Hi Matt, Thanks for your response.
I do use SuperDuper. I run it each night to clone my system SSD to an external hard drive. However, I run SuperDuper in the middle of the night (and it only runs for 10-15 minutes), while the skipped backups in Time Machine often happen in the middle of the day, way after SuperDuper has finished. Also, I have been doing this for years, and this Time Machine problem only started recently, maybe the last few weeks, which coincides with when I upgraded from Yosemite to Sierra. I have looked at the Console app, but I did not see much of anything (Time Machine related or otherwise). I wondered about file system corruption, which is why I re-ran the 10.12.6 combo updater. Since it ran, rather than saying I was already up to date, I assumed it found something to change. This seemed to solve my problem for a few days, but then the problem came back again. I don't have Disk Warrior. Would that work better than re-running the combo updater? Thanks, Gregg From: Matt Penna <[email protected]> Date: Monday, July 31, 2017 at 10:39 AM To: "[email protected]" <[email protected]> Subject: Re: Time Machine stops backing up This is admittedly a long shot, but do you use SuperDuper? I use that to clone my Time Machine drive for redundant backups, and while the clone is running, Time Machine does not attempt to backup. I recall that on the rare occasion when SuperDuper didn't exit gracefully, I had Time Machine issues afterwards, but these were always temporary. Are you using any kind of disk cloning or backup software that might cause similar behavior? Are there any clues in Console as to whether Time Machine is attempting to back up and running into an error? (Though good luck finding such information. Allow me to join the chorus of people who think Sierra's Console is a useless abomination.) Could there be file system corruption in play? If you have DiskWarrior, perhaps try running that on all source and Time Machine target disks just to eliminate the possibility. -Matt On Sun, Jul 30, 2017 at 9:13 PM, Dinse, Gregg (NIH/NIEHS) [C] <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: Well, I'm not sure whether being connected to a UPS has anything to do with my problem, but my Mac Pro knows it's connected to a UPS. There is a USB cable running between the two, so that must explain it. The USB cable allows the UPS to tell the Mac to shutdown gracefully if it's been on battery power for a specified amount of time. As confirmation, when I look at the Energy Saver panel in Preferences.app on my Mac Pro (which is connected to the UPS), there are 2 tabs -- one for Power and one for UPS. On another mac that is not connected to a UPS, there is only a single tab that says Power. Again, I don't know if that is related to my problem. Gregg -----Original Message----- From: Macs R We [mailto:[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>] Sent: Sunday, July 30, 2017 7:05 PM To: Dinse, Gregg (NIH/NIEHS) [C] <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> Cc: [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> Subject: Re: Time Machine stops backing up I can't imagine how your Mac could even detect that it was plugged into a UPS (or a surge protector, or a gas generator) as opposed to a wall socket, so I really doubt the usefulness of that avenue of inquiry. Given the novelty of Power Nap, it's possible that the effective semantics of "com.apple.TimeMachine RequiresACPower" have changed from they were previously, and may now possibly be insufficient for your purpose. > On Jul 30, 2017, at 2:53 PM, Dinse, Gregg (NIH/NIEHS) [C] > <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: > > Thanks for the tip. I'll keep TimeMachine Editor in mind as a third party > fix if I don't find a solution. > > Do you think Power Nap is causing this problem? I suppose I could turn it > off and see if that solves my problem. Supposedly Time Machine keeps running > with Power Nap on IF THE MAC IS PLUGGED INTO AN OUTLET. My mac (a 2013 Mac > Pro) is plugged into a UPS, which is plugged into an outlet. One of the > things I found earlier had to do with macs not being directly plugged into an > outlet, so maybe that is the problem. Supposedly the command I listed below > fixes that problem, but I'll try turning off Power Nap and see if that works. > > Thanks, > > Gregg > > -----Original Message----- > From: Macs R We [mailto:[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>] > Sent: Sunday, July 30, 2017 5:38 PM > To: Dinse, Gregg (NIH/NIEHS) [C] > <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> > Cc: [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> > Subject: Re: Time Machine stops backing up > > Try TimeMachine Editor (free) to impose a "manual" schedule outside Time > Machine. It won't technically "fix" your problem with native Time Machine, > but it might force your way around it. At the minimum, you may get a more > informative error message if it also fails. > >> On Jul 30, 2017, at 1:40 PM, Dinse, Gregg (NIH/NIEHS) [C] >> <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: >> >> Hi, >> >> About 2 weeks ago, I upgraded from Yosemite (10.10.5) to Sierra (10.12.6). I >> believe that this is when my trouble started. >> >> Until recently, whenever I looked at the Time Machine panel in >> Preferences.app, it would show times for the latest backup and the next >> backup that were roughly an hour apart, as expected. Now when I look, it >> has often been several hour (maybe even 12 or more) since the last backup. >> If I tell it to backup now, it backs up. However, an hour from then, the >> next backup time often jumps by an hour but the latest backup time stays the >> same. In some cases, I think it performs a backup eventually, but certainly >> not every hour. I don't recall if it has gone for days without a backup, >> but I think it has. >> >> Does anyone know how to fix this? My disk has plenty of space left. >> >> I have tried several suggestions that I found online, but so far none have >> helped. I unchecked and then rechecked the Back Up Automatically button. I >> deselected and then reselected the drive used for Time Machine backups. I >> rebooted many times. I ran the following command from Terminal: >> >> sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.TimeMachine >> RequiresACPower 0 >> >> Supposedly all of these "fixes" have helped some people with this problem, >> but they have not worked for me. >> >> In case something was corrupt in the 10.12.6 combo update, I ran that again. >> Things seemed to work for a few days, so I thought that fixed it, but now >> the problem is back again. Does anyone have any other suggestions? >> >> Thanks, >> >> Gregg > _______________________________________________ MacOSX-talk mailing list [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> http://www.omnigroup.com/mailman/listinfo/macosx-talk
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