Time Machine/HFS question

[David Mackler]

On Mar 4, 2008, at 1:59 PM, Justin C. Walker wrote:

> My backups stopped working recently, and I don't know why.  There  
> doesn't seem to be anything in the system logs, but I did find this  
> entry on the Apple support site:
>   <http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=306932>
>
> I have been backing up using Time Machine from a 10.5 MacBook Pro  
> (Core 2 Duo) to a 10.4 Mac Pro (Dual Quad Xeon) using a 1TB Western  
> Digital MyBook FireWire drive.  It was fine from October through  
> early February.  Then I took the laptop on the road.  I plugged it  
> back in last week and didn't notice til today that backups weren't  
> happening.
>
> In the past, I would just mount the (remote) firewire drive on the  
> laptop, and Time Machine would begin chugging away (or would  
> dutifully schedule a time to start chugging away).
>
> Now, I mount the device, Time Machine remains 'off', and when I turn  
> it on, I get a drop down window where, presumably, the available  
> drives are given.  This window is empty, and there's nothing in the  
> logs to indicate what's happening (other than the mounting of the  
> drive over AFP is logged).

There is clearly an asymmetry with Time Machine. The ".backupdb" is  
created for a locally attached drive, and the ".bundle" is created for  
a network attached drive. TM appears to all a restore from either  
recognized source, but is selective in what it allows for a backup  
destination. Further, it only seems to permit a network style backup  
when the network share is hosted by Leopard [client|server]. Somehow  
you managed to make TM recognize your Tiger-hosted network share as a  
valid destination.

> This may be linked with the upgrade from 10.5.1 to 10.5.2 (the last  
> 'band' on the drive is 2/4; the upgrade was on 2/5).  The appearance  
> of the Time Machine prefs pane may have changed in 10.5.2, but  
> that's a bit hazy...
>
> A little more extraneous info.  My backup volume has two directories:
>  Backups.backupdb/laptop
>  laptop_...bundle
>
> The Backups directory has a half-dozen directories from 10/29 (when  
> I first started trying this out) and that's it.
>
> The 'laptop...bundle' directory has a bunch of "bands" dating  
> between 10/30 and 2/4.
>
> If I try to "restore", the alert tells me that there's no backup  
> location.  I can open the prefs, which gets me back to the above  
> problem (no drive to select) or I can use a "previous" disk, which  
> gives me access to the 10/29 backups only.
>
> A clue for the clueless?

Only one meager clue. Did you do a hack to force network TM backups on  
your laptop? It might have been undone by that upgrade to 10.5.2.