Fixing a simple Time Machine error
This morning I nudged the mouse on my Mac Pro and was welcomed with the following window:
Funny thing is that the dialog has an OK button. It's really not OK. Why not? Because it didn't tell me where the problem was.
As I've said before, I love the simplicity of Time Machine, though presenting an error message like this is not very helpful. Something - anything - to indicate what went wrong would be a good idea. I accept that you don't want to scare off the non-techies with a detailed error message but having a little "more" link that described what the problem is would have helped.
Rather than investigate I decided to go with the flow. I clicked the OK button and then told Time Machine to back up now. It happily whirred away and looked like everything was fine, then at the very end up popped the failure notification again. Crap.
I did what I always do when something unexpected happens on my computer: I Google'd up the error message. There were a number of solutions offered up, many involving reformatting the TM drive. I felt that was a little drastic so I looked into the Backup drive in Finder and saw that the last folder was:
2008-05-30-064104.inProgress
I dragged that folder into the Trash can and was prompted for my login credentials. The file was whisked away and I asked Time Machine to do another backup and it proceeded fine.
Finding out what happened
Wanting to understand why this occurred I popped around looking for logs. In reviewing the current System Log (/var/log/system.log) I found entries that indicated one of my Growl plugins had a problem being written to the backup. Once that occurred the "in progress" backup file was corrupted and needed to be deleted in order for Time Machine to continue.
I'm not sure what caused the problem. The backup and main disks appear to be operating fine; I ran Disk Utility's Verify Disk on both and they came up clean. Perhaps a Growl notification opened the plugin in mid-read? Not too sure but it all seems fine now.
If you happen to get the error message above you may want to just check your backup volumes to see if you've got an open backup that's listed as In Progress, even though Time Machine is not running. Try deleting that to see if it allows your backups to continue. At least that's what worked for me!
Comments
You just switched a few month ago, and now, I learn ton of good tricks from you.
Thanks so much for sharing
Fred
(I switched in 1984 ;-)))
You can also go to File and make a new database query in the normal Smart Folder interface way if you keep checking for the same thing.
OS X not only has Spotlight, but a great search mentality integrated into everything. Tools like the way Console app works, or searching through a bijillion preferences to find one would have been real handy back in my Windows admin days.
However in my case just manually kicking off the backup again with "Backup Now" resulted in a successful backup.
There are a TON of us who are getting a Time Machine error since upgrading to 10.5.3 - read this post:
http://www.jeffmccord.org/?p=207
If any of you know how I fixed it, PLEASE let me know! There are a ton of Apple forum posters who are getting these errors and it's driving us crazy!
Like Fred I switched in '84.
Here's a zipped Applescript that'll pull the info from the last (or current) backup for you. It even gets backups whose logs span files (If you're up that early. The author often is.)
http://homepage.mac.com/jimhoyt/erickson/tm_log.zip
Cheers,
Jim
: )
Why don't you read "Playing Media Rant - when will this get better?" comment?
I was also having problems with the drive at the time so its possible that the hardware problems were actually what was causing the errors. It may have been a coincidence that the drive was running out of space at the same time.
Still, I would check the space and make sure there is enough.
I also had some issues with my TM drive and permissions. For some reason the drive was read-only for a short while. Rebooting OS X seemed to fix that, but I couldn't eject the drive even after turning off Time Machine.
Hopefully 10.5.3 will address some of these issues so that better error reporting can be displayed.
TM Drive:
931GB Capacity
595GB Available
Man, I love 1TB drives!
Thanks again.
what happend? pls help thanks
I hope this helps Max.
Have you heard of http://www.jungledisk.com/ ?
It's powered by Amazon's S3 hosting solution, and allows you to easily backup to the "cloud". You pay Amazon a very small fee (you'll be surprised how cheap) per GB stored and transmitted (see the calculator http://calculator.s3.amazonaws.com/calc5.html ) and then you are safe in the knowledge that in the result of a fire/flood/burglary that caused you to lose both your computer and your time machine backup, you would not lose any data. For example, 10Gb of storage would cost you 1.50 USD per month. Transferring this data (a one off event) would cost 1 USD!
You can use it in a number of ways. For example, you can use it to simply mount a drive in Finder/ Windows Explorer (similar to Dot Mac/Me). Or you can use the software to create automatic incremental backups every night at a certain time.
One of the best things about Jungle Disk is that it makes the interaction with Amazon's servers easy. Furthermore, once you pay for the Mac version, you get the Windows and Linux versions too, creating great opportunities for cross-machine synchronisation, whatever the platform. Also, you can use the software so that your files are encrypted on the Amazon server, meaning that even if someone were to break into Amazon, your files would be safe.
I'm planning on using this in addition to Time Machine. This for the really important stuff + Time Machine for everything looks like a great combo.
-- Lennie
Anyway, I just wanted to say that your link was the 1st one on the page and it sounded exactly like my problem, so I decided to follow your advise and delete that pesky file (inprogress) I'm running backup again right now and am hoping for better results. I'll let you all know how I make out.
Thanks for the tip.
Just wanted to stop back in and let you folks know that it worked. I was able to complete a new backup after deleting that file. Thanks again for the tip.
Thanks
James
Now enter "backupd" in the filter text area in the top right to see all of the Time Machine related messages. That should give you an idea of what is actually happening with Time Machine and give you a clue as to why it may be skipping backups. Hope this helps...
So, bottom line: Time Machine will not backup automatically every hour. I can't find this behavior identified anywhere on the WWW.
Help!
Thanks
James
I also found a little application called TimeMachineScheduler that you may want to try to see if that will work for you. Drop a note in here to let me know if you find a solution!
Several weeks ago I installed Time Machine Editor. I thought this was messing with the time so I deleted it and restored the defaults by restoring Time Machine's LaunchDaemons in the system library from an earlier backup. but I missed a File: /user/library/preference/com.timeSoftware.timeMachineEditor
I opened that file using "Pref Setter"
and found that the "startinterval" was set to 14400. That's 4 hours. I reset it to 3600. At 12:02pm the next scheduled backup came an went without any backup. Somewhere there's a file, maybe invisible, that's set to backup every 4 hours so I'll wait until 2:02pm to see if it does a backup.
Thanks
James
I have a very big and important problem and need urgent help.
I have a time machine backup file that was not terminated correctly. It has the ending .inprogress I need to restore that file by all means. Does anybody have an idea how i can do that. There are videos in there that are not storeda anywhere else and are extremly important. The .inprogress file is 194 GB bis, so hopefully tyhe videos would be there...
PLEASE HELP !!!
I have a very big and important problem and need urgent help.
I have a time machine backup file that was not terminated correctly. It has the ending .inprogress I need to restore that file by all means. Does anybody have an idea how i can do that. There are videos in there that are not storeda anywhere else and are extremly important. The .inprogress file is 194 GB bis, so hopefully tyhe videos would be there...
PLEASE HELP !!!
Thanks, Estephan
Any confirmation out there?
I am running a 24" aluminum iMac. I'll look into removing Growl and see .. but don't have high hopes for that.
Apple ... please please fix this issue!
-Rees
Rebooting Time Machine didn't help and I wasn't able to delete the in progress file even as admin (or via command line using sudo.) Only after rebooting my Mac did it start working. Maybe it's as simple as remounting the backup volume in some cases?
For as many solutions as I've heard to the issue I have a feeling there is more than one cause. I'd start with the easy ones first (like rebooting your Mac and the Time Machine) before you start deleting your old backups.
HTH
Chris
I am using 10.5.6 with an external HD.
My error message says it cannot access the Desktop folder. How can I get rid of this and start fresh with the Desktop backup?
I've changed it now in accordance with the info here:
http://support.apple.com/kb/TS1550
Thanks everyone.
I appreciate the help!!
Looks like Apple fixed this somewhere along the way....maybe 10.5.7?
TM will still error out....however, instead of failing and presenting the useless dialog box, it will now just retry the backup.
-Kevin
I can't believe it - what a huge help this is. I search Apple and other sites to determine what the problem was. Once I found your posting I had the problem fixed in moments.
Thank you so much for your help!
Sara
After looking at the Console information (as per previous tips) I determined that my DROPBOX application was preventing my TM backups. I turned off Dropbox and voila ... everything worked like it should. I didn't even have to delete the progress file. I also run Growl 1.2 which seemed not to affect anything.
Got the error, checked the backupd log messages, found out it was an old iMovie project that was tripping it up, put that on the Do Not Back Up list, and now it's running again. It's already further along and seems to be running faster as well.
Time Machine Buddy
It's a free widget that shows recent Time Machine logs.
http://www.apple.com/downloads/dashboard/status/timemachinebuddy.html
Hope this helps, too.
wpns
I just dumped the com.apple.timemachine prefs in ~/Library/Preferences/ and then Restart. Some other helpful solutions at apple knowledge base: http://support.apple.com/kb/ht3275#3
Good luck.
RB
Path: /Applications/Footballmanager/Football Manager 2010/fm.app/Contents/MacOS/fm
Identifier: com.sigames.eur.FootballManager2010
Version: 10 . 1 (10 . 1 . 0 f 84713)
Code Type: X86 (Native)
Parent Process: launchd [82]
Date/Time: 2010-09-03 02:47:27.123 +0530
OS Version: Mac OS X 10.6.4 (10F569)
Report Version: 6
Interval Since Last Report: 377 sec
Crashes Since Last Report: 1
Per-App Interval Since Last Report: 1 sec
Per-App Crashes Since Last Report: 1
Anonymous UUID: 7FC4D7A2-B3EB-4A3F-AE7C-332E2F92BAF8
Exception Type: EXC_BAD_ACCESS (SIGBUS)
Exception Codes: KERN_PROTECTION_FAILURE at 0x0000000000000000
Crashed Thread: 4
can u help make a head or tail of this error..?? what shud i do??!
Thanks David!
NYT version: My wife finally filled up the HD on older G5. I wanted to install a new larger internal HD, she wanted to go shopping for new external HD (her logic is that she is getting a new Mac later this year so she rather just move her data via the external). So the crazy set-up is a 320GB OWC 800-firewire (used with SuperDuper!), a 640GB WD (for all data files, apps stay on the internal HD) and a 2TB WD for Time Machine. TM did the back ups fine the first week I set all of this up, then all of a sudden it started bombing out with that nebulous Microsoft-like error. I wasted this past Fri, Sat & Sun messing with a dozen different settings trying to undo what I thought I screwed up and get things working correctly. I played a round-robin with my files as I reformatted all of the HDs. I re-re-re-set permissions. I did several things other forums suggested. THIS was the only post I found with the right answer. (Use Elvis voice) Thank you. Thank you very much.
~ Will in DC (bilingual PC/Mac since 2008 as my graphics artist wife is sooooo non-technical)
My time machine stopped working mysteriously about 2 weeks ago. After pulling my hair in frustration for a while and combing the apple support forums i stumbled across this blog and finally found my fix.
Here's what worked:
-disabling growl (i know, right?)
Yup. It was as stupid as that. Thanks Apple.
Great post, thanks for sharing.
I have been having a problem completing a Time Machine backup for a couple weeks.
Snow Leopard - 10.6.7
Per this thread, I was able to delete the "In Progress" file, have restarted the computer numerous times and the backup is still failing.
What next?
Thanks in advance
Hector
If you can't find a specific file that's causing the problem it may be that your Time Machine drive is out of disk space or failing in general. Run Disk Utility on it and see if something obvious comes up. If these steps don't give you a solution, may be time to reformat / replace your Time Machine drive.
Good luck!
Thanks for the advice and suggestions. I looked at the console log but nothing stood out. I have Tech Tools Pro and I ran a "File Structure" test on both the Time Machine Drive and my Mac HD drive that is being backed up by Time Machine. Tech Tools reported 2 files on the Mac HD drive that are either corrupt or contain invalid data. One is a .plist file and the other is .png
Based on what they are and their location, my best guess is that these files have been there for a long time and my Time Machine problem started recently so I am not sure if they are the culprits. The TM "drive" is a 1.25TB partition on a 2TB external drive.
Tech Tools is not reporting any other problems.
Do you have any other suggestions?
Dumb question - If I reformat or replace the TM drive is their any way to save the backup data or do I just run a full backup right away in which case I will lose historical data, I think.
Thanks again
Hector
If that still doesn't give you an indication, you're probably best off reformatting that drive partition and starting from scratch. Given the low cost of multi-TB drives you may want to go out and get a Firewire 800 or USB 2+ external HD that you can use as a rotating spare.
I personally have two drives for backup within my Mac Pro and rotate them occasionally, then an external drive that I pull out of a fireproof safe every couple of months and copy all of my key data over to it; between 10 years of digital photos and video, I don't want to lose it.
Hope this helps...
I beleive I have the answer. After looking at the console messages again I noticed error messages for files that make up Photoshop plugins. These files are from a product from On One software.
Long story short, I visited the On One support page and they are aware of this problem For now they suggest excluding their files from the backup until they figure out the problem. I will try this tomorrow.
FWIW here is a link to their support page with more info: http://www.ononesoftware.com/support/
Thanks again for your help.
Hector
When you run Repair Disk on your OS drives you mentioned that it always has a ton of permissions that it has to fix - is that every time? If you tell it to repair permissions, then you fire it back up, do you get the same errors it needs to fix? If so, check to ensure you are logged in as an admin on the machine.
This doesn't sound so much as a Time Machine error as something wrong w/ either your drive or permissions. Hope this helps...
The drive that is showing lots of fixed permissions is my OS drive. i do think it has issues. However, it backed up just fine. I read a tip elsewhere that someone booted off the OS cd, ran permissions repair, repaired the disk, and then ran permissions repair again and it got rid of all the 'sticky' fixes. Unfortunately that didn't work for me- its still goes through all of them. Worth a shot, though. I'm not positive i'm logged in as admin, truthfully. When i set up the mac, since i'm the main/only user, i set it up as one user. Doe sit automatically have an admin set up? Sorry i'm don't have as high a level of knowledge in tech stuff as many of your posters. Thanks so much for your help!!
Did a couple more experiments and it definitely does not like that one drive now, period. At least i'm getting back ups of everything else. Frankly, that's the best one to exclude anyhow.
sudo rm .inProgress
It will prompt you for your administrative password.
Hope this helps...
will try the Terminal option! what's the CD command?
(mac name):~ hannah$
will be your prompt. From their you can use the cd command to navigate to the folder where your time machine backups (and the .inProgress file) is stored.
Open a terminal window and enter:
cd (followed by a space)
Then press Command-V to paste the path from the clipboard. Hit enter and that should take you into the folder where your .inProgress file is located. From there you should be able to do the:
sudo rm .inProgress
command to remove the file.
9 years from first post and this still helps!
Running OS X 10.5.4 Server, and had the same error.
Ran a manual backup just fine.
This morning deleted the prefs, restarted, and Time Machine is happily doing automatic backups.
[Was glad I didn't have to go into Console. :-) ]
THANK YOU!