New Logic Board? Time Machine Thinks "New Computer!"
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OK, I've had to get two logic boards replaced recently and have gone through this twice, re-constructing the steps each time. Now I'm writing them down for future reference. See, Time Machine saves the Ethernet MAC address on your computer's logic board as part of the way of identifying your system. But suppose your logic board gets replaced? Now Time Machine thinks you've got a brand new computer, even though all that backed up data is really the same.
To re-associate your old Time Machine backups with your computer's new logic board:
For this example, machine ginger is the machine with the new logic board, and machine tarragon is the backup host. ginger's old address was 00:11:22:33:44:55, and its new address is aa:bb:cc:dd:ee:ff. On tarragon, the backup volume is called gin.
Don't know the old MAC address? No worries, just follow along below. Don't know your new MAC address? Open System Preferences, Network, Ethernet (or Airport if you're using that), Advanced, Ethernet; it'll be listed next to "Ethernet ID".
- On
ginger, open Time Machine Preferences and turn it off. - On
tarragon, open a terminal and enter:% cd /Volumes/gin % ls -aF .001122334455 .0013ffac9302 .01facc0e962b .DS_Store .Spotlight-V100/ .TemporaryItems/ .Trashes/ .com.apple.timemachine.supported .fseventsd/ Backups.backupdb/ Desktop DB Desktop DF cilantro_0013ffac9302.sparsebundle/ ginger_001122334455.sparsebundle/ thyme_01facc0e962b.sparsebundle/
Notice the
.001122334455file and theginger_001122334455.sparsebundlebundle? We got to fix those. The old MAC address is in the filenames, just run together without colons. - In the terminal on
tarragon, type:% open ginger_001122334455.sparsebundle
After a check, the backup volume will be mounted as
/Volumes/Backup of ginger. - Confirm the old MAC address by entering these commands:
% xattr -p com.apple.backupd.BackupMachineAddress /Volumes/Backup\ of\ ginger/Backups.backupdb/ginger 00:11:22:33:44:55That tells us we have three things we need to fix: the MAC address in the
.001122334455file, the MAC address in the ginger bundle name, and finally the MAC address in the extended attribute of the "ginger" directory in the Backups.backupdb directory. - Fix the dot file. In the terminal, type:
% sudo mv .001122334455 .aabbccddeeff
- Fix the extended attribute. In the terminal, type:
% sudo fsaclctl -p /Volumes/Backup\ of\ ginger -d % sudo xattr -w com.apple.backupd.BackupMachineAddress aa:bb:cc:dd:ee:ff /Volumes/Backup\ of\ ginger/Backups.backupdb/ginger % sudo fsaclctl -p /Volumes/Backup\ of\ ginger -e
The first command disables file system access control list checking, the second writes the new MAC address, and the third re-enables access control list checking.
- Unmount the "Backup of ginger" backup volume by dragging it to the trash.
- Rename the bundle:
% mv ginger_001122334455.sparsebundle ginger_aabbccddeeff.sparsebundle
- Finally, turn Time Machine back on back on
ginger.
That's it! The next time ginger backs up, it'll see it's just another incremental. The oldest backup available will still be the oldest one available and not today's date.
Done this, but only works partially
I've done all of this, however, it only works partially.
I can now access the time machine backups of my machine on the various dates in the past, so clearly some connection is there. (If I click "Enter time machine")
However, the backup module doesn't seem to know that they're there. It says "--" next to latest backup and when it goes to backup, it tries to do a full backup (and runs out of space).
Any suggestions?
My dot file is correctly named, and xattr shows the correct mac address. Don't think the whole bundle thing applies to me, as I'm just using a directly connected external drive, but let me know if that's my problem.
Thanks for any input!
Same problem here
I'm having the exact same problem, did anyone figure out how to solve this?
Same here
Same problem here. I can go back in the past and see all my files. But if I'm trying to create a new backup it fails. My external drive is directly connected to my MBP by firewire. Any solutions?!
Any further info on this problem?
Having the same issues here after the fix above - can access past backups by entering Time Machine but Time Machine refuses to recognize their existence. So close and yet so far....
Some more notes
Thank for the helpful post!
A few notes:
- On my MacBook, which uses its built-in AirPort to connect to an AirPort Express (which is then wired to a Mac Mini, to which a USB disk named "TM" is attached for Time Machine) actually the MAC-address of the ethernet port is used (though not active!), not the Mac address of the built-in AirPort (which is active). In fact, it's easy to tell: temporary rename all the dot-files and you'll see that Time Machine creates a new one for the MAC-address it's using (and on my Mac, the timestamp of that file is always June 15 2008).
- I removed the password while my MacBook was in repair, and hitting Enter without a password seems to cancel the sudo command without any error...? Setting a password again solved that issue. Always validate that the new MAC-address was set! So, after "sudo xattr -w com.apple.backupd ..." always run "xattr -p com.apple.backupd ..." again!
- My MacBook was in repair for quite some time and meanwhile I had restored the Time Machine backup to the Mac Mini. On that Mini, I used to have a guest user with the very same name of my MacBook user, just for the backup. This made the restore to the Mini a bit cumbersome (restoring a user account which already existed as a limited account...), but I managed. However, when the MacBook returned home it only had read access to the opened sparsebundle (now that I am writing this: maybe that is because that Mac Mini user now also has an empty password
- can't verify that now). This caused some problems after taking the steps from your blog post:
- When manually mounting the remote disk using the new credentials then after "Network mountpoint /Volumes/TM not owned by backupd... remounting" I would get "[SnapshotUtilities remountVolumeRef] url could not be resolved via BonJour", "Failed to remount network volume", "BackupCore -- _CSBackupServerProxyCopyDestinationMountPoint returned: 19" and "Backup failed with error: 19"
- Manually mounting using the new credentials, and then setting up Time Machine to use that volume for the backup, would make no changes.
- When not manually mounting the disk, then choosing "Backup now" would give me "FSMatchAliasBulk returend -5032 while resolving alias to backup target".
- In all cases Time Machine itself would not show any history (it would only show Today).
I backed up the sparsebundle and then opened the sparsebundle myself, and changed the access rights for "staff" or even "everyone" to "read/write". Running those changes took over 24 hours to complete, and did not solve the issue.
- But the solution was simple... To tell Time Machine to use other credentials one needs to clear the network passwords in Keychain
- but until today I did not know that in Keychain's menu View there's an option "Show Keychains", which is required to allow for selecting "System" (it defaults to "login") when searching for the old passwords to change (or simply delete to be prompted for new credentials)...
After that Time Machine showed the full history again, and running "Backup now" got me "Event store UUIDs don't match for volume: Macintosh HD" (which I don't understand) followed by "Node requires deep traversal:/ reason:kFSEDBEventFlagMustScanSubDirs|kFSEDBEventFlagReasonEventDBUntrustab|e"
Seems to work fine now!
Which MAC address?
Which MAC address should be used? Built-in Ethernet or AirPort? I tried both and get the following error when I do a backup:
"The network backup volume could not be mounted because there was a problem with the network username or password."
Answer: built-in
Standard practice is to use the built-in Ethernet MAC address. That was definitely true for my Mac Mini, which I just successfully got working again following Sean's recipe.
The first
More precisely: I've been told that the first network port will be used. So, the one that shows as eth0 in the output of ifconfig.
For most this will indeed be the ethernet port.
this didn't quite work for me
Hmm, I walked through this a couple of times but now I am looking at a new name on an old backup and Time Machine won't take the hint.
Not sure what went wrong and pondering my next move.
Seeing a lot of these: Event store UUIDs don't match for volume: Macintosh HD
one additional file
This worked for me - thanks very much for the post. One additional item to check as referenced toward the bottom of http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20080128003716101 :
Make sure the contents of /var/db/.TimeMachine.Cookie on ginger match the contents of /Volumes/gin/.aabbccddeeff on tarragon
Size of backup is there but will not see prev. backups
I followed the steps extremely carefully and was able to link the time machine backup to the correct file, but Time machine does not see any of the previous backups. The sparsebundle shows 135gb on get info but only shows one file, a backup that is in progress. Would trying to repair this sparsebundle with diskwarrior help?
Any help or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
-Mitch
Now and Today
Same problem here, but selecting browse other TM disks (option+clic on Time Machine) and selecting the same disc image mounted on your finder (the same that only offer "Now" and "Today") you could see all the previous backups.
But I would like to solve this problem, any help or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
Pedro
Brilliant! Saved me a lot of hassle
Just received my new MacBook Pro and transfered all my stuff from the old machine, so I didn't see the point of restarting my TM backups from scratch (on a Time Capsule). All I needed was your step-by-step instructions and I was go... Thanks a lot!
Not just a new logic board...
I'm having the same issue just from installing Snow Leopard onto a new (640GB) disk, and migrating my PB320 to it, then installing the new disk into my MBP. (I wanted to do a fresh install of the OS AND I needed more disk space.)
After finally getting SL stable (issues with the new disk going to sleep and some incompatible s/w), Time Machine was going 99% complete "calculating files" then recycling, while the available space crept upward so I'm guessing it's busy erasing all the older backups to make room for a brand new, about 320 GB base backup.
Here's hoping I can use this Macro-Tip to associate my existing laptop with a new disk with what's left of my previous TM backups.
good guide but ...
Hi Thanks for laying this out so succintly. However I have a problem in that I haven't been able to make a single backup so the files you mention at the start of the guide do no exist. This is because when Time Machine first failed I followed another guide that said to reformat and repartition the drive and then reselect it. So my backup drive is copmletely blank and if I go to do a Time Machine backup it just pops up the old
drive not founderror. If you know a way round this, I'd be very grafeful, because up until now I've found TM to be excellent. Thanks, Andy