More console detail, will submit as bug
Thanks Mr. Retrofire,
I double checked that the drive partition is HFS+ (OS X extended, case-sensitive, journaled). It is.
I confirmed volume ownership with the terminal command. That worked.
I restarted TM and get the same problem at the same point.
There is some other chatter on the console that I had assumed wasn't related, but it may be. So in the interest of more complete disclosure, here are some other messages. The timestamps are preserved, so you can see the sequence:
5/30/12 4:56:23.370 PM com.apple.backupd: Starting standard backup
5/30/12 4:56:23.475 PM com.apple.backupd: Backing up to: /Volumes/T3/Backups.backupdb
5/30/12 4:58:03.044 PM com.apple.backupd: Backup content size: 455.3 GB excluded items size: 88.3 GB for volume Macintosh HD
5/30/12 4:58:03.318 PM com.apple.backupd: 440.35 GB required (including padding), 2.61 TB available
5/30/12 4:58:03.330 PM com.apple.backupd: Waiting for index to be ready (101)
5/30/12 4:58:15.056 PM com.apple.revisiond: [ERROR] genstore_chunk_interface.m:GSChunkedFilesSatisfyReadRequest:423 no chunk store for fsid 234881030 fileid 209 offset 0 size 65536
5/30/12 4:58:30.057 PM com.apple.revisiond: [ERROR] genstore_chunk_interface.m:GSChunkedFilesSatisfyReadRequest:423 no chunk store for fsid 234881030 fileid 209 offset 65536 size 62045
5/30/12 4:58:30.000 PM kernel: /SourceCache/AppleFSCompression/AppleFSCompression-37/Compressors/Dataless/compressorType5Kext.c:532: Error: post_request error for /Volumes/T3/Backups.backupdb/jbenniMac/2012-05-30-160241.inProgress/85CE1122-6471-4A46-AA6E-A279496FC595/Macintosh HD/.DocumentRevisions-V100-bad-1/PerUID/501/1/com.apple.documentVersions/A6B83243-607F-49F8-B959-0DDE4EA2EAFC.pdf: 35
5/30/12 4:58:30.000 PM kernel: decmpfs.c:1309:decmpfs_read_compressed: decmpfs_fetch_uncompressed_data err -35
... repetitions of similar messages at frequent intervals ...
When I canceled TM (clicked "stop backup" in the progress bar) I got more logging:
5/30/12 5:00:30.128 PM revisiond: send response: Invalid argument
5/30/12 5:00:30.128 PM com.apple.revisiond: [ERROR] 181f1dcb21be [12/05/30 17:00:30.127] 72. _CSChunkRefsForToken:2425 _CSChunkRefsForToken sqlite3_step returned: 101 unknown error, for listToken: 5572
5/30/12 5:00:30.128 PM com.apple.revisiond: [ERROR] genstore_chunk_interface.m:-[GSChunkedFilesEntry updateEntry:]:305 CSCopyChunkIDsForToken failed for 5572
5/30/12 5:00:30.128 PM com.apple.revisiond: [ERROR] genstore_chunk_interface.m:-[GSChunkedFilesEntry _initWithPath:chunkStore:]:326 updateEntry for new entry /.DocumentRevisions-V100-bad-1/PerUID/501/118/com.apple.documentVersions/245A73B8-715A-41C8-AC92-14D37FB20C47.m failed
5/30/12 5:00:30.128 PM com.apple.revisiond: [ERROR] genstore_chunk_interface.m:assembleInfoForOffset:376 no entry for '/.DocumentRevisions-V100-bad-1/PerUID/501/118/com.apple.documentVersions/245A73B8-715A-41C8-AC92-14D37FB20C47.m'
5/30/12 5:00:30.128 PM com.apple.revisiond: [ERROR] genstore_chunk_interface.m:GSChunkedFilesSatisfyReadRequest:439 failed assembleInfoForOffset for fsid 234881026 fileid 118644920 offset 0 size 3391 (path /.DocumentRevisions-V100-bad-1/PerUID/501/118/com.apple.documentVersions/245A73B8-715A-41C8-AC92-14D37FB20C47.m)
5/30/12 5:00:30.129 PM com.apple.backupd: Copied 26 files (147.0 MB) from volume Macintosh HD.
5/30/12 5:00:30.130 PM mds: (Error) Volume: Could not find requested backup type:2 for volume
5/30/12 5:00:30.660 PM com.apple.backupd: Backup canceled.
I assumed the revisiond messages were unrelated, but I'd hate to omit important context.
At this point, I'm stumped and the experts don't seem to recognize anything obviously wrong. So I'd still welcome any and all suggestions, but unless someone sees something soon I'll report it to Apple as a bug and see if they accept it.
Thanks for your response!