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Time Machine error

Jamacfer

Jamacfer

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Sep 3, 2015
293
274
京都市
Since updating to Sequoia my Time Machine backups have been failing during night. Every time I wake up the display, I get the same error: "Time Machine did not finish backing up because some files were unavailable. Backups will resume when your Mac is unlocked." My Mac actually never sleeps; I only put the display to sleep. The next backup after waking the display always works.
Anyone is having the same problem?
 
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Same for me. Restart/shutdown didn't fix things. Forcing a backup didn't fit things either.

For me it's hit or miss, but most of the time I get the same error message as you. I'm hoping an update will correct the issue.
 
I had to uninstall and reinstall my TM with the Airport Utility and wait with Prepairing backup for 5 hours before it finally started and then the first sequoia backup took 7 hours to complete.
Some things I did notice, one, the new TM backup hates a Ethernet connection and actually disconnects the TM and fails after about an hour. 2. Using Wifi I turned off the Private Wifi Setting (got a warning) and disconnected the Ethernet cable. This seems to work since the MAC address rotation is turned off, which why in the hell Apple came up with that brilliant plan makes no sense to me since I limit my router access via MAC address and now that doesn't work after each reboot of my iMac.

This is getting so tiresome, not to mention that here in Germany they Gendered the computer with word phrases that aren't listed in any dictionary. To vent a little, this is my last Mac and as soon as it dies I will be switching permanently to linux
 
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Hi guys. Any solution here? Keep getting this annoying error while my Mac Studio is locked: files unavailable. Works fine when unlocked… tried to remove and add the TM setup (even format the whole target disk). Same feeling here: macOS is starting to seriously piss me off, not as much as Windows, but more than Linux for sure…
 
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Keychain Access hasn't been deleted but moved to System/Library/CoreServices/Applications, and should still be working as before. I've updated three Macs to Sequoia and have so far had no issues with Time Machine accessing a Time Capsule. I can't offer any explanation as to why your backups aren't currently working I'm afraid, but I can confirm that all the necessary software is still present and correct in Sequoia.
 
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c0rb4c said:
Hi guys. Any solution here? Keep getting this annoying error while my Mac Studio is locked: files unavailable. Works fine when unlocked… tried to remove and add the TM setup (even format the whole target disk). Same feeling here: macOS is starting to seriously piss me off, not as much as Windows, but more than Linux for sure…
Click to expand...
Same exact issue here. Really annoying. Not seeing a ton of reports about it; this thread one the very few/only…
 
still broken here as well. seems to be even worse, as it doesnt even run anymore even when unlocked...

isnt there anything that can be done?

I am using synology nas, latest patchlevel, ran fine until sequoia.
 
McMario said:
still broken here as well. seems to be even worse, as it doesnt even run anymore even when unlocked...

isnt there anything that can be done?

I am using synology nas, latest patchlevel, ran fine until sequoia.
Click to expand...
Hmmm, mine is still running fine when awake but it's directly connected to my Mac via TB. Might have two different issues presenting themselves here. TM in general and TM over network.
 
McMario said:
still broken here as well. seems to be even worse, as it doesnt even run anymore even when unlocked...

isnt there anything that can be done?

I am using synology nas, latest patchlevel, ran fine until sequoia.
Click to expand...
It's working fine for me. Maybe check your setup?
SpaceRex has an excellent YouTube video about setting up Synology for Time Machine. Here are the key points:


Open Control Panel on your Synology.
Under Shared Folder:

  • Recommend Btrfs filesystem not ExT4 or ExT3
  • Disable Recycle Bin
  • No encryption because we encrypt via MacOS
  • Recommends Data Checksum
  • Disable compression
  • Enable shared folder quota that’s about 1.5x to 2x the size of your drive. You can expand this later but you can’t shrink it.
  • Give the account user Read/Write permission.

Under File Services:
  • Enable SMB and disable AFP. Apple removed AFP support in MacOS Big Sur.
If you use snapshots, limit the Time Machine shared folder on your Synology to one snapshot a week, two or three snapshots max.
 
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Alameda said:
It's working fine for me. Maybe check your setup?
SpaceRex has an excellent YouTube video about setting up Synology for Time Machine. Here are the key points:


Open Control Panel on your Synology.
Under Shared Folder:

  • Recommend Btrfs filesystem not ExT4 or ExT3
  • Disable Recycle Bin
  • No encryption because we encrypt via MacOS
  • Recommends Data Checksum
  • Disable compression
  • Enable shared folder quota that’s about 1.5x to 2x the size of your drive. You can expand this later but you can’t shrink it.
  • Give the account user Read/Write permission.

Under File Services:
  • Enable SMB and disable AFP. Apple removed AFP support in MacOS Big Sur.
If you use snapshots, limit the Time Machine shared folder on your Synology to one snapshot a week, two or three snapshots max.
Click to expand...

thanks, thats a good, comprehensive checklist!

so in my case, all my diskstation have that setup, since quite a few years now. i am using this setup for over ten years, there have been issues once in a while, but righth now it is a catastrophy. since sequoia it is onlx getting worse, lost backups, started new ones, now it is refusing to backup since one week.

firewall off doesnt help anymore since 15.1, its really very disappointing. no excuse if this is an macos problem, this is so much unprofessional....
 
McMario said:
thanks, thats a good, comprehensive checklist!

so in my case, all my diskstation have that setup, since quite a few years now. i am using this setup for over ten years, there have been issues once in a while, but righth now it is a catastrophy. since sequoia it is onlx getting worse, lost backups, started new ones, now it is refusing to backup since one week.

firewall off doesnt help anymore since 15.1, its really very disappointing. no excuse if this is an macos problem, this is so much unprofessional....
Click to expand...
I had a glitch with mine today. Time Machine couldn’t find the backup drive. I even mounted it on my desktop and it couldn’t find it!

Rebooting the Mac fixed it.
 
Same for me.The log shows `(TimeMachine) [com.apple.TimeMachine:General] '/Volumes/software' does not support SMB FullFSync`,but i have deleted the first backup file(which used smb,and failed too),and used the hardware disk.The only thing i got is the error message.
 
I have the same issue here. I decided to update from MacOS Sonoma to Sequoia 15.1 and suddenly I woke up to see the "Time Machine did not finish backing up because some files were unavailable. Backups will resume when your Mac is unlocked" message.

This is my first time I receive this ever.
 
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Hi there,

after some weeks now I came across this official Apple Support document:

If you can't back up or restore your Mac using Time Machine - Apple Support

If Time Machine says that it can't use your backup disk to back up or restore your files, try these solutions.
support.apple.com support.apple.com

It says: "...backup is delayed because some files are unavailable, make sure that your backup disk is available and your Mac is unlocked. ..."

There it is! Apple officially suggests you should have your Mac UNLOCKED to perform a proper backup.

I find this a rather strange approach to "fixing" the problem, by declaring it "normal" to have your Mac unlocked while backing up.

This is totally ridiculous... I will not even try to think of all the crap that comes with such recommendations.
 
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McMario said:
Hi there,

after some weeks now I came across this official Apple Support document:

If you can't back up or restore your Mac using Time Machine - Apple Support

If Time Machine says that it can't use your backup disk to back up or restore your files, try these solutions.
support.apple.com support.apple.com

It says: "...backup is delayed because some files are unavailable, make sure that your backup disk is available and your Mac is unlocked. ..."

There it is! Apple officially suggests you should have your Mac UNLOCKED to perform a proper backup.

I find this a rather strange approach to "fixing" the problem, by declaring it "normal" to have your Mac unlocked while backing up.

This is totally ridiculous... I will not even try to think of all the crap that comes with such recommendations.
Click to expand...
I just updated both my iMac M3 and wife MBA M2 15”. Both has external HD attached and MBA is set to never sleep, iMac sleep after 10min. The screen turns off and lock after 10 min. My iMac shows this message since the update. Her MBA has not shown this message since update. Both have no 3 rd party utilities running. Pretty much just the OS plain. I don’t know why mine is doing that and hers is not.
 
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kagharaht said:
I just updated both my iMac M3 and wife MBA M2 15”. Both has external HD attached and MBA is set to never sleep, iMac sleep after 10min. The screen turns off and lock after 10 min. My iMac shows this message since the update. Her MBA has not shown this message since update. Both have no 3 rd party utilities running. Pretty much just the OS plain. I don’t know why mine is doing that and hers is not.
Click to expand...

Isn't that exactly what the support-document says:

- iMac sleeps / locks after 10 min --> backup shows error
- MBA never sleeps / locks --> no backup problem

this would be exactly what I would expect after reading (the quote from) the support document.

In other words: According to Apple, this behaviour is expected - not a bug :)
 
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McMario said:
Isn't that exactly what the support-document says:

- iMac sleeps / locks after 10 min --> backup shows error
- MBA never sleeps / locks --> no backup problem

this would be exactly what I would expect after reading (the quote from) the support document.

In other words: According to Apple, this behaviour is expected - not a bug :)
Click to expand...
That's really a stupid expected behavior. LOL So Apple changed it so that you can't back up while sleeping with Silicon Mac unlike in Sonoma? Because in Sonoma it can do that and now in Sequoia PowerNap is disabled for Time Machine to backup? That doesn't make any sense at all. As an experiment I turned off sleep on my iMac M3 and the Time Machine error message didn't come up.

"When your Mac is plugged into a power adapter, Power Nap can also do activities such as downloading software updates and performing Time Machine backups."
 
kagharaht said:
That's really a stupid expected behavior. LOL So Apple changed it so that you can't back up while sleeping with Silicon Mac unlike in Sonoma? Because in Sonoma it can do that and now in Sequoia PowerNap is disabled for Time Machine to backup? That doesn't make any sense at all. As an experiment I turned off sleep on my iMac M3 and the Time Machine error message didn't come up.

"When your Mac is plugged into a power adapter, Power Nap can also do activities such as downloading software updates and performing Time Machine backups."
Click to expand...

I know, it is ridiculous.

Wait, no, it's worse...: Apple silently slipped this "unlock for TM to function" into the documentation, which means they KNEW about this all along. Which is a catastrophe in many ways
- backup is nearly impossible for most of my macs because they cannot remain unlocked all the time (OF COURSE NOT!)
- Apple had hte choice to fix it, but chose to silently roll this into a public release, knowing all the effects; which means: they obviously don't care
- also, since the chose to release it, they obviously do not have a fix for this in the drawer; how can this be, since it has been working for years (well, yeah, most of the time)

All in all, this really stinks.
 
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Ok this is weird. On the MBA M2 15" it works perfectly fine in any mode. TM HD is plugged directly into the port. On the iMac M3 the stupid error keeps popping up no matter how I change the Mode and it's plugged in directly. Sleep, No Sleep, Low Power Mode, Normal Power Mode, Different Port on the back of the iMac. Nothing works. I get that stupid error! I may have to just turn off TM for now and unplug the drive.
 
So, I read through that Apple Community post and I used the "log show --info --style compact --predicate '(subsystem == "com.apple.TimeMachine")' --last 24h" command and started browsing.

I spotted this as the potential problem on my own backups while the screen is off. I found other errors but this specific one seems to be the one that, if it happens, results in a failed backup and a notification. The log is very long but 3 times I found the specific combo of this first error leading to a failed backup and notification.

2024-12-01 10:53:45.594 E backupd[565:17bbe7] [com.apple.TimeMachine:FileProtection] Failed to acquire device lock assertion for '/Volumes/com.apple.TimeMachine.localsnapshots/Backups.backupdb/systemname/2024-12-01-105313/Data/Users/username/Library/Containers/com.apple.findmy.FindMyWidgetPeople/Data/SystemData/com.apple.chrono/timelines/com.apple.findmy.FindMyWidgetPeople/systemSmall--2050817267050937663----164.00w--164.00h--20.00r--0f--0.00t-0.00l-0.00b0.00t.chrono-timeline' (assertion state: <dropped>), error: Error Domain=NSPOSIXErrorDomain Code=1 "Operation not permitted"

miscellaneous informational messages related to wrapping up the backup attempt

2024-12-01 10:53:53.963 E backupd[565:17bdbb] [com.apple.TimeMachine:BackupDispatching] Backup failed: BACKUP_DELAYED_UNFINISHED_PROTECTED_FILES (104)

2024-12-01 10:53:53.964 E backupd[565:17bdbb] [com.apple.TimeMachine:General] com.apple.backupd.xpc: connection invalid

2024-12-01 10:53:54.053 E TMHelperAgent[23888:17be5c] [com.apple.TimeMachine:General] com.apple.TMHelperAgent.DeliverNotification: connection invalid

The yellow is just things I changed for privacy or brevity sake.

Anyway, this appears to be related to the FindMy widget I had on my desktop. I've removed it now and will see over time if this resolves the issue.

My question for everyone else is, do you have a FindMy widget on your Desktop or in your Notification Widgets? This is the only permission error I could find. It could be specific to the FindMy widget or that could just happen to be the file that is causing me issues.
 
Oh I don't have any widgets on my iMac M3 or wife's MBA M2 15". At least for now its not corrupting TM Backup and drive or creating humongous System Data files when TM gets corrupted.
 
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