com.apple.desktop. plist I wentto lIbrary, preference and look for it and it is not where in my mac. I also launch time machine and file is no where on my Mac. How do I get this file back?
thanks

System files are hidden by default in Finder now, search for what you want then click the little + button on the top right of the bar that appears when you do a search. A new bar comes up and click the first box (that says "Kind"), change it to "System Files". Then change the box that says "aren't included" to "are included" and your file should show up.
http://osxdaily.com/2009/02/25/show-hidden-files-in-os-x/

Using external HDD for Time Machine and files in one single partition ?

Hello everybody.
I've been searching for some time now and have encountered some contradictory answers, so I turn to you.
I would like to know if it's possible (one) and safe (two) to use a single partition for both Time Machine and file storage. I've read that this should be ok, since TM is actually only a single folder, which means the rest can easily be used as a standard Finder drive. Some people say however that this is not good to do so, because TM will run out of space quicker. But if the -let's say- 30Gb used for files where used by TM after a month, that would be the same, wouldn't it ? It would simply erase older backups. But is it safe to do so ? Will Time Machine not makes errors when accessing files or doing an entire system backup ? I don't won't to make a new partition really, that's why I'm asking you here, to let me know some arguments about it.
Thank you very much for your answers.

Marekova wrote:
Yet, overlooking that, you say "safe: mostly", why is that ? where's the "danger" or, what where you thinking when you said that ? Aren't these simple folder's ? Do you mean that, because during a full backup, these "stranger" files could be a problem ? It would be great if that was clarified, since I've found no indication about it elsewhere, has anyone tryed it ?
Oh, yes folks have tried it. That's why I (and many others) recommended against it.
Here's a similar thread from just the other day: http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1926893 Note the responses from the top 2 "gurus" on this forum.
I probably should have asked you what you mean by "safe." If you mean, will TM delete other files on it's partition, no, it won't. If you mean, can there be problems, then yes, there can be conflicts and difficulties, as mentioned.
As to whether TM backups are simple folders, no, they aren't. They look like normal files and folders, but they actually contain what are variously called "hard links," "multi-links," and (my own personal favorite term) "ghost clones." Think of them as very fancy aliases. So they're not to be fooled with directly, by us mere mortals.
If you want more on this: http://arstechnica.com/apple/reviews/2007/10/mac-os-x-10-5.ars/14
and/or: http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/07/10/12/roadto_mac_os_x_leopard_timemachine.html
and, if you haven't seen it yet: http://www.apple.com/findouthow/mac/#tutorial=leopardtimemachine
You should also know that, for some reason, TM stores it's backups differently when it does them wirelessly. In that case, they're in a "SparseBundle," very different from the structure used for directly-attached backups.
All the more reason to put each Mac's backups in a separate partition, and if you want to store other data there also, a 3rd partition for that.
I've been using Mac since many years now, but I have no idea about backups, so excuse me if the statements appear a little childish.
Nope. Even those of us who are "older than dirt" and have used many flavors and varieties of backup systems for decades are in a whole new world with Time Machine.
And most of the folks on this forum who found themselves in deep trouble got there because they assumed things or didn't ask.

Time Machine and Disk Permissions + Compatibility with Snow Leopard

I have received warning from Disk Utility that I should repair permissions as several files show incorrect permissions and, more than that, my 750GB shows "769GB available".
My questions are:
1. If I use Command+R and rebuild the disk from a Time Machine backup, will permissions be reset or will the files just be copied as they are now?
2. Is there a way to verify the TM backups to check the files therein?
3. Suppose, just for the sake of an exercise, that I reload Snow Leopard; can I still use SL's Time Machine to read a Lion Time Machine backup?
Thanks in advance for any advice you can provide!
Fernando

Why are you repairing permissions? It's a waste of time unless you have a specific reason to do it, and the warnings don't mean anything.
To verify your Time Machine backup, proceed as below.
Launch the Terminal application in any of the following ways:
☞ Enter the first few letters of its name into a Spotlight search. Select it in the results (it should be at the top.)
☞ In the Finder, select Go ▹ Utilities from the menu bar, or press the key combination shift-command-U. The application is in the folder that opens.
☞ Open LaunchPad. Click Utilities, then Terminal in the page that opens.
Drag or copy — do not type — the following line into the Terminal window, then press return:
sudo tmutil compare
You'll be prompted for your login password, which won't be displayed when you type it. You may get a one-time warning not to screw up.
The command will take at least a few minutes to run. Eventually some lines of output will appear below what you entered.
Each line that begins with a plus sign (“+”) represents a file that has been added to the source volume since the last snapshot was taken. These files have not been backed up yet.
Each line that begins with an exclamation point (“!”) represents a file that has changed on the source volume. These files have been backed up, but not in their present state.
Each line that begins with a minus sign (“-“) represents a file that has been removed from the source volume.
Files that you’ve excluded from backup, or that are excluded automatically, are ignored.
At the end of the output, you’ll get some lines like the following:
Added:
Removed:
Changed:
These lines show the total amount of data added, removed, or changed on the source(s) since the last snapshot.

Time Machine And Repair Permissions Error

Hi.
I have a new Intel Mac running Leopard. "Set up Assistant" worked like a charm and brought over all my preferences, iTunes, iPhoto etc. with out a hitch. Verified permissions and the disk and came up clean.
I bought a USB LaCie 500GB external hard drive and connected it up with the idea that I would eventually use it for Time Machine.
First thing after connecting up the new hard drive, Time Machine came up and asked if I wanted it to use the new drive as a Time Machine drive and I clicked on "cancel." Thanks to all of you I knew enough to need to GUID partition and re-format the hard drive, from the FAT 32 that it came with to Mac OS Extended (journaled) that Time Machine needs. After completing this, again, the dialog box popped up about activating Time Machine and I cancelled it again.
I have not, yet, activated Time Machine. But running permission verify and repair yielded this error message both times: Warning: SUID file "System/Library/CoreServices/RemoteManagement/ARDAgent.app/Contents/MacOS/ARDAg ent" has been modified and will not be repaired.
This is the same message seen on so many other people's machines and posted here when they run into problems with Time Machine. If I don't resolve this error, will I, too, have problems running Time Machine?
This is so weird. The only thing I did between the clean permissions verification and the one with the error was connect the USB LaCie hard drive and partition and and re-format it. Time Machine has not yet been activated on this machine.
What does this SUID warning mean? Is this something I need to worry about? Should I wait to start using Time Machine?
Or... is this not a problem but there are other things I need to do to insure a good running of Time Machine?
Thanks so much for any advice you can offer.-Charlotte

The SUID is nothing to worry about.
It is documented from Apple stating this.
Everyone of us has that error.
It has not bothered Time Machine from doing its thing.

What to do if you simultaneously run Time Machine and File Vault

Never do what is mentioned in the subject line; even if you decrypt your drive, it does not spread to Time Machine, and so if you ever need to do a system restore, File Vault will forget your password and lock you out of your own system.
Thankfully, I ended up having recourse. The solution is to log in as root and create a disk image from the last Time Machine backup, "latest," and then duplicate that disk image. Having done that, paste the files into the user folder of your choice, recreating the account you have lost.

Realistically, your only option is to upgrade to an Intel-based Mac.
There is no way to use iCloud on a Mac running anything lower than OS X 10.7.2 - not even Snow Leopard.
You can access iCloud.com through a web browser on your current computer, but you'd need a Mac running 10.7.2 to move to iCloud and it wouldn't sync anyway...

Time Machine and drive permissions question

I'm using Time Machine on a MacBook with two admin accounts (let's call them admin1 and admin2). admin2 is the account used daily. admin1 is the account used very infrequently.
Things were set up with admin1. I noticed today when I was logged in as admin2 that TimeMachine reported that the last backup was more than 2 week ago (when things were set up), and that the last backup failed because the user didn't have privileges.
I did a Get Info on the drive, and it seemed to confirm that (admin 1 had read/write privileges, but admin 2 had only read access).
To get around the problem I logged in as admin1 and turned Time Machine off. I then logged in admin 2 and selected the disk from there, and turned Time Machine on.
My question is - is this normal behavior? Or if there's something wrong, how to fix it?
Thanks...

Scott Newman wrote:
After a few minutes, an external drive that is mounted on the desktop will spin down--like it should. But...each time a "Save" or "Save As..." dialog box is opened in any application, things will grind to halt for a few seconds while the external drive spins up--even though I will not be saving files to that drive. I've always hated that, which is one reason I've always done manual backups.
Does that happen with Time Machine (either with a drive physically or wirelessly connected via Export Extreme) and is there any way to avoid that?
It happens with TM. I am not sure of any convenient work-arounds. You can of course eject the drive and reattach it when you want to make a backup, but that's a bit inconvenient, IMO.
Is it possible to manually turn on and turn off Time Machine (and the external drive) so as to only do manual backups like I'm doing now? I don't really care about looking up a prior version of file that I've changed. I just want a reasonably current whole-disk backup.
Yes, TM has an on/off switch. Just turn it off until you want a backup. It will simply continue where it left off. It will not create a completely new backup.

Time Capsule both: Time machine and file server

Hi!
We have 3 macs that has access to a Time Capsule we use just as a file server.
Now, I'll like to do backups of all the data, and I was thinking about using Time Machine in all the computers to backup in Time Capsule.
My question is, can I use Time Capsule as both? With Time Machine and also as a file server?
Thanks,
Júlia

Time Machine can be used to backup your Macs to the Time Capsule. You set this up on each Mac by opening System Preferences (gear icon) on the dock and then opening Time Machine to select the Time Capsule as the destination for backups.
Time Machine will keep separate files for each Mac on the Time Capsule and your regular files on the TC will be left alone. Ideally, Time Machine needs about twice as much space for each Mac to allow for a good history of future backups.
Backup each Mac one at a time since the first backup will copy everything from the Mac over.
Things will go 3-5 times faster if you connect the Mac to the Time Capsule using an Ethernet cable for this procedure.
Once the "master" backup is completed for each, you can switch back to wireless to backup incremental changes since these will only take a few minutes on average.
As you know, Time Machine cannot be used to backup the regular files that you already have on the Time Capsule disk. If you need to backup these files, post back for a few suggestions on applications that can handle this task.

Time Machine and File Transfer to a new hard drive -- Permissions

24May2011
Apple Discussions:
        I have a 2 TByte external hard drive that I use to back up a 1TB internal hard drive. I use time machine.
        I got a serious warning that my 2 TB drive is going bad and i need to reformat the disk AFTER I store the files on the drive.
        I bought a new 3TByte external hard drive. I copied some important non-Backup files from the defective 2TB drive, but I can not move the backup folders. I do not have permissions to copy the backup directory.
        I want to transfer ALL the data from the 2 TB drive to the new 3 TB drive. Then re-format the 2TB and use that for file storage. I want to use the copied back up folder on the 3TB and use teh 3TB to for time machine backups.
        I tried to change the permission on the Backup Directory on the 2TB. It has been two days and I have no indication that anything other than the horizonal barber pole is happening.
        How do I copy the back up folder to the new 3TB so I don't loose any old files Ihad backed up on the defective 2TB.
        Thank you for your help.

Sure that's pretty simple to do. Follow this link for the step by step instructions.
I used it about a year ago and it worked like a charm.
Regards,
Roger

Has anyone restored from Time Machine and Application permissions okay?

Greetings Apple Discussions:
Has anyone restored their system from Time Machine yet and had a successful restore of their application permissions from Time Machine?
I just wanted to get confirmation.

I've done several. In fact I did many during beta testing and I've done at least one after installing 10.5 and 10.5.1. Each one done under 10.5 and 10.5.1 were successful without any noticeable issues with permissions.

Sleep interferes with Time Machine and file writes to FW800 drives

I have leopard installed now on 5 systems. If a system goes to sleep while i am either copying files to an external firewire 800 drive or using time machine for its initial backup to the firewire 800 drive the file copy/write will get hung up and not resume when coming out of sleep. I have also had a problem where the screen gets crazed and locks up while writing to external drives and the sleep state.
I have gone in and selected never as the sleep frequency and this has all stopped.
I did not have this problem writing to the same Firewire 800 drives with TIGER.
Anyone else seeing this problem?

I am having a very similar problem. Time Machine starts up fine (albeit a little slow). It starts backing up files. I have the machine set to not go to sleep and I have the option to put drives to sleep turned off. I do have the screen saver kick in after 30 mins, though. As soon as that happens, the backup process seems to halt.
FWIW, I am backing up to an external FW800 drive. I have a FW400 enclosure I can try. I'll give that a whirl later tonight.
This is very annoying. Very un-Apple.
--DotComCTO

Time Machine and file system errors?

Hardware:
- 15" MBP 2GHz (mid 2006) 10.5
- WD MyBook Premium 320gb
Problem:
Time Machine backs up to a partition on the MyBook (drive is GUID partition table, partition is Mac OS Extended). Immediately after a TM backup to a reformatted partition, Disk Utility may or may not detect invalid sibling links, invalid key lengths, or other errors. If it does not detect them after the initial backup, subsequent backups of recently changed files will cause said errors. This is consistent; its occurrence is not a "maybe".
Disk Utility cannot fix these errors. fsck_hfs has had success in fixing these errors once. As I type fsck_hfs is running a second time, so we'll see the results from that. The first run produced the following:
fsck_hfs -ypr /dev/disk1s2
*Invalid node structure*
(4, 44282)
*Invalid volume file count*
(It should be 832071 instead of 802858)
*Invalid volume directory count*
(It should be 181916 instead of 177095)
*Invalid volume free block count*
(It should be 13931374 instead of 14042565)
*Volume Header needs minor repair*
(2, 0)
Questions:
- Of what is this behavior indicative?
- Is the MyBook necessarily bad?
- Is TM somehow the cause?
- Could bad sectors on the MyBook be the cause?
- Is the drive within the MBP the source of these problems (Disk Utility has not previously found any errors...)?
I'm really at a loss...

Boot from the OS X installer disc that came with the computer. After the chime press and hold down the "D" key until the diagnostic screen appears.
Booting From An OS X Installer Disc
1. Insert OS X Installer Disc into the optical drive.
2. Restart the computer.
3. Immediately after the chime press and hold down the "C" key.
4. Release the key when the spinning gear below the dark gray Apple logo appears.
5. Wait for installer to finish loading.

Time Machine and file sharing with XP on a Time Capsule

Am I right in thinking that I can't use a Time Capsule to support Time Machine on OS-X and to support sharing files between OS-X and XP at the same time given Time Machine will not run on FAT32 and I can't partition Time Capsule hard drives without taking them to bits, partitioning and re-assembling?

Hi Jonathan and welcome to Discussions,
Drive Genius http://www.prosofteng.com/products/drive_genius.php and iPartition http://www.coriolis-systems.com/iPartition.php claim to be able to repartition without erasing.
Time Machine indeed works only on Mac OS Extended partitions.
Regards
Stefan

Time Machine AND File Sharing: Partitioning possible?

Hi everyone,
I'm thinking about a TC setup where 2 Macs would connect to it and do regular backups using Time Machine. At the same time I'd like to use TC's hard drive for file sharing purposes. I believe that this is possible. What I don't know is:
Is it possible to partition the drive in order to set a limit to what space is available to Time Machine? If not, is there another way (ratio setting) to limit this?
Thanks
Björn

From what I've seen, the answer is no. (1) you'd have to be able to access the disk in such a manner as to partition. it does not show up in Disk Utility. Perhaps Terminal might have options. (2) As far as I've seen, there is no ratio setting. TC just backs up all Macs on the network using Leopard that have Time Machine backups set to the TC.
You can actually do what you want without changing anything. The TC HDD shows up as a network drive. Time Machine backs up until full. Files on the drive would take up space. So, until it's full, you can put shareable files on it. once it's full, you have delete backups or make space through some other method.

Time Machine and File Vault - How does it REALLY work?

Good afternoon,
I ran some tests and I can't figure out exactly how Time Machine behaves with Filevault.. here's what I did:
I ran a backup manually. It backed up about 265megabytes. This was right after iTunes downloaded an update for my iPhone. This is weird, because that is stored in Library/iTunes/iPhone Software updates, which is in my FileVault user data.
I ran a second backup right after. It backed up 726Kb. Sounds like not much has changed.
Then, I copied a folder (mp3 album) from my NAS to a folder called Time Machine Test in my home folder.. 91megabytes of files.
I started a backup. Sure enough, it backed up about 91megabytes.
After the backup completed, I mounted the Sparsebundle file, and my files were there. I could copy them back properly.
Can someone explain to me exactly what TM can backup while logged in, and what gets backed up only when I log off?
It seems to me like actual files are being backed up, while the complete encrypted sparsebundle is backed up at logoff only. But if that's the case, why isn't there an option to restore individual files other than by mountaing the TM volume manually?
Thanks

infrid wrote: We shouldn't accept this as a price we pay for using other operating system features. Gepeto is quite right : it's unnacceptable, and Apple should sort it out.
Hmm. I guess it depends on whether you want your Time Machine backups to be encrypted or not.
If you use a whole disk encryption solution like PGP, Time Machine works fine when logged-in but all your data is backed-up as though encryption were not present, because one you have booted, the encryption is invisible to applications including Time Machine.
If you enable FileVault, and remove your Home Directory from the exclusions, TM will back up the files in the same way when you're logged in but they will be unencrypted on the backup drive.
With FileVault enabled and Home Directory excluded, it is not the FILES that are being backed up, but the encrypted VOLUME which is essentially one big file containing all the individual files in your Home Directory. It's similar to a TrueCrypt encrypted volume in this sense. It needs to be backed up unmounted which is why it only happens when you log off.
The only thing Apple could do would be to create an encrypted volume for the TM backup and synchronize that with your FileVault volume. Not quote the same thing as Time Machine though.
Message was edited by: Gledders

Time Machine and File Permissions

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