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TIL: Apple Broke Time Machine Again on Tahoe

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Re: TIL: Apple Broke Time Machine Again on Tahoe

#131

Post by Derbasti »

Aurornis wrote: post #81
codeulike wrote: post #32

Time Machine is held in high regard for some reason (maybe the fancy scrolling interface when you look for files to restore?) but it's not really useable. It pretends that backups-over-the-network are a possibility but its completely unstable over the network and invariably decides the backup is corrupt after a few months and then tells you you have to start from scratch.

> Time Machine is held in high regard for some reason (maybe the fancy scrolling interface when you look for files to restore?) There was a time in the past when Time Machine was reliable and well-designed. It made backups into a nice experience that were accessible to everyone. If your only experience with Time Machine is the modern incarnation with all of the flaws and seemingly missing QA process then I understand…

Exactly my experience. I've used TimeMachine with external USB drives, Apple's own TimeCapsule router (am I remembering that name correctly?), and various NASes. None of them could maintain a stable backup for a year. And you know, a backup that can't back up, isn't a backup.

I have since implemented a borg backup. This also failed at one point, but at least its five-year record remained readable, so no data was lost. Now I'm using restic.

Re: TIL: Apple Broke Time Machine Again on Tahoe

#133

Post by rcarmo »

fmajid wrote: post #74
rcarmo wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hi! OP here. No, that was not it. Time Machine just quietly failed to do any backups and I failed to notice they weren't happening.

I use a self-hosted healthchecks.io watchdog timer instance to monitor jobs like these and alert if they don’t complete. Of course TimeMachine doesn’t have a way to signal successful completion, unlike, say, Carbon Copy Cloner. Given Apple software quality’s accelerating downward trend, I’d suggest switching to rsync/rclone instead, or Borg/Kopia if you want GUI-driven restores for non-technical members of your famil…

I am using Borg Backup on Fedora, so that’s coming.

Re: TIL: Apple Broke Time Machine Again on Tahoe

#134

Post by atombender »

ezfe wrote: post #124
atombender wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's reliable except when it's not. I'm using Mojave, and currently fighting a bug where a local snapshot gets stuck. When I list the local snapshots, I see the old one, then a gap of several days, and then additional snapshots. From what I can tell, this snapshot is preventing space reclamation. The last month or so, I've constantly run out of disk space even when not doing anything special. As in actually run out o…

Mojave is 7 years old so I think its safe to say you can't generalize

I meant Sequoia, but I can't edit my comment anymore. I've completely lost track of the OS releases after they stopped emphasizing the number.

Re: TIL: Apple Broke Time Machine Again on Tahoe

#135

Post by grandinj »

I suspect that Time Machine is no longer used by a sufficiently large % of their customer base for them to care, and they are slowly sunsetting it. They are quite aggressive about that sort of thing, so I expect it to to deprecated in favour of iCloud soon.

Re: TIL: Apple Broke Time Machine Again on Tahoe

#137

Post by fmajid »

rcarmo wrote: post #133
fmajid wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use a self-hosted healthchecks.io watchdog timer instance to monitor jobs like these and alert if they don’t complete. Of course TimeMachine doesn’t have a way to signal successful completion, unlike, say, Carbon Copy Cloner. Given Apple software quality’s accelerating downward trend, I’d suggest switching to rsync/rclone instead, or Borg/Kopia if you want GUI-driven restores for non-technical members of your famil…

I am using Borg Backup on Fedora, so that’s coming.

Yes, just saw your post on Vorta. I myself am ditching Apple platforms due to creeping enshittification, but I doubt my wife will.

Re: TIL: Apple Broke Time Machine Again on Tahoe

#138

Post by H8crilA »

rcarmo wrote: post #65
H8crilA wrote: post #13

The author posted a fix, but how do I check if there is a problem in the first place?

Hi! OP here. In my case Time Machine stopped doing backups to the server, period, and would keep silently refusing to do so. I encourage you to check backups are happening.

Thanks - I can see why you skipped writing this, backups not happening at all is obviously a failure :). At least if you ever look there ...

Re: TIL: Apple Broke Time Machine Again on Tahoe

#139

Post by hoherd »

compiler-devel wrote: post #85
pier25 wrote: post #3

macOS yearly updates haven't been great since they started but Tahoe is a new low. Apple really needs to turn things around.

Sometime around High Sierra, I changed my habit such that I don't upgrade to the next major release until August. By then, it's been patched a half dozen times or so. Yes, I'm basically a year behind all the time, but I don't need the new features.

Tahoe has made it so I will return to this upgrade strategy. I regret upgrading to Tahoe almost every day. If nothing else, the music apps on macOS and iOS cause me almost daily headaches.

Re: TIL: Apple Broke Time Machine Again on Tahoe

#140

Post by hoherd »

lemonwaterlime wrote: post #64

I had so many corrupted Time Machine backups over the years that I eventually just wrote an incremental backup script in rsync. I’m much happier. Something like [1] can be inspiration. [1]: https://github.com/perfacilis/backup

I had the exact same experience and did the exact same thing. I also moved my backups from HFS+ to zfs, and got more serious about my backup strategy.

If I had to start over I'd go with rustic-rs or borg backup.

FWIW I do still use `tmutil localsnapshot` for local macOS snapshots where you can use the Time Machine UI to restore files.

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