(SOLVED) Time Machine "Failed to attach - Operation not supported by device"


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Hello all,

I'm currently trying out Unraid 6.10.3 on a Dell PowerEdge R720xd. Almost everything's going great, especially once I find the forum threads made by people who've had the same problems as me! Unfortunately, there's one big problem that I've found plenty of forum threads about, but for which I'm yet to find a working solution: Time Machine backups.

 

I'm trying to use Time Machine to back up a single iMac running v12.5 "Monterey". I've tried both with the Time Machine Docker container (as updated on the 11th - today) and with Unraid's built-in SMB/Time Machine support, both with and without the SMB extra config very helpfully suggested here by wgstarks.

 

Whatever setup I'm using, I've been unable to continue my old backups copied from the NAS I'm looking to replace. If I start a new backup (which I'd prefer not to do, but will resign myself to if it works), I've never been able to get any backups beyond the initial backup. Even the initial backup has struggled at times; it seems to get rather sensitive when the image gets bigger than about 800GB and does odd things like suddenly stopping when the mover runs, even if it's only running on another share. The problem always seems to be as shown in this extract from the backupd logs:

default	21:54:41.071259+0100	backupd	+[BackendXPC newFileBackendWithURL:fileOpenFlags:error:]: Image file stat: dev(0x3600005c), inode(1314760957312219803), mode(40775), uid(0), gid(0), size(16384), blocks(32)
default	21:54:41.143327+0100	backupd	-[DIAttachParams newAttachWithError:]: entry: DIAttachParams[DiskImageParamsLocked_XPC[SparseBundleBackendXPC]]
default	21:54:41.143368+0100	backupd	-[DIBaseXPCHandler createConnection]: Creating connection with com.apple.diskimagescontroller
default	21:54:41.143543+0100	backupd	+[DIEncryptionFrontend hasGUIaccess]: User session flags: 0x1 (0x1=root, 0x10=graphics, 0x20=hasTTY, 0x1000=IsRemote), secRes=0
default	21:54:41.359494+0100	backupd	-[DIAttachParams reOpenIfWritableWithError:]: isWritableFormat: YES
default	21:54:41.359543+0100	backupd	+[BackendXPC newFileBackendWithURL:fileOpenFlags:error:]: Image file stat: dev(0x3600005c), inode(1314760957312219803), mode(40775), uid(0), gid(0), size(16384), blocks(32)
default	21:54:41.769937+0100	backupd	-[DIAttachParams reOpenIfWritableWithError:]: Image file <private> re-opened with RW permissions
default	21:54:41.770010+0100	backupd	-[DIStatFS logWithHeader:]: Input underlying FS: mounted on <private>, 1024 bytes block size, remote mount
error	21:55:18.629965+0100	backupd	-[DIBaseXPCHandler completeCommandWithError:]: Got error from last XPC command: Error Domain=NSPOSIXErrorDomain Code=19 "Operation not supported by device" UserInfo={DIErrorVerboseInfo=Failed to initialize IO manager: Failed opening folder for entries reading}
error	21:55:18.630089+0100	backupd	Failed to attach using DiskImages2 to url '/Volumes/.timemachine/timemachine._smb._tcp.local./DB7EB74C-1836-4DB5-B64D-55BBB02461E2/TimeMachine/iMac.sparsebundle', error: Error Domain=NSPOSIXErrorDomain Code=19 "Operation not supported by device" UserInfo={DIErrorVerboseInfo=Failed to initialize IO manager: Failed opening folder for entries reading}
error	21:55:18.649180+0100	backupd	Failed to unmount '/Volumes/.timemachine/timemachine._smb._tcp.local./DB7EB74C-1836-4DB5-B64D-55BBB02461E2/TimeMachine', Disk Management error: {
    Action = Unmount;
    Target = "file:///Volumes/.timemachine/timemachine._smb._tcp.local./DB7EB74C-1836-4DB5-B64D-55BBB02461E2/TimeMachine/";
}
error	21:55:18.649617+0100	backupd	Failed to unmount '/Volumes/.timemachine/timemachine._smb._tcp.local./DB7EB74C-1836-4DB5-B64D-55BBB02461E2/TimeMachine', error: Error Domain=com.apple.diskmanagement Code=0 "No error" UserInfo={NSDebugDescription=No error, NSLocalizedDescription=No Error.}
error	21:55:19.764936+0100	backupd	Failed to unmount '/Volumes/.timemachine/timemachine._smb._tcp.local./DB7EB74C-1836-4DB5-B64D-55BBB02461E2/TimeMachine', Disk Management error: {
    Action = Unmount;
    Target = "file:///Volumes/.timemachine/timemachine._smb._tcp.local./DB7EB74C-1836-4DB5-B64D-55BBB02461E2/TimeMachine/";
}
error	21:55:19.765384+0100	backupd	Failed to unmount '/Volumes/.timemachine/timemachine._smb._tcp.local./DB7EB74C-1836-4DB5-B64D-55BBB02461E2/TimeMachine', error: Error Domain=com.apple.diskmanagement Code=0 "No error" UserInfo={NSDebugDescription=No error, NSLocalizedDescription=No Error.}

(for the record, this was using the Docker, attempting to make the second backup into a new image, but it seems to be substantively the same for other configurations)

 

The actual problem seems to be the second error line (I think all the others are just knock on effects):

Failed to attach using DiskImages2 to url '/Volumes/.timemachine/timemachine._smb._tcp.local./DB7EB74C-1836-4DB5-B64D-55BBB02461E2/TimeMachine/iMac.sparsebundle', error: Error Domain=NSPOSIXErrorDomain Code=19 "Operation not supported by device" UserInfo={DIErrorVerboseInfo=Failed to initialize IO manager: Failed opening folder for entries reading}

Does anyone know which operation is not supported? What device is it referring to? The Unraid server? The SMB implementation? The disk image? Or just the mount point? I don't believe the disk image has been corrupted: it can be manually mounted in Finder/with Disk Utility.

 

I've tried with cache set to both yes and no for the share, I've tried pinning the share to its own disk before creating the backup, I've tried the built in Time Machine support both with and without the mentions SMB extra configuration, and I've tried with the Docker container. Can anyone make any suggestions for either possible solutions or further diagnostics that will better pin down the problem?

Edited by ScottAS2
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I had a similar problem and fixed it by re-installing macOS. It’s a simple process. The user experience is roughly the same as installing an update, it’s just updating the full OS rather than just the changes.

 

Another option may be the TimeMachine docker. Less likely to be negatively effected by unRAID updates.

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1 hour ago, wgstarks said:

I had a similar problem and fixed it by re-installing macOS. It’s a simple process. The user experience is roughly the same as installing an update, it’s just updating the full OS rather than just the changes.

 

I'm skeptical since I coincidentally re-installed the system a few weeks ago, but the 12.5.1 update has just been proffered to me and it won't be much more effort to reinstall so I'll give it a try.

 

Quote

Another option may be the TimeMachine docker. Less likely to be negatively effected by unRAID updates.

 

I'm absolutely open to the Docker, but I can't get it to work either. The symptoms are exactly the same: 'failed to attach'; 'operation not supported by device'. 😕

 

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No change for me from re-installing 12.5.1, unfortunately. I have a couple of other ideas, but they need quite a lot of bits shuffled around before I can try them.

 

18 hours ago, Jclendineng said:

same issue here. probably apple broke something. 

 

Very possibly. The most frustrating thing from my point of view is that the NAS I'm trying to migrate from, a Drobo, is still happily Time Machining away over AFP despite Apple having deprecated the protocol.

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  • 2 weeks later...

So, I finally got this (mostly) working, then ended up with COVID before I got around to writing it up. I tried changing the formatting of the underlying disks. This did nothing, probably meaning Unraid abstracts away a sensible amount of the underlying file system. What got it working for me was using the AFP branch of the Time Machine Docker container. There were a couple of non-obvious things (at least to a Docker newbie like me), so I'll probably write it up over at its support thread. It's not 100% stable and sometimes gets itself into a silly mode where it has to be kill -9ed, but what do you expect from deprecated software?

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  • ScottAS2 changed the title to (SOLVED) Time Machine "Failed to attach - Operation not supported by device"
3 minutes ago, ScottAS2 said:

So, I finally got this (mostly) working, then ended up with COVID before I got around to writing it up. I tried changing the formatting of the underlying disks. This did nothing, probably meaning Unraid abstracts away a sensible amount of the underlying file system. What got it working for me was using the AFP branch of the Time Machine Docker container. There were a couple of non-obvious things (at least to a Docker newbie like me), so I'll probably write it up over at its support thread. It's not 100% stable and sometimes gets itself into a silly mode where it has to be kill -9ed, but what do you expect from deprecated software?

Look forward to the write up since I have an old cheese grater MacPro that I need to get setup for. 
 

Would recommend you post any issues on the GitHub project page for the docker if you haven’t already.

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1 hour ago, wgstarks said:

Look forward to the write up since I have an old cheese grater MacPro that I need to get setup for. 

Your wish is my command. 🙂

 

1 hour ago, wgstarks said:

Would recommend you post any issues on the GitHub project page for the docker if you haven’t already.

I'm hesitant since Docker's pretty new to me, so it's most likely I'm just using it wrong. I've listed the oddities I've found in the write up, though. I'd be interested to hear what more-experienced users like you think of them, or indeed if you run into them yourself when setting up for your Mac Pro.

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