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Trouble Shooting


Networks: Backing up to Networks such as AFP ,CIFS, SMB, NAS, an airdisk, or Time Capsule types of file systems may have unpredictable results due to the fact that they don't handle file permissions and other attributes that rsync uses to compare files with. Copying personal files may work OK in these situations, or not at all, depending on the type of setup. It is often possible to copy files to these Networks but incremental backups will not work properly, each time copying everything instead of just the changes. Incremental backups do work, sometimes, when "pulling" from the destination rather than copying to them. System clones will not work at all. Similarly using and airdisk or Time Capsule may not work as expected (see the Time Capsule bug below.)

Note: There have been changes to backupList+ that allow for better fidelity with network backups. See the network page.

Issues with the new recovery HD option

Under most circumstances, if you select to have backupList+ copy the Recovery HD partition along with a system clone type of backup, it will work perfectly. There are many factors which might thwart the process however. If the desination drive can not be unmounted or is full or not formatted correctly the Recovery partition may fail to copy. If there is already a Recovery partition on that volume, backupList+ will not attempt to recreate it. Likewise if there is not a good Recovery partition on your source drive, it can obviously not be copied to the destination.

The Recovery partiton is not always needed if you are making backups of all your data and especially if you make regular full system clones of your drive, you can then always boot from them (always check that that is possible) and restore your data or the whole system.

Incremental backups failed

Incremental backups do not always work on Network Volumes such as NAS. It depends if those volumes support the use of hard links, which allows backupList+ to make snapshot or incremental copies. If, for some reason, an incremental backup fails to complete, the following backup will attempt to re copy everything from scratch, rather than just the changed files and hard links to files already copied. If this happens backupList will ask if you want to delete the last (incomplete) backup which will allow succeeding backups to work as expected. If they continue to fail you should send me the log reports - BackupList+ Help > Create debug report. The report will appear on your desktop as a zip file which you can email to me with all details of your situation and what went wrong.

Backup drive is full:

No explanation needed. BackupList+ will notify if the drive is dangerously full. Do not let your drive fall below 10% free space of fragmantation of the volume may occur and could even fail

Ignore permissions

Be sure that "ignore permsiions" is left un-checked ( in the Get Info box) for any disk or volume you are copying too. If this box is checked, there can be problems with file permissions and incremental backups will NOT work correctly. To check this, control-click on the icon for your disk or volume and choose "Get Info." At the bottom of the Get Info window you wiull see the Permissions area and a check box at the bottom for "Ignore Permissions on this volume." Leave that unchecked, otherwise certain types of backups will not work correctly and you can not make a clone if that box is checked!

Permission issues

BackupList+ is a simple copy utility. On OSX (Unix), unless you are the "Administrator of your account, you will only have access to your personal Home folder. Items belonging to the system, and other users Home folders will be off limits. This means backupList will not work and you will get an"Access" error if you try to copy files from those areas to your backup folder. If you are not the Administrator of your computer, you should then put files in the backup list that are only within your Home folder (this does include all the files on the desktop- but not those inside your The Macintosh HD icon (again, unless they are in your Home folder.) A bit confusing if you aren't use to the OSX Folder structure. You can, of course, change permissions for your system and other files by going to "System Preferences" and clicking on "Accounts". there you can change yourself to Account administrator, if no one else is already that. That is why I made the first backup location choice, "Home Folder." Other logical choices would be any mounted disc, external drive etc. which should usually allow you access.

If the destination folder appears empty:

1. Enter your administrator password in the "Global settings" panel. If this solves the problem then you know you need to use your password with backupList+

2. Be sure the destination drive has enough free space for the backup, otherwise the backup could freeze midway. Many people have said their backup folder was empty because of this!

3. Be sure you have entered the correct destination paths in the "Destination" text field and the "Backup to folder" text field in the "Settings" panel.

4. If you are backing up to an external drive, check the hidden Volumes folder. This is a known problem when copying files to an external disk. Sometimes, if you pull the plug accidentally on a drive, or for no apparent reason, the Volumes folder will contain left over aliases of drives that are no longer present. This can result in data being copied into them instead of your desired disk, thus your hard drive mysteriously fills up with "hidden" backups! To check the folder go to the "Go" menu in the Finder menu bar, select "Go to folder..." and then type "/Volumes" in the search filed. This will bring up the hidden folder. BackupList+ includes a menu item called "Open Volumes folder" in the "Window" menu, or the "Help" menu if you are in Background mode. see more at the Volumes folder page.

Progress bar issues:

When backing up with rsync, the progress bar may seem to progress very fast at first and then slow down towards the end and the run. You can tell where the backup is by the names of the files being transferred. This is due to incremental recursion which scans files in batches rather than in a progression, saving much memory and time! You can change this to get more accurate bar readings but it will be much slower. I made this the default for obvious reasons!

Error notices about missing disks or problems with the Volumes folder:

See the Volumes folder page and disk errors....

Freezes:

If backupList+ freezes and you can't cancel it, force quit (command -option- esc) or restart computer. You will also need to force quit rsync - Open Activity Monitor (in the Utilities folder) and select "All Processes" at the top. Then scroll down to rsync (should be three of them) select each and click "Quit" and then "Force Quit." BackupList+ launches rsync to copy files and it is a separate process that runs in the background, thus you must use Activity Monitor to Force Quit.

Due to limitations of applescript the cancel feature can get stuck sometimes though we have gone a long way to prevent this. If backupList+ is in background-only mode, you must open activity monitor and quit rsync and backupList+ from there, or restart.

If BackupList+ crashes or you get error messages, you can usually fix the problem by trashing the .plist file. It is a good idea to make a backup of this file any ways, when you have your list and preferences set up, so you can restore your settings if there is a crash. The .plist file is in your Home folder > Library > Preferences folder and is called "com.rdutoit.blist.plist". Just quit backupList+ app, move this file to trash and restart backupList+ app. A new .plist file will be generated. You then need to set up your backup sets again.

If you are not the sole user of your Mac, or have not enabled permissions for Read/write of certain folders, you may not be able to back up or copy files in those locations. You can enter the administrator password (OS X 10.4 and above) in the "Global Settings" panel which will allow all files to be copied. Entering your password solves a host of problems. See Mac help about enabling permissions. You should always, however, be able to access your Home Folder or any local disks you have mounted.

 

A bug in Time capsule has been found in the new release of TC. See Apples Support Discussion... Apparently you can use the rsync option "--inplace" which may work.
so check the box "Expert options" and paste this into the text field:

-aHAXNx --fileflags --force-change --protect-decmpfs --inplace --stats -

They also suggested mounting the time capsule via SMB instead of FTP?