Time Machine Woes

[rmr]

I have two Macs with the new macOS 12.01 Monterey, and one of them just won’t back up to a Multi-User Time Machine on SCALE 22.02-RC1.2. I even upgraded to the latest nightly that has SAMBA 4.15.3 but no improvement.

I created a new Time Machine share (since I couldn’t get the old one to work), so I’m starting from scratch. Time machine starts up and copies files. It gets to about 15% or so of 1.7 GB when it stops.

It leaves behind a non-working sparse bundle (I have to delete the dataset to be able to try again; I also reboot the Mac just in case).

According to the logs:

Failed to set string value '2021-12-12-192453,3,7232489367,7233933312,780,0,0,0' for extended attribute 'com.apple.timemachine.private.directorycompletiondate' on '/Volumes/Backups of imac2/2021-12-12-185920.inprogress/iMac HD - Data/Users/robert/Pictures/Aperture Library.aplibrary/Masters/2011', error: 92 Illegal byte sequence

As a test, I created a new Time Machine share on another Mac and the whole disk backed up fine (also using SMB).
But, just in case, I also turned off Bit Defender, closed Safari and everything else, and erased the Spotlight index on the source drive.

Any ideas what else I could try? The second Mac backs up fine, same OS, just a lot less data. There is plenty of space on the target pool. I know Time Machine is temperamental, but when it works, it's so convenient.

 

[Cloudified]

Time Machine seems to work completely different with macOS Monterey. You might trying setting up separate user accounts and shares for each Mac. This is what mine currently looks like with an external HDD. It's not just one sparse bundle anymore with directory names for each Mac. I'm sure I will also run into this same issue when my Mini XL+ arrives.

 

[anodos]

Time Machine seems to work completely different with macOS Monterey. You might trying setting up separate user accounts and shares for each Mac. This is what mine currently looks like with an external HDD. It's not just one sparse bundle anymore with directory names for each Mac. I'm sure I will also run into this same issue when my Mini XL+ arrives.

View attachment 52590

Code:

root@homenas[/mnt/dozer/tmprotect]# ls -l minitm/Mac\ mini.sparsebundle 
total 59
drwxrwx---+ 2 minitm  minitm   220 Jan 26 05:10 bands
-rwxrwx---+ 1 minitm  minitm   512 Jan 26 05:09 com.apple.TimeMachine.MachineID.bckup
-rwxrwx---+ 1 minitm  minitm   512 Jan 26 05:09 com.apple.TimeMachine.MachineID.plist
-rwxrwx---+ 1 minitm  minitm  1368 Jan 26 05:11 com.apple.TimeMachine.Results.plist
-rwxrwx---+ 1 minitm  minitm  5254 Jan 26 05:11 com.apple.TimeMachine.SnapshotHistory.plist
-rwxrwx---+ 1 minitm  minitm   502 Jan  4 06:09 Info.bckup
-rwxrwx---+ 1 minitm  minitm   502 Jan  4 06:09 Info.plist
-rwxrwx---+ 1 minitm  minitm     0 Jan  4 06:09 lock
drwxrwx---+ 2 minitm  minitm   220 Jan 26 05:10 mapped
-rwxrwx---+ 1 minitm  minitm     0 Jan  4 06:09 token

My m1 mini with Monterey has a single sparsebundle.

 

[Cloudified]

Code:

root@homenas[/mnt/dozer/tmprotect]# ls -l minitm/Mac\ mini.sparsebundle
total 59
drwxrwx---+ 2 minitm  minitm   220 Jan 26 05:10 bands
-rwxrwx---+ 1 minitm  minitm   512 Jan 26 05:09 com.apple.TimeMachine.MachineID.bckup
-rwxrwx---+ 1 minitm  minitm   512 Jan 26 05:09 com.apple.TimeMachine.MachineID.plist
-rwxrwx---+ 1 minitm  minitm  1368 Jan 26 05:11 com.apple.TimeMachine.Results.plist
-rwxrwx---+ 1 minitm  minitm  5254 Jan 26 05:11 com.apple.TimeMachine.SnapshotHistory.plist
-rwxrwx---+ 1 minitm  minitm   502 Jan  4 06:09 Info.bckup
-rwxrwx---+ 1 minitm  minitm   502 Jan  4 06:09 Info.plist
-rwxrwx---+ 1 minitm  minitm     0 Jan  4 06:09 lock
drwxrwx---+ 2 minitm  minitm   220 Jan 26 05:10 mapped
-rwxrwx---+ 1 minitm  minitm     0 Jan  4 06:09 token

My m1 mini with Monterey has a single sparsebundle.

Interesting. My Time Machine backups used to be that way with external USB HDDs, but I kept having problems so I deleted the single sparse bundle to start over. Once I did that, the Time Machine applet forced me to reformat the drive which now only works what looks like daily snapshot sparse bundles. Although I can still see the directory structure in Finder, the drive is only useable with Time Machine now.

 

[anodos]

Interesting. My Time Machine backups used to be that way with external USB HDDs, but I kept having problems so I deleted the single sparse bundle to start over. Once I did that, the Time Machine applet forced me to reformat the drive which now only works what looks like daily snapshot sparse bundles. Although I can still see the directory structure in Finder, the drive is only useable with Time Machine now.

Oh, Is this time machine on a local hard drive or over SMB?

 

[Cloudified]

Oh, Is this time machine on a local hard drive or over SMB?

Local Time Machine backups via USB HDD. I'm just stating that the way it has always worked changed for me with the same disk when I decided to start fresh.

 

[anodos]

Local Time Machine backups via USB HDD. I'm just stating that the way it has always worked changed for me with the same disk when I decided to start fresh.

Okay. Over SMB it still does old behavior (at least as-of Monterey).