Mac problem-solving

A list of articles to help you solve problems on Macs running Monterey and later. For older articles about previous versions of OS X, see this article, and this article for more recent ones including Big Sur.
For basic help with managing problems, see my Mac Troubleshooting Summary.

For a list of all my free software, please visit the Free Software Menu.

Accessing this blog – news feeds and pages
How to get news on Apple’s latest updates, and updates to my apps

Updates and changing updates – Ventura and support for El Capitan and Sierra

macOS 14 Sonoma

macOS 13 Ventura

LaunchServices problems and Ventura
Welcome back, Location Services
Apple has released macOS Ventura 13.5.1 update
Ventura’s lost Location Services
What has changed in macOS Ventura 13.5?
Apple has released Ventura 13.5, Monterey 12.6.8 and Big Sur 11.7.9
How does Ventura check the security of known apps and command tools?
Ventura 13.4.1, Monterey 12.6.7 and Big Sur 11.7.8, 21 June 2023
Why won’t a system app or command tool run? Launch constraints and trust caches
Ventura 13.4 makes network diagnostic logging harder
Close, but still no banana: Disk Utility 22.6
Volume names, mount points and normalisation
How help works and how it doesn’t
How macOS now tracks the provenance of apps
What causes App Translocation?
All in the numbers – macOS version numbering
Did that update just break something? How bad updates are getting less likely
Safe mode, caches and CacheDelete
What is a Rapid Security Response (RSR)?
Ventura 13.3.1 can’t change the password of sparse bundles
How Ventura space management tracks changes
When the numbers don’t add up – purgeable and available space
Which files are purgeable? Look with new versions of Sparsity and Precize
Ventura space management: what gets purged and how?
The Finder confuses with wildly inaccurate figures for available space
Finder or loser? – Finder’s volume size bugs
When the Finder’s error exceeds 50%
The app that won’t go into quarantine
Apple has released macOS Ventura 13.3.1, and Safari 16.4.1
Just which volumes are encrypted?
How Cryptexes are changing macOS Ventura
Getting more from Disk Utility’s First Aid
fsck status 65 – Disk Utility errors
What has changed in macOS Ventura 13.3?
Are you ready for 13.3 or 9.1?
What is macOS Ventura doing tracking provenance?
Using a Mac without a network connection
Ventura has changed app quarantine with a new xattr
How does Ventura check an app’s security?
Do Ventura’s signature checks work?
How troubleshooting has changed with macOS security
What’s the overhead of using APFS encryption?
Recovery on Apple silicon Macs has changed again
How does Time Machine make a backup?
macOS 13.2.1, authenticated restart and fdesetup
How Ventura is changing Login and Background Items
Controlling Login and Background Items in Ventura
Apple has released an urgent security update to Ventura 13.2.1
Why are security updates still so unreliable?
Curious bugs in Help Viewer and Stage Manager
What has changed in macOS Ventura 13.2?
Apple has released updates to Ventura 13.2, Monterey 12.6.3 and Big Sur 11.7.3
Is Apple checking images we view in the Finder?
App Nap, undead and nascent apps in Ventura
Stage Manager for the unimpressed: 1 Getting started
Stage Manager for the unimpressed: 2 Workflow strategies
Stage Manager for the unimpressed: 3 Apps and windows
How Stage Manager works in the log
How do you know when macOS detects and remediates malware?
Can you rely on macOS Ventura for malware protection?
How much free space does Ventura need to update?
Why won’t Ventura let me install that?
What has changed in Ventura 13.1?
Apple has released Ventura 13.1 and security updates to Monterey and Big Sur
Disk performance of lightweight macOS VMs on Apple silicon
Lightweight virtualisation in Ventura
Cryptex: how a custom iPhone is changing macOS updates
How does Ventura update faster? Inside the macOS update process
Apple has released Ventura 13.0.1
Disk Utility and Time Machine in Ventura
Fixes and flaws in Ventura 13.0
Reference info for Ventura, and macOS 11 and 12 updates, is complete
Which firmware should your Mac be using? (version 7)
Did you jump or were you pushed?, Ventura upgrade
Silently updated security data files in Ventura
Stage Manager, intuition and changing interfaces
Ventura for early adopters
Ventura volume layout
Apple has released Ventura, and security updates to Monterey and Big Sur
First call for Ventura
From Control Panels to System Settings in Ventura
The transition from Preferences to Settings
How to keep Monterey when upgrading to Ventura
Preparing to upgrade to Ventura
Should you run a Linux server on Apple silicon?
Why some apps won’t run in Ventura and how to fix it
Should you upgrade to Ventura early, then?
Apple can patch Ventura on the fly: RSR is coming
System Settings in Ventura: a turn for the worse?
Passkeys and biometrics
Apple harvest is coming
Why Passkeys are so important, and how you can use them now
Why Ventura’s Stage Manager is so important
Why you should consider upgrading to Ventura early
12 Installing Linux is different
Lightweight virtualisation of GUI Linux on Ventura
Should you risk or resist Ventura Public Beta?
Who needs Ventura’s Accessory Security?
Stuck together or flourishing apart? macOS, iPadOS and iOS
App security changes coming in Ventura
How might Ventura’s Rapid Security Response work?
Explainer: Virtualisation and Rosetta 2
Where we’re coming from: recent macOS
Where we’re heading: macOS 13 Ventura
When will Apple ship other M2 Macs?
Updates for Ventura and M2 Macs: SilentKnight, LockRattler and SystHist
Watch the ANE
Is Apple’s Malware Removal Tool dropping out of macOS 13?

macOS 12 Monterey

Breaking

Should power affect the speed of external SSDs?
Text with style: using styles in TextEdit and beyond
SwiftUI on macOS: Life Cycle and AppDelegate
SwiftUI on macOS: Life Cycle and App Delegate source code
How robust is your Mac’s encryption?
APFS: Special file types
Why good external SSDs are faster with Apple silicon
Are Dictionary’s days numbered?
What to do if Apple contacts you about malware or security
How macOS opens a file in the correct app
Solutions to Saturday Mac riddles 251
Saturday Mac riddles 251
APFS: Encryption and sealing
APFS: Snapshots
SwiftUI wrangling
What are UUIDs and why might I need them?
A quick look at QuickLook and its problems
A short history of versions
APFS: Files and clones
APFS: Directories and names
APFS: Containers and volumes
How FileVault passwords work, and are they now vulnerable?
Checking bootable systems using bputil on Apple silicon
Invisible Unicode and compound emoji
What to do when offered a new FileVault Recovery Key
Happy birthday APFS, 7 years old today
Keeping cool: physics
Keeping cool: control
Attack of the Clones – clone files in APFS
Is Apple lagging in AI?
Accents or repeat: how is your keyboard configured?
How to recover Recovery
Solo or CoreDuet? – system management
What makes a disk bootable?
Apple silicon: 6 Security
Ovid’s myths of macOS: password entry dialogs and the death of Semele
What malware can macOS remove?
How to tell genuine password requests from fakes
Apple silicon: 5 Memory and internal storage
Skint and SkintM 1.05 are almost feature-complete
Very overwhelming – logs and iCloud Drive
Apple silicon: 4 A little help from friends and co-processors
Solving login password problems
Keep a more watchful eye on your Mac with Skint 1.04
Apple silicon: 3 But does it save energy?
iCloud of unknowing – iCloud’s services and their limits
How to evaluate an external SSD
Apple silicon: 2 Power and thermal glory
iCloud does throttle data syncing after all
Mints version 1.18 now shows floating-point numbers in hex
Shopping for a faster external SSD
Apple silicon: 1 Cores, clusters and performance
Working together, not apart – sharing versions in iCloud Drive
Explore floating-point number formats in Mints 1.17
How you still can’t share document versions in iCloud
How to reinstall the current version of macOS or downgrade it
Skint version 1.03 fixes bugs that could give false negatives
Share your Mac’s display and control
Can you avoid a forced upgrade to Sonoma?
Back to USB basics
Why have there been so many XProtect updates?
How to deal with XProtect Remediator (XPR) problems
A layered approach to preserving documents
Summary of macOS VM performance on Apple silicon Macs
Troubleshooting your Mac’s security with Skint 1.02
Wobbling plates and bfloat16 support
Mines of information
What is a snapshot, and how does it work?
PDF, Live Text and Spotlight: troubled relationships
Skint 1.01 fixes SSV checks on Macs with multiple boot systems
The World According to Macintosh (in 1994)
Skint will keep a quiet eye on your Mac’s key settings
Nelson’s blind eye, lost property and macOS
Preserving the evidence: what to do when something serious goes wrong
Why does virtualisation run some code far slower on Apple silicon?
Secrets of Apple silicon
The revenge of Unicode
Exploring sysctl’s secrets with a new version of Mints
What changed CPU performance from the Macintosh 128K to the M3?
Why am I getting warning emails about iCloud?
Why the M2 is more advanced that it seemed
Magic updates – Magic Keyboard and Bluetooth updates
How M1 Macs may lag behind
How virtualisation came to Apple silicon Macs
Changing systems from Mojave to Sonoma
Catching up with Time Machine
Are we making good progress?
M3 CPU cores have become more versatile
What should we know about APFS special files?
Virtualise Linux on Apple silicon with Liviable beta 4
Apple silicon comes of age
Tips of the year: work around bugs and limitations
Why are Apple silicon VMs so different?
Making the leap from Mojave to Apple silicon
Can a different core allocation strategy work on Apple silicon?
When macOS won’t work with the App Store
Where are the sanity checks?
The Three XProtects of Christmas
Comparing Accelerate performance on Apple silicon and Intel cores
How to prepare your Mac for disposal, and what about AppleSetupDone?
What is changing in Mac firmware?
Are your apps built to get the best from Apple silicon?
Why apps need to Accelerate
Finding and evaluating AMX co-processors in Apple silicon chips
Evaluating the M3 Pro: Summary
Does iCloud+ Private Relay reduce network responsiveness?
A new vision for macOS utilities
Where have the network tools gone?
How AppleCare has changed with AppleCare+
Evaluating M3 Pro CPU cores: 5 Quest for the AMX
Evaluating M3 Pro CPU cores: 4 Vector processing in NEON
RIP RSR?
Evaluating M3 Pro CPU cores: 3 Special CPU modes
Evaluating M3 Pro CPU cores: 2 Power and energy
Scheduling and dispatch of backups and other background activities
Evaluating M3 Pro CPU cores: 1 General performance
A short history of Recovery in macOS
What has changed in CPU cores in M3 chips?
Over the Rainbow – M3 Pro
Are we running out of panaceas?
Backup errors, iCloud Drive and the limits of APFS
SilentKnight 2.7 is more tolerant of error
Scary hasty – M3 release and macOS updates
It’s all about reliability and contingency
Should you make an emergency disk for an Apple silicon Mac?
Estimating energy use for Apple silicon chips
Backup simplicity
Are Finder Tags useful metadata?
Metamer 1.4 adds autosave and more
M3 Macs: there’s more to performance than counting cores
Where is my file’s metadata?
How good is GPU access for Apple silicon virtual machines?
Where Safari hides and bundled apps crash
How does macOS manage virtual cores on Apple silicon?
Handling errors
What happens when you run a macOS VM on Apple silicon?
What security updates does my macOS get?
What you can do with lightweight VM Shared Folders, and what you can’t
Reversing Spotlight search with a second beta of Spotcord
How to check and repair storage in Disk Utility
Autumn firmware updates
Get more from your metadata: reversing Spotlight
How to ‘clean’ install modern macOS
Mojave on the road to Apple silicon
macOS upgrades since El Capitan
Still struggling with Dark Mode 5 years on
Navigating boot volumes in paths and inodes
Resolve inode numbers to file paths in Mints 1.15
Will Sonoma come as an upgrade or update?
How the Mac didn’t bring programming to the people
Current limitations on macOS virtual machines running on Apple silicon Macs
Using a third-party password manager alongside keychains
How quickly can Apple release a security update?
Some forms of encrypted storage still don’t work properly
Inside SilentKnight: how it works
Taking manual control of macOS updates with softwareupdate
Is macOS’s new XProtect behavioural security preparing to go live?
VoiceOver and VMs
APFS versions, updates and compatibility
Will Ventura continue to get Rapid Security Responses?
What to do with common APFS warnings and errors
How Software Update works in Ventura
How to identify the file responsible for a disk error
The problem with macOS keychains
Maintaining the System: how software update has changed
How could someone steal your keychain’s secrets?
Ignoring ownership and 501 orphans
Enhance your macOS VMs with Apple Remote Desktop
How the Secure Enclave protects your Mac
macOS updates for Apple silicon Macs are larger than reported
How to recover files from a near-dead Mac
How to buy a used Mac
How to prepare your Mac for service or repair
Alerts and traffic signs
Why macOS anti-malware scans can behave oddly
How to store data and files securely using macOS
How to tackle keychain problems
When should you provide a keychain or admin password?
How to change an unknown system setting
An introduction to keychains and how they’ve changed
Are we ready for dataless files?
From Cyberdog to dataless files: a brief history of iCloud
Recent items, property lists, Bookmarks and resolvers
Preferences, permissions and problem-solving
Preferences: Property lists and their use
Log Literacy: How to make and use logarchives
System settings that aren’t in System Settings
How Preferences do and don’t work
How and why to reset your Mac’s SMC and NVRAM
Firmware updates and futures
Why don’t custom icons work properly in iCloud Drive?
How to fix problems with iCloud and iCloud Drive
Obscured by iClouds
How macOS depends on firmlinks
iCloud Drive changes extended attributes
Backing up iCloud, iCloud recovery and document versions
Searching iCloud Drive with Spotlight
What is firmware for, and why does it need updating?
How does iCloud work? Plus a new version of Cirrus
How an RSR went badly wrong
Why can’t you just roll back from a bad macOS update?
Why can’t Safari connect to that website?
How to make Time Machine backups faster
How to check your Mac is secure
How to fix background activities that stop running
Mastodon, Threads, Bluesky and what next?
When to revive or restore in DFU mode
How to get the right app to open a document and fix LaunchServices problems
How to diagnose and control login and background items
How to gain access to a locked Mac
Secure Boot conflicts
How macOS installers changed
What to do when an update goes wrong
From party trick to file protection: sparse files have their uses
Keyboard layouts in lightweight virtualisation
What to do when your Mac can’t update
What updates?
Explainer: the app sandbox
How VMs and disk images can be like Doctor Who’s TARDIS
What to do when Spotlight can’t find it
What works in virtualising macOS on Apple silicon, and what doesn’t
What to do with a disk error?
What to do when a process uses too much CPU
Malware detection and remediation by XProtect Remediator
Cold boot or restart?
What to do when an app uses too much memory
What to do when an app crashes as it opens
Between Undo and backups: document versions
Customising metadata display in the Finder
How should we check the integrity of important files?
Ghosts in the machine: .DS_Store files
Apple’s big test of data integrity
Dealing with a kernel panic
Should we be worried about data integrity?
Would you like to Comment or Finder Comment?
Crashes, panics, freezes and other unexpected events
Firmware updates with macOS 13.4, 12.6.6 and 11.7.7
Not a Twitter quitter
Are macOS updates getting larger?
When your Mac can’t get to the login window
Identifying the state of your Mac: is it dead or alive?
Systematic troubleshooting
Making a dial-up Internet Connection in Mac OS 8
A detailed record of macOS and its security updates
COW and clones: how they save space and SSD wear
Secret security, pulled XPR update
Connecting to the Internet via a phone 21 years ago
APFS hard links, symlinks, aliases and clone files: a summary
Where does macOS get its volume free space figures from?
Freeing space on your boot disk
Should you remove duplicate files?
When it doesn’t work, try it again in Safe mode
How well do USB 3 SSDs work on a Thunderbolt hub?
What is purgeable disk space?
Will your new SSD support TRIM and SMART?
Tackling problems with permissions, ACLs and other access controls
Storage stories, selecting SSDs
Thanks for the Memory in Mac OS 8.6
How to check whether an SSD gets trimmed
How APFS mounts encrypted volumes, snapshots, cryptexes and more
How to maintain your Desktop in Mac OS 8 and 9
Why you should enable FileVault
How APFS mounts an external disk: 1 Basics
macOS Ventura 13.3, Monterey 12.6.4 and Big Sur 11.7.5 bring firmware updates for all supported Macs
Fixing firmware update problems
Dive into APFS in Mints version 1.11
Apple’s big gamble: the 6th birthday of APFS
Should you trim external SSDs?
How does an Apple silicon Mac mount a Thunderbolt disk?
Fast user switching: how it works and when to use it
How connecting your SSD to a Thunderbolt hub can slow it to a crawl
Providence and provenance
loginwindow does more than log you in
Log Literacy: Hunting bugs with Ulbow’s Chart View
Why is Apple so reluctant for the offline Mac?
Who’s managing my apps?
Log Literacy: Extending Ulbow with predicates, filters & styles
Removing privacy censorship from the log
KeySteal, Honkbox and BadGacha
Custom Finder icons, resources and Mac OS history
Getting best performance from Thunderbolt on Apple silicon Macs: a practical guide
Thunderbolt 4 hub performance with 3 SSDs
Complexities of Thunderbolt hubs
What are those XProtects?
How to get the Trash working properly
It pays to be a winner: How a fast SSD can slow others down
Thunderbolt 4 hubs can slow down fast SSDs
Getting help from ChatGPT and AI
What are all those extensions?
Should apps and command tools be notarized?
What are Ventura’s system privacy settings?
Log literacy: the power of message types, and Ulbow 1.10
Children, animals and TCC
Permissions, SIP and TCC: who’s controlling access?
Privacy: what TCC does and doesn’t
Should you reset its database or delete it? The woes of TCC
Log literacy: all about the log
Gaining control over the log with a new version of Ulbow
How a security update threw errors in XProtect Remediator
Caches, buffers and swap
Log Literacy: Navigation
Scheduled activities: 3 launchd or DAS?
Backing up to network storage: checks and balances
Log literacy: Reducing log entries shown
Scheduled activities: 2 Running the activity
Knowing your limitations – techniques for studying macOS
Log literacy: an essential skill for advanced users
How QuickLook Preview doesn’t tell Apple about images
Do Thunderbolt hubs impair performance?
Is it more secure to be a normal or admin user?
Scheduled activities: 1 Scheduling by DAS
The evolution of Apple silicon – M2 Pro/Max
How macOS schedules background activities
Demonstrating causal connections using the log
How APFS trims a disk image to size
How to write to the log from a script
Which disk image format?
How plain disk images went sparse in Monterey
Sparse disk images in virtual machines
The trouble with better security
Should you use a disk image or a volume?
Recovery mode problems and how to solve them
Lightweight VMs are sparse files, and how to keep them compact
Inside APFS: from containers to clones
Ultra chips and cryptexes – round up of 2022
What happens when XProtect Remediator discovers real malware?
Free space on an APFS volume is an illusion
Checking macOS malware scans: Endpoint Security or the log?
From resource forks to quarantine, ResEdit to Gatekeeper
Can I have a Yule log?
How does macOS tell the type of a file?
Gaining control over your Mac’s log
Rolling logs and anti-malware scans
Text file formats
All you need to know about Safe mode
Bypassing Gatekeeper
Panaceas: which general fixes still work well?
An A to Z of keys and keyboards: Keyboard commands
Estimating the remaining life of a Mac’s internal SSD
An A to Z of keys and keyboards: Keyboard layouts
Similar hardware but different by design – iPad Pro v Mac
Explainer: Rosetta 2
Spotlight problems: mds_stores and mdworker in trouble
An A to Z of keys and keyboards: Input methods
How to estimate an SSD’s working life
The mobile virtual Mac
Finder can’t create an alias inside a package or bundle
Tracking swap space: is it wearing out your SSD?
An A to Z of keys and keyboards: Startup and login
How much Unified memory does your Apple silicon Mac need?
Can you game core allocation on Apple silicon?
I told you so! – new Apple silicon Macs
Booting two Apple silicon Macs from one external disk
Changing preferences isn’t so simple
Dealing with a dysfunctional Desktop
Which external disk?
Booting macOS on Apple silicon: Multiple boot disks
Booting macOS on Apple silicon: LocalPolicy
Some boot, but others don’t – booting Apple silicon Macs from an external disk
How to get updates when they’re still fresh
Repairing Home folder permissions: a mystery
What to do when your Mac has a kernel panic
Fortnightmare – updates
What makes an external disk bootable?
Ventura’s updates have got faster for some
Does Apple maintain APFS in older macOS?
Why is my Mac’s firmware version wrong, and what to do about it?
Home truths about macOS
Getting the most from SilentKnight: a tutorial
Everything you need to know about XProtect’s malware protection
A quiet word about help
Troubleshooting keychains
Explainer: Passwords and passkeys
When SIP status is unknown, SilentKnight and silnite can be foxed
Explainer: Keychain basics
It either works or it doesn’t, Content Caching server and updates
XProCheck 1.2 checks macOS malware scans better
SilentKnight version 2 is designed for Catalina to Ventura
Time for a fresh SilentKnight
Is Apple scanning the images on my Mac?
Firmware and macOS upgrades
Do you still need that external bootable disk?
Copy, clone, backup: is there a difference?
Where to find Gatekeeper?
Paradoxical undressing (disabling security features)
What does SilentKnight check and why?
SnowDrift warnings: are they malware?
How to check an app’s signature
How macOS leaves users vulnerable, and unaware of their vulnerability
XProCheck 1.1 can now run XProtect Remediator scans on demand
Interpreting XProCheck’s results and problems
How to report macOS crashes to Apple
App first run, quarantine and translocation
Don’t run that app where it landed: how translocation can cause crashes
XProCheck: a new utility to inspect anti-malware scans
Breaking the silence – performance cost and reporting
Monitor macOS anti-malware scans with Mints version 1.9
Hunting malware protection in the log
Does a macOS update change the Data volume?
How can I bring my Mac up to date with firmware and system updates?
macOS now scans for malware whenever it gets a chance
Are command tools getting out of their depth?
Security updates are down again
Explainer: subsystems
Unified log structure and available data
Has Apple broken Content Caching server updates again?
Mints now lists firmware and recovery versions, and more
Software Update and serendipity
Recent security updates: how unusual?
An atlas of recovery and boot volumes: High Sierra to Monterey
How to find full Software Update information
Not a PC
Why won’t that sparse bundle compact?
MRT and XProtect Remediator: an update
Activity Monitor: meanings and misleadings
Getting more from Activity Monitor: Memory
Using macOS versions beyond local volumes
Is your Mac still secure from malware?
Has Apple fixed recent Software Update problems?
How macOS versions help you recover from errors
How to recover old versions of Xcode source
Obfuscating errors
Explainer: Pixel density and display resolution
Preparing your Mac for Trade In or passing on
The State of Mac Security
How to find it in the log: 2 Navigation
How can you tell whether your Mac is up to date?
Explainer: The arithmetic of snapshot size
Why did that app crash?
How to find it in the log: 1 An introduction
What can you do with Time Machine backups on APFS?
How virtualization is important to the future of macOS
Explainer: Machine learning
Startup disk surgery in recent macOS: fixing bigger problems
A user’s guide to Disk Images
Updates and open loops
Persisting problems with Content Caching and failed security updates
Dismal write performance of Disk Images
Why are Disk Images so slow at writing?
Changing anti-malware tools in macOS
How should you save web pages in Safari?
Dealing with the insomniac Mac
Biome isn’t about biometrics, but suggestions
Apple to kill all support for Sierra and earlier
Putting the insomniac Mac to sleep: help is at hand
Explainer: Archiving isn’t backing up
Explainer: network ports
Maintaining the integrity of important files
What to do when an update won’t install correctly
Explainer: Error-correcting files
Which are more reliable: hard disks or SSDs?
Explainer: Non-lossy compression
Efficient resilient storage
How to make more use of your backup disk
How hard disks get slower as they fill up
Should you continue using HFS+?
Explainer: Compression
How to transfer files between Macs
Deleting the SSV to free space
Mac Studio Max and Studio Display: impressions and future
Interpreting and using disk performance data
Does it matter which Thunderbolt ports you use?
Explainer: Thunderbolt
Are Thunderbolt SSDs more consistent than USB?
Opening Pandora’s SSD
Explainer: FileVault
What performance to expect from SSDs
Which external storage?
Explainer: Benchmarks
The kernel and extensions 1: To Mojave
The kernel and extensions 2: Secure Boot
How should security data updates work?
Does your Mac keep installing the same MRT updates?
Explainer: S.M.A.R.T. and disk health
When an SSD becomes wobbly
Explainer: The ‘bricked’ Mac
A brief history of APFS in honour of its fifth birthday
Updating your Mac using softwareupdate, SilentKnight and silnite
Understanding digital audio
Explainer: Whatever happened to QuickTime?
Firmware on the change: 1 Out with the old
Firmware on the change: 2 In with the new
Which NAS?
Explainer: Parallel computing
What’s in an app’s signature?
Explainer: TLS, VPN and Private Relay
How to back up and archive iCloud data
Securing your data in iCloud
How Apple should help Ukraine by fulfilling its promises
Does removing I/O throttling make backups faster?
Explainer: Cloud storage
CPU percentage is misleading on M1 Macs
How to prevent errors on SSDs
Can you back up iCloud documents?
Do we have custom access?
Command tools – alisma, blowhole, cintch, cmpxat and unorml – updated
Explainer: WindowServer
How can you trust a disk to write data?
Permissions and ACLs
Understanding and managing Time Machine snapshots
SSD wear and IORegistry
Still struggling with snapshots
Managing snapshots: how to stop them eating free space
Explainer: kernel panics and crashes
What should you do when your Time Machine backups go awry?
Why do installer packages expire, but apps don’t? Signing certificate and notarization oddities
When clouds break the sun doesn’t shine
Should you ever repair permissions?
Things that go bump in SilentKnight: serious security failures
The Last 7 Years on My Mac: an anniversary
Explainer: Non-Volatile RAM (NVRAM)
Why doesn’t Apple formally support old macOS?
Did someone forget their password? Getting access to a locked Mac
On-board diagnostics
Explainer: Metal
Ruby text in Pages
Has Time Machine slowed?
Explainer: Logging out and in
Looking back at 2021 on my Mac: articles worth reading again
Explainer: Links, Aliases and Bookmarks
A strategy for tackling NAS problems
CoreServices apps: Wireless Diagnostics
CoreServices apps: the rest
CoreServices apps: Directory Utility
Explainer: Open Directory
How to get an old version of macOS, OS X and Xcode
Using SilentKnight to download updates
What’s in that app? A guide to app internal structure
When the Internet caught fire
Explainer: Quarantine
How macOS reports crashes
Hidden files and folders on APFS volumes
Explainer: Disk free space
What to do when iCloud gets stuck
What to do when your Mac slows to a crawl
How can you check the integrity of backed up files?
Are malware defences changing again?
Explainer: .DS_Store files
Copying a Mac volume to another file system (and back)
Snapshot hostages – backups to APFS and their repair
Explainer: defragmentation
How should you check an APFS backup store?
Why won’t that Help book open?
How Safari’s tab groups consume memory
Who needs a desktop Mac?
Will Apple honour its promises on OCSP certificate checks?
Explainer: chipsets and Fabric
Memory leaks
M1 Pro First Impressions: 1 Setting up
M1 Pro First Impressions: 2 Core management and CPU performance
How to deal with a site with a broken certificate
Migrating to a new Mac
Who started that Mac up? How Macs can start up on their own
Improving the performance of Time Machine backups to network storage
Passwords and patchwork quilts
Explainer: file types
MacSysAdmins presentation on Time Machine: slides
Juggling with HFS+ and APFS partitions and volumes: a primer
Explainer: caching
Brolly 1.1 now does its own testing of secure connections
Taming the App Store: getting timely updates
How Safari 15 checks a secure connection
Web woes worsen
Explainer: Security certificates
Why won’t Safari open that web page?
How to undelete a file simply
Silence isn’t golden – Apple’s unspoken update policy
How long does Apple support macOS?
SilentKnight: how to install just one update, rather than all
Explainer: Logs
The silence of the BoMs: why you don’t know what macOS updates
El Capitan and older Mac OS X are about to have a security certificate problem
Explainer: the Recovery Partition
Cleaning out old preference settings and other housekeeping
How to run an app or tool at startup
Running software automatically using launchd
Explainer: macOS scheduled background activities
Looking back in time at backing up with Time Machine
Explainer: the macOS versioning system
Troubleshooting macOS versioning
How to recover a Mac from a kernel panic
What to do when a volume can’t be ejected or unmounted
Powering your Mac: power filters and UPS
Explainer: System Management Controller (SMC)
Dual-booting macOS: Disk structure and Recovery
Disk encryption, FileVault and hardware encryption
Trust Apple
How to compare two PDF documents
How colours get hacked by the web
Is Apple keeping its promises over online OCSP certificate checks?
Analysing natural languages with Nalaprop
How Apple intends checking images for CSAM
Where’s the accelerator? – documentation and more or less
Explainer: File systems
There/their/they’re goes the Cupertino – teach your spell-checker
Knowing what not to back up, and how
Forming unusual characters using Unicode and typography
Explainer: Snapshots
How to customise keyboard layouts
A Short History of Malware Protection in macOS
Preparing your Mac for someone else to own
Explainer: Property lists and preferences
Time has run out on Time Capsules
How to share large files without using your iCloud allowance
Explainer: checksums, CRCs, hashes and cryptography
Finder’s metadata puzzles
How to recognise and diagnose kernel panics
Explainer: xART and nonces
When you can’t send mail: fixing SMTP problems
Volume names are still a Unicode mess
Making a good Recovery: Installing a different macOS in Recovery
From assembly to Shortcuts
When your backups vanish
Hardware legacies
Explainer: version and build numbers
Inside the Content Caching server: performance and troubleshooting
Tango for Two Macs: cached system and App Store updates
The elephant at WWDC
Firmware and Recovery upgrades and downgrades on different Macs
Explainer: what makes a volume bootable?
Apple has finally posted standalone updaters for Catalina and Mojave Security Updates
Explainer: deduplication
How WordPress comments and Property Lists can trip you up
Adding more Thunderbolt ports using a Kensington SD5700T Dual 4K Dock
Getting more from Activity Monitor: CPU
Explainer: secure boot and boot security
Explainer: Unicode, normalization and APFS
Inside the App Store: how it delivers your apps
When an app can’t connect to AppleID-linked services
How to get the best out of the App Store
That macOS update has caused havoc. What do I do next?
Floating-point numbers aren’t evenly distributed
Explainer: numbers in macOS
How some log entries vanish sooner than others
Death by SMB
Optimising performance with EtreCheckPro and Ulbow
Explainers: Sparse things
APFS and pursuit of the free lunch
Bugs and problems in the log: updates for 6 apps
Exploring sparse files and potential clones with Sparsity 1.2
How can you tell whether a file has been ‘cloned’ in APFS?
Troubleshooting macOS: Observation and the log
How your Mac changed its clocks to Summer Time
macOS at 20, APFS at 4
Sparse files are common in APFS
How sparse files can explode backups
The trouble with snapshots: how can you copy them?
How to update your Mac’s firmware
Can you trust Numbers with numbers?
Hyperinflation: comparing update sizes from Mojave to Big Sur
iCloud Secure Backup comes to macOS
How to check the integrity of your backups and iCloud files
Why is firmware so troubled?
You may notice something odd with the latest version of iMovie
Going forward with backups
Why is my Mac’s Gatekeeper data so out of date?
Running custom storage benchmarks using Stibium
What has changed in macOS, and why it matters
How fast SSDs slow to a crawl: thermal throttling
Should you switch to Thunderbolt 4 cables?
How to run apps in private
More App Store update problems
Swallowing a fly – benchmarking SSDs and more
Spotlight on search: How to diagnose and fix problems
Why reporting bugs to Apple may harm software quality
Spotlight on search: Four different Spotlights
Diagnosing a Spotlight bug in Big Sur: failure to index RTF content
Apple’s scorched update policy
Could this fix firmware updating in the iMac Retina 5K 27-inch Late 2015 (iMac17,1)?
How to test Spotlight out in 30 seconds with Mints 1.0b11
Spotlight on search: In-app search (Core Spotlight)
Spotlight on search: Better and different, 3rd party apps
Finding not hiding – access -v- privacy
Why your laptop Mac may not be recharging
Spotlight on search: Search and you might be lucky
Spotlight on search: How Spotlight works
Obsolescent preferences
Bluetooth utilities to help diagnose disconnections
Publishing code in WordPress articles
Lightweight diagramming with Scapple
A Guide to Startup Modes for Intel and M1 Macs
Preference settings and Finder misbehaviour
Help! My Mac is innumerate
Boot disk layout on Intel and M1 Macs: High Sierra to Big Sur
Notarisation: privacy controls
Notarization: the hardened runtime
Notarization: is a notarized app ‘safe’ to use?
How to benchmark your storage using Stibium
Disk read and write tests go random in Stibium 1.0b6
Fessing up – should developers declare vulnerabilities and privacy policies?
Macs of the past and the future
Let’s make 2021 the year of Disk Utility
Getting SSD performance data which make sense
Securing sensitive data
Last Year on My Mac: There must be a pony
Give your Mac (imaginary) unlimited storage thanks to Disk Utility’s bug
Can a Content Caching Server compensate for lost standalone updates?
What stops your Mac running incompatible extensions?
Begging from Apple
Apple has stopped providing standalone installers for macOS updates
Measuring performance of different SSDs using Stibium 1.0b3
Comparing SSD performance between T2 and M1 Macs with Stibium
How did that update eat so much free disk space?
Drag racing SSDs
Controlling processes and environments
Who decides when to quit an app?
Bad design makes macOS a Tower of Babel
Rosetta 2 won’t let the undead die
macOS has checked app signatures online for over 2 years
How big is Xcode?
Backstage heroes – third-party developers and Big Sur support
How to move Apple Installers around via AirDrop
Getting unnotarized apps out of quarantine
macOS version numbering: I’m already eating my hat
Which firmware should your Mac be using? (version 5) – for Big Sur
Checks on executable code in Catalina and Big Sur: a first draft
Making essential services fail-safe
Wrangling file paths in Catalina and Big Sur
No secret
Extended attributes as a vulnerability
Finder Comments: worth avoiding
Guarding against buggy security updates: a new version of SilentKnight
Code signatures: 3 Fixing signature problems
Controlling metadata: Tricks with persistence
Support, dependence, control
Finder Tags: commonplace metadata
Code signatures: 2 How to check them
Quarantine and the quarantine flag
Code signatures: 1 How they work, and stop working
XProtect: What do we know about it?
What happened with security updates and HP printer software?
Are silent security updates a vulnerability?
Why have my HP printers stopped working? How to check their software signature
MRT: what do we know about it?
There’s more to files than data: Extended Attributes
There’s more to files than data: Attributes
There’s more to files than data: Structure and data forks
Background activity scheduling with CTS in Catalina
Miss Havisham Syndrome – accessing hardware info
How does your Mac know when Apple revokes a developer certificate?
How macOS schedules and dispatches background tasks using CTS 1
How macOS schedules and dispatches background tasks using CTS 2
How macOS schedules and dispatches background tasks using CTS 3
What happens when background scheduling fails
Mints now provides better volume info, and looks at task scheduling
Inside the file system: 4 Summary and references
SilentKnight and LockRattler: A Masterclass
Inside the file system: 1 Disks and partitions
Inside the file system: 2 HFS+ volumes
Inside the file system: 3 APFS containers and volumes
How to tell Electron and Catalyst apps
Pretend it never happened
What does Disk Utility’s First Aid really check in Catalina?
Why clicking on some Apple links fails: URIs and ITMSS
Diagnosing an abnormal startup: what that screen means
Were Apple’s system updates less frequent and more reliable?
What to do when a macOS update goes wrong (macOS 10.13-11.0)
What went wrong with Mojave Security Update 2020-005, and Catalina 10.15.7?
Change challenged or champion?
What is responsible for persistent firmware update failures?
What’s right at the end of the menu bar, and how it’s changing
Firmware and the iMac Retina 5K 27-inch Late 2015 (iMac17,1): a hardware fault?
Mints can now reveal your Mac’s logic board ID
Two thousand yard stare (iOS 14)
A brief guide to disk image files
Fitting a quart into a pint pot with sparse bundles
Boot volume layout
Firmware fundamentals
Imaging APFS storage in Disk Utility, and size of the VM volume
New freeware menu: all the apps that are fit for Big Sur and Apple Silicon
Measuring performance of code using RouteMap, now a Universal App
How quickly can apps and scripts write to the log?
Has notarization burned?
Tackling keychain problems with KeychainCheck 2, now a Universal App
Checking signatures on apps
Achieving the CIS Apple macOS 10.15 Benchmark
Is macOS becoming unmaintainable?
How notarization works
Building and notarizing command tools as Universal binaries
SilentKnight, LockRattler and silnite: which should you use?
When you shouldn’t use unconventional Unicode text
Quarantined documents, Pratique and Sandstrip
How can you rebuild or repair an APFS Volume Group?
Dead divers, security exploits, and Swiss cheese
Where privacy protection fails
Exploring natural languages with Nalaprop
Fun and confuddling with Unicode
The vulnerability in Remote Login (ssh) persists
Recover a broken document using versions, and clean versions up
Getting more from document versions in macOS
Apple leak
Which version is that command tool?
The life cycle of a kernel panic
How a kernel zone memory leak can panic macOS
Reading a Panic Log in Catalina
Understanding ‘crashes’ and kernel panics
Heavy hand on the kill switch
Why can’t my iPhone or Mac tell me how hot it is today?
Putting the text back into mail
Catalina 10.15.6 is prone to kernel panics from a memory leak
Calling time on High Sierra
Unsticking stuck preference settings
How should you clean re-install Catalina?
System 8 runs again – in macOS 10.15
Apps on the ultimate diet: beyond stripping Universals
Instant weight loss: how to strip Universal Apps
Time Machine and snapshots
Universal Binaries: inside Fat Headers
Time Machine 17: Using utilities to solve problems
How Apple told us about Apple Silicon 2 years ago
Firmware updates and the iMac Retina 5K 27-inch Late 2015 (iMac17,1)
Mints can now check folders for Universal Apps
ArchiChect 2.4 goes Universal and improves detection of Universal code
Malware detection games
Time Machine 16: Reading a normal backup in Catalina using Mints
Do you want to explore or diagnose a problem? Try Mints
When the Finder’s arithmetic fails with an error of 139 TB
Control-Space – control of snapshots
How macOS overrides app behaviour, including quarantine
Will macOS protect you from ransomware like ThiefQuest?
What to do if you find a security problem in macOS
Protecting yourself against malware
Finding your way around the log using Ulbow
More pieces in Apple’s jigsaw puzzle
Controlling what’s written to the unified log
Limits to size of sparse bundles, and bugs fixed in Spundle 1.2
Lock down your mind – pandemic, WWDC, App Stores
How your Mac may talk in its sleep thanks to HID
Why did that app crash? Getting to the bottom of the log with Ulbow
Selecting sizes for sparse bundles
What caused that kernel panic? How to use the log in diagnosis – tutorial using Ulbow
EFI System Partitions: a hidden problem?
Console, the vital tool that Apple abandoned
How to get more detail in the log
What to do when a process is using excessive CPU
New Mac troubleshooting page
WindowServer: display compositor and input event router
Did your Mac crash, freeze or panic?
WindowServer-GPU crash: different from a kernel panic
Safari 13.1.1 and the lost pages
QuickLook thumbnails don’t always render JPEGs right
Is MacKeeper bad for your Mac?
Is it safe to upgrade to Catalina 10.15.5?
It’s about user choice
Battery health management in Catalina 10.15.5
Software Update and SilentKnight after Security Update 2020-003
A user’s guide to code signatures and notarization
cintch checks file integrity from the command line
How to make Time Machine backups to an APFS disk
How to reveal ‘private’ messages in the log
Nobbled and hobbled by notarization
How come someone notarized my app?
Bookmarks, a type of Alias: their access and use
Metadata editing made easy with Metamer version 1
Spundle: a new utility for creating and adjusting sparse bundles
The tragic case of audiobooks
Snug sparse bundles work better, but…
Sparse bundles leak space
Audiobooks in the Books app
Cut-Copy-Paste: Inside the Pasteboard/Clipboard
Night terrors
How to check the integrity of files in a Time Machine backup
Getting more out of metadata
What happens when you double-click a document? Processes, problems and solutions
Too many apps
File Integrity 12 : Error correction for large files
File Integrity 11 : Which RAID levels enable file recovery?
How to find apps using metadata
Using Finder Item Groups
Sparse bundles: what they are and how to work around their bugs
File Integrity 10 : Effects of length of corruption on images and ECC recovery
Why file integrity is important
File Integrity 9 : How error-correcting codes work
Why is kernel_task eating my CPU?
File Integrity 8 : Compression, encryption and disk images
Time to update updating
File Integrity 7 : Which other file formats are resilient?
File Integrity 6 : Which image format is most resilient?
File Integrity 5 : How well does error-correcting code work?
Vandalism
How to unshorten a URL
How apps save changed files
File Integrity 4 : Error-correcting code is available for macOS
Copy, move and clone files in APFS, a primer
What to do when a T2 Mac suffers a problem updating its firmware
Surprise Supplemental Update
Origins of the Mac human interface, and starting macOS coding
The way ahead with integrity checks, and Dintch 1.1 adds timestamps
A break in the clouds: when cloud services won’t work
Where did all that free space go on my APFS disk?
File Integrity 3 : Where to store digests?
File Integrity 2 : Which digest?
File Integrity 1 : Why bother?
How Preview mangles annotations
SilentKnight & LockRattler: security & firmware updates
The strangeness of Photos libraries, and tagging them with Dintch
Some Macs don’t update their firmware when they should
How Time Machine backups waste space
Apple has changed resetting permissions again
App Store updates get more unreliable
What changes a file’s modification date, and what doesn’t?
Burning to Blu-ray
No thanks for the memories
Should we take bit rot seriously?
Viewing macOS events live using Crescendo
Beyond Time Machine: 5 Archiving
Which extended attributes does iCloud preserve, and which get stripped?
What has Accessibility got to do with me?
Backing up the future
When should you upgrade from an older macOS?
Beyond Time Machine: 4 Offsite backups
Beyond Time Machine: 3 Hourly backups
Beyond Time Machine: 2 Infrequent backups
Deceived by the Finder
Working around the Finder column width bug
18 months on and Dark Mode still doesn’t work properly
Should Mac users worry about ransomware?
How macOS 10.14 and later overrides write permission on some files
Learn (almost) everything about an app with lsappinfo
A Guide to Catalina’s Privacy Protection: 5 Location
Time Machine 15: Large files including VMs
Virus pandemics
Disk, drive, HD: does it really make any difference?
Finder still thinks this Mac’s got a hard disk, and won’t set Preview Options
Beyond Time Machine: 1 Deciding what you need
Apple is working on a developer cloud
A more complex algorithm should make PermissionScanner 1.6 more reliable
Quantum permissions?
How to enable the startup chime on recent Macs
What does the Move To command do in Pages, Numbers & Keynote?
Checking backup transfer rates using T2M2 version 1.13
Repairing permissions in your Home folder has changed – important change in Apple’s recommendations
Time Machine 14: Diagnosing and working around slow backups
Duff disk or normal behaviour?
Why privileged commands may never be allowed
How to keep, or lose, a document’s previous versions
Time Machine 13: Backups and versions
Time Machine in Catalina 10.15.3 has serious bugs
Ulbow now helps you solve log problems in version 1.1b2
When you can’t run an app because its extension(s) won’t load
SSD it
Time Machine 12: Backups that never complete
How long does your Mac keep its log for?
Making your own logarchive from a backup
Orphaned snapshots: a growing problem?
Errors in the night and snapshot problems
Hardening and notarization finally arrive in Catalina
Is Catalina a good upgrade yet?
Apple has released macOS Catalina 10.15.3, and security updates for Mojave and High Sierra
Quarantine, SIP, and MACL: macOS per-file security controls
What’s this new AppleInternal folder then?
A Guide to Catalina’s Privacy Protection: 4 tccutil
What could possibly go wrong on an app first run?
When more security subverts security
Preventing external displays from sleep can be crucial
Catalina Boot Volumes
Testing iCloud using Cirrus
Time Machine: 10 Tools
Time Machine: 11 tmutil
Time Machine: 9 Inside backup support files
A Guide to Catalina’s Privacy Protection: 3 New protected locations
A Guide to Catalina’s Privacy Protection: 2 Controlling privacy settings
A Guide to Catalina’s Privacy Protection: 1 Principles and structure
Time Machine: 8 Preventing problems
Key macOS and related documentation from Apple
Protecting folders and volumes is too blunt
Diagnosing privacy protection problems in Catalina
Using and understanding some AppKit controls, examples from Ulbow
When apps show mirror-writing upside down in Catalina
Catalina’s privacy protection backfires again: why you can’t save a logarchive there
When did my Mac last start up, and why? An exploration with Ulbow
Consolation 3 and Ulbow: Saving a logarchive in Catalina
‘Erase Mac’ doesn’t?
Time Machine: 7 Checking logs using Ulbow
Explanations required – end of year review
Publishers determined to kill electronic books
Network security can block updates, notifications, and more
Flaws in re-installing Catalina
Opening documents, SIP and quarantine flags in Catalina
Making sense of Disk Utility and disk structure in macOS 10.13-10.15
How clean re-installs change in Catalina
What to do when a macOS update goes wrong (Catalina edition)
Why does my Mac keep waking up?
Dictation changes in Catalina – for the worse?
Can you still use AFP sharing?
Apple invents a new procedure to fix MacBook Pro 13-inch 2019 models
Are you having weird problems with Catalina?
What happens when you run an app in Catalina?
All aboard for Catalyst: how macOS runs iPadOS apps
How to encrypt files and folders in APFS
Reset and maintain your SMC and NVRAM
Which startup mode?
Time Machine has changed again in Catalina
Why do Macs with T2 chips display a black screen so long?
Preparing for new security rules: how signatures can get stripped
Safe Booting in Catalina has changed
Starting up in Catalina: sequence and waypoints in the log
Are you experiencing panics or problems with USB-C external displays?
A plain guide to Mac firmware and its problems
Support articles for Catalina, and macOS download links
How can security data get so out of date?
AirPlay streaming can stop App Store apps from running
Catalina crashes non-notarized command tools with a quarantine flag
Firmware update failure in iMac Retina 5K 27-inch Late 2015 with Catalina
Should you enable defragmentation on APFS hard drives?
Beware Apple security certificates after 24 October: they may have expired
Security data files: how they’ve changed in Catalina
Inside Catalina’s unified log: how has it changed?
Does Safe Mode check and repair disks?
How Catalina handles app first run
Which EFI firmware should your Mac be using? (version 4) – for Catalina
When should you use APFS Containers, Volumes, and Folders?
Opening the log
What to do when a newly-installed app can’t be opened?
Will Gatekeeper let me run that app in Catalina?
How to preserve metadata stored in a custom extended attribute
Should you trust Disk Utility’s First Aid or fsck?
Which Recovery Mode?
What doesn’t Time Machine back up?
Is single-user mode (SUM) dead?
More About This Mac: where to find that UUID, MAC address, etc.
Hardware diagnostics
Why has Apple put snapshots in a straitjacket?
What’s that file then? How to identify unknown file types
Volume recovery using an APFS snapshot
The problem with APFS snapshots
Is a VM a good answer for running 32-bit apps in Catalina?
If you’re still running Sierra, what do you do next?
Preparing to upgrade to Catalina
How to tell if an app will run in Catalina
macOS Mojave Boot Volume Layout
Are you running macOS before Mojave 10.14.4? Do you use command tools?
Prepare to upgrade to Catalina
Caring for SSDs: TRIM, wear levelling and APFS
Preference settings: where to find them in Mojave
Working safely and effectively with preferences in Mojave
Global defaults in macOS Mojave
APFS tools suck
Hitting the limits of APFS is both easy and confusing
The ‘hardened runtime’ explained
Spotlight search can skip files
SilentKnight and silnite: FAQ
Metadata and iCloud
What makes macOS updates more complex: T2 firmware updates
How do the Finder, Terminal and Spotlight handle extended attribute flags?
How to save file metadata in iCloud, and new info on extended attributes
How to save your file metadata – implementation isn’t simple
studentd and its self-signed certificate are permanent fixtures in Mojave
How to add a custom icon to an app without breaking its signature
How do you get a security update to work?
Versions and other app metadata: what to trust?
Should you pay the high price of a high-speed external SSD?
Does replacing internal storage cause EFI updating problems?
A primer on code signing errors
Why Catalina has got a read-only system volume
What is SIP and when is it safe to turn it off?
Notarization made a bit simpler
Making notarization as hard as possible
What to do when you can’t launch an app
Will my app/tool/extension run on Catalina?
Building and delivering command tools for Catalina
Grokking Gatekeeper in Catalina
Time Machine: past, present and future
Notarization in Mojave and Catalina
Finder security errors opening documents: a summary
Tackling sleep and wake problems
Why is my system update history wrong?
🎗 Quarantine: Apps
🎗 Quarantine: Documents
Sandboxing makes quarantine flags almost meaningless
How does notarization affect your own apps and scripts?
Why can’t I open that document? Troubleshooting LaunchServices
Finder Aliases and Bookmarks: a summary
Copies, clones, links and aliases: summary in tables
A lexicon of Mac power adaptors, from MagSafe to USB-C
No Entry ⛔️: access controls in Mojave
Four serious security errors which are easily made on a Mac: how to fix them

135Comments

Add yours

1

raggedapple on November 10, 2015 at 2:42 pm
Reply

Mail – I have upgraded to an iPhone 6s and my single mail account shows 14 unread messages. Nothing in the mailbox – cleared all mail from the server – reset the account and the problem persists. Online search shows this to be a problem for others too – and no solutions that work posted. Any ideas Howard? With thanks.

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2

hoakley on November 10, 2015 at 8:07 pm
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This does look like a not uncommon problem. The acid test is whether Mail takes any time looking for those mythical unread messages: if it does, then you should contact support, as there is a glitch between Mail and the mail server.
I suspect that it does not, but the badge is stuck. In that case, it is a matter of waiting for it to clear, or for Apple to release a new version of Mail which fixes that bug.
Howard.

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3

mtmanner on April 9, 2016 at 2:08 pm
Reply

Hello… first time on your site… looking for a way to capture keystrokes as I’m debugging some software. Total newbie at it. // While looking for “how to”, I happened onto your blog… and while looking at your blog, I happened onto the link for “How to defragment in El Capitan”; however, here is the page that comes up: https://eclecticlight.co/2016/01/12/visible-brushstrokes-8-painterly-portraits/ Fascinating stuff, but perhaps not related to defragging, right? So… two ponderings — 1) do you know how to capture keystrokes and provide a log of them? 2) do you have a working link to the defragging process?

Very interesting blog. I’ll be back.

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- 4
  
  hoakley on April 9, 2016 at 2:49 pm
  Reply
  
  Thank you. My apologies for that incorrect link: I have fixed that now, to this page.
  Capturing keystrokes is possible, but there are two different situations: if you want to log everything which is typed on the keyboard, then there are keystroke loggers which are available, but are not normally used for ‘good’ purposes. If you are debugging software which you have written, then you should work within the Xcode debugging environment, which provides different and more appropriate solutions for working with key input events, which are different from simple keystroke logging.
  Howard.
  
  LikeLike
5

Alan on March 26, 2017 at 10:15 am
Reply

Hello Howard. I used LockRattler 3.3 this morning and it reported that “XProtect blacklist Failed, error = 1″. I got in touch with Apple Support. The response was”…If you have Flievault turned on your data is protected.” I asked “So I can ignore the XProtect blacklist error message?” and they said “I would say yes, I have not heard of this error message before and it is not something that you are being notified about for the preinstalled applications.” I”m not sure if this helps your development in any way however I wanted to feed it back to you. Also, to say thank you for the software you’re developing and the terrific, insightful art posts.

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- 6
  
  hoakley on March 26, 2017 at 10:37 am
  Reply
  
  Thanks. I’m away from my Mac at the moment but will respond fully when I get back to it.
  Howard.
  
  LikeLike
- 7
  
  hoakley on March 26, 2017 at 11:52 am
  Reply
  
  OK, back at my Mac now – and thanks for your kind words.
  That control simply returns the result of running
  spctl --status
  in Terminal’s command line. spctl is an Apple tool which returns the security assessment subsystem status – whether it is enabled or not. According to Apple’s docs, it returns 0 on success (assessments enabled), or a low positive integer from 1 to 3 if it fails.
  According to the docs, exit code 1 indicates that the operation has failed, which could simply mean there’s a bug in spctl when FileVault is active.
  The ‘security assessment subsystem’ is mainly about assessment against the blacklists maintained by XProtect. These are still required when FileVault is turned on: FileVault cannot replace XProtect, as they do totally different things. So if XProtect is not functioning normally when FileVault is turned on, that would be a significant security vulnerability.
  I suggest that you try the Terminal command to confirm that this is the error returned from that. If it is, it will be very helpful if any other reader here who has FileVault turned on could confirm that they get the same error. If they do, it looks like a bug, at the very least.
  Sadly I don’t have a system here with FileVault active, although I may try that on another of my Macs in the coming days to check.
  Howard.
  
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  - 8
    
    hoakley on March 26, 2017 at 12:51 pm
    Reply
    
    Thanks to Alan Stonebridge, the new editor of MacLife: he reports that
    spctl --status
    returns assessments enabled on a Mac running Sierra with FileVault. I therefore recommend that you run that command in Terminal: if the result is not assessments enabled, then your Mac seems to have a problem, and definitely needs a check in a Genius Bar or similar.
    Howard.
    
    LikeLike
9

ludheat on March 26, 2017 at 1:27 pm
Reply

Thank you so much Howard, and Alan too. I’ll be home and back in front of my Mac later this evening so I’ll try your suggestion then. Thanks again.
Alan

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- 10
  
  hoakley on March 26, 2017 at 1:30 pm
  Reply
  
  You’re most welcome.
  I will be writing more about spctl and its use in this sort of situation later today, for publication here tomorrow morning. Hopefully it will give you better insight into what might be going wrong.
  I can feel another tool might be needed!
  Howard.
  
  LikeLike
11

ludheat on March 27, 2017 at 6:44 am
Reply

As advised I ran spctl –status and it returned assessments disabled as the response. Then, I thought to check the settings in the Security & Privacy pane of the System Settings. At some point I must have clicked the radio button to allow it too accept installations from ‘Anywhere’. I changed the setting to ‘App Store and Identified Developers’ and ran the spctl –status command again. This time it returns ‘Enabled’. Alan

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- 12
  
  hoakley on March 27, 2017 at 6:49 am
  Reply
  
  Ah – thank you.
  I’m not quite sure how you get to see ‘Anywhere’ as an option in the General tab of Security & Privacy in Sierra, though: that was dropped in Sierra and there should only be the two options now.
  I have updated this morning’s article to reflect this.
  Howard.
  
  LikeLike
13

Alan on March 27, 2017 at 8:01 am
Reply

I just checked my other Macs that are running Sierra and as you rightly point out the Anywhere button was removed however I now recall that in a reckless moment I ran sudo spctl –master-disable on my home Mac that re-enabled the Anywhere button and completely forgot that I did it. It seems that I am the route cause of my issues.

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- 14
  
  hoakley on March 27, 2017 at 8:04 am
  Reply
  
  I’m sure that there was a very good reason at the time.
  At least it’s fixed now: another benefit of running LockRattler!
  Howard.
  
  LikeLike
15

iawhciwc on March 28, 2017 at 4:56 am
Reply

Got a question that I haven’t found a workaround for and I am not sure there is on, but I’ll ask just to satisfy my curiosity.

What I would like to do is install el Capitan from a USB thumb drive into a separate partition on a machine that is running macOS Sierra. So far I haven’t been able to find a way of doing it. I have El Capitan install virtually using a somewhat freeware app from MAS called Parallels Desktop Lite that created the installation files from the Install El Capitan.app.

TIA

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- 16
  
  hoakley on March 28, 2017 at 7:08 am
  Reply
  
  There seems to be an issue with installing El Cap onto a partition on your startup drive, if you already have Sierra installed on another partition. You certainly shouldn’t have any problems installing El Cap onto an external drive, and making that bootable, but I cannot find any reports of a release version of Sierra allowing dual-boot from the internal drive.
  You could make a bootable (non-installer) USB thumb drive with El Cap on it, but that is not a good way to run El Cap unless you have a lot of time on your hands.
  So I think your best option is an external drive for El Cap.
  Howard.
  
  LikeLike
17

iawhciwc on March 28, 2017 at 11:59 am
Reply

Thanks for satisfying my curiosity

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18

Richard Glaser on January 17, 2018 at 10:21 pm
Reply

Hello, I head the University of Utah campus MacAdmin meeting which is popular with the Mac administrative community and wanted to see if you might be interested in doing a remote presenting on macOS unified logging, issues, tools, etc. Let me know.

LikeLiked by 1 person
- 19
  
  hoakley on January 17, 2018 at 10:22 pm
  Reply
  
  Thank you: I will respond by email to you.
  Howard.
  
  LikeLike
20

John R on April 26, 2018 at 8:01 pm
Reply

Sir, I have spent an hour or two trying to figure out how to find my EFI version. I could not understand how to use the technical report you linked. I downloaded the GitHub tools, but never saw how to use them. The GUI interface through Safari does not seem to work with my 17,1 iMac macOS 10.13.4, build (17E202). Would you sometime explain how a non programmer user can check if their EFI is updated correctly or not? None of the terminal commands I have found following the many EFI discussions seem to work. Terminal answers mostly “unknown command”.

LikeLiked by 1 person
- 21
  
  hoakley on April 26, 2018 at 10:22 pm
  Reply
  
  Walk, don’t run, to this article, which not only explains how to find it out, but lists all the latest versions.
  I hope that solves the problem for you.
  Howard.
  
  LikeLike
  - 22
    
    blackxacto on April 26, 2018 at 10:48 pm
    Reply
    
    This is what the command returns on my iMac:
    
    ls /Volumes/ExternalSSD1/usr/libexec/firmwarecheckers/eficheck/EFIAllowListShipping.bundle/allowlists
    ls: /Volumes/ExternalSSD1/usr/libexec/firmwarecheckers/eficheck/EFIAllowListShipping.bundle/allowlists: No such file or directory
    
    LikeLiked by 1 person
    - 23
      
      hoakley on April 26, 2018 at 10:51 pm
      
      Further down in that article, I explain where to read the EFI version from System Information, and how to understand that.
      It’s much easier.
      Howard.
      
      LikeLike
  - 24
    
    blackxacto on April 26, 2018 at 11:46 pm
    Reply
    
    Ok, got it. IM171.0151.B00 which is what you wrote about anyway. Thanks for your time.
    
    LikeLiked by 1 person
25

Ampere77 on May 16, 2018 at 9:45 am
Reply

Hi, thanks for the awesome information!! I couldn’t find the proper contact link or support page, so I’m putting this up here. Consolation 2 (and 3) give me an “Error 64” on the default settings (no custom searches). I can send screenshot. What am I missing? thank you!

LikeLiked by 1 person
- 26
  
  hoakley on May 16, 2018 at 10:54 am
  Reply
  
  My email address is in the About page – that is probably the best way to tackle this.
  If you can send me that screenshot and details of which version of macOS, etc., I’d be very grateful.
  Howard.
  
  LikeLike
27

Ampere77 on May 16, 2018 at 6:55 pm
Reply

Hi Howard, maybe I’m losing my vision but I don’t see an About page – where’s that??

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- 28
  
  hoakley on May 16, 2018 at 6:59 pm
  Reply
  
  Here – the address is almost at the end.
  Sorry, it’s my fault. I have too many pages to put them all in the top menu, but they are all listed at the right of the bottom of every page.
  Howard.
  
  LikeLike
29

blackxacto on July 9, 2018 at 3:38 am
Reply

Howard, I’m getting two beeps sometimes when I reawaken my 17,1 iMac. Console used to tell me exactly what happens if I quickly looked. Where in High Sierra Console does one look now? Surely its possible.

LikeLiked by 1 person
- 30
  
  blackxacto on July 9, 2018 at 4:59 am
  Reply
  
  I tried RunConsolation it err’d in 10.13.5: AppleScript could not launch Consolation.
  
  LikeLiked by 1 person
  - 31
    
    hoakley on July 9, 2018 at 6:03 am
    Reply
    
    First, do you need to use RunConsolation? It is only needed if you are logged in as a regular not admin user. If you log in as an admin user, you can just run Consolation instead.
    Second, do you have a copy of Consolation 2 or 3 named Consolation2.app in /Applications? That is what it will try to run. If you have Consolation 3 installed instead, please rename the app to Consolation2.app before using RunConsolation, and it should launch fine.
    Howard.
    
    LikeLike
- 32
  
  hoakley on July 9, 2018 at 6:05 am
  Reply
  
  In Sierra and later with the unified log, Console can only provide access to the current log stream, or open logarchives. It cannot provide any entries which have already been acquired except from a logarchive.
  Howard.
  
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- 33
  
  hoakley on July 9, 2018 at 6:13 am
  Reply
  
  A couple of suggestions:
  1. Run hardware diagnostics. Most system sounds like that now indicate hardware issues.
  2. ACPI reports may be important – these are covered here.
  I wish you success,
  Howard.
  
  LikeLike
34

blackxacto on July 9, 2018 at 6:23 am
Reply

Thank you very much for your information. Will try and get back.

LikeLiked by 1 person
35

Robert Hancock on August 10, 2018 at 10:10 pm
Reply

Great site Howard.
Although HFS+, DU, and RAID had issues, the High Sierra and now Mojave beta installers ALSO have a serious bug in the bless command implementation when installing to a booting APFS Apple RAID volume. According to shirt-pocket (SuperDuper dev), this bug “…is in BLCreateBooterInformationDictionary.c in Apple’s Open Source bless project. After some additional investigation, it looks like, in this case, if the APFS container is on an Apple RAID, bless can’t find the Preboot volume and doesn’t properly set up the container.”
Apple seems to have let this bug slip through from HS to Mojave and there is no solution on the various forums other than wait for Apple to fix it (if they ever will). Both the SD and CCC devs have reported it and it has been the subject of bug reports and feedback reports but there is no response from Apple for what is a show stopper for this group of RAID users.
I’ve tried various bless commands from Terminal but all fail. Do you have any ideas or the ear of some DU engineer at Apple who might push the fix.
Best
Robert

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- 36
  
  hoakley on August 10, 2018 at 10:55 pm
  Reply
  
  Thank you, Robert. I’m afraid that both your comments got stuck in the spam folder for some reason – as they express the problem in slightly different ways, I have let both out to stand as comments.
  Sadly I have very few contacts among Apple engineers. All experience says that reporting such bugs on Radar is the only way to get anything done, and I’m surprised that this has been let slip into Mojave betas.
  I wonder if SoftRAID 6.0, soon to go into beta, will work around this, perhaps? In the past when I used software RAID, I found that far superior and so much better-supported. Apple never seems to have thought that its own software RAID merited much investment.
  Howard.
  
  LikeLike
37

Robert Hancock on August 12, 2018 at 3:40 am
Reply

Thanks Howard.
I’m left wondering if the delay in the SOFTRaid 6.0 release might be the result of the same issue with the bless command. Time will tell.
Thanks for a truly great site for both art and Macs.

LikeLiked by 1 person
38

Bela on May 24, 2019 at 9:22 pm
Reply

I downloaded and tried your 32-bitCheck app, and I’ve encountered one difficulty. I use a MacPro with only a small SSD, so half my apps are on an external drive . When I try to access the external HDD, no path specification seems to work. Maybe it’s just my limited familiarity with how paths should be specified. I tried and and , now of which worked (the list shown here has generic substitutes for my drive names and file names). Can you advise me how to correct the path to my apps on the external HDD?

LikeLiked by 1 person
- 39
  
  hoakley on May 24, 2019 at 9:29 pm
  Reply
  
  No problems.
  There are three ways of doing this:
  1. Use the Unix path, which for an external volume runs like /Volumes/[volumename]/
  2. Leave the text box blank, click on the Scan button and select that volume using the Open File dialog.
  3. With the text box blank, drag and drop the volume from a Finder window into the text box, and the app will show you the path all ready to click on Scan.
  I hope those help.
  Howard.
  
  LikeLike
40

Bela on May 24, 2019 at 9:34 pm
Reply

Please ignore my previous post on how to access apps on my external HDD. When I examined the results of the main drive search I discovered it had included the apps on the external drive without a direct scan request to the specific drive.

LikeLiked by 1 person
- 41
  
  hoakley on May 24, 2019 at 10:15 pm
  Reply
  
  If you have a hard or symbolic link to the external drive from /Applications, then it should have followed that during its scan.
  Howard.
  
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42

Bob Freeman on November 8, 2019 at 7:46 pm
Reply

Have you noticed the problem with “man” pages on Catalina (not sure if only 15.1 or with 15.0 also), but whenever you try a “man -k xxx” you get the normal info about xxx but you also get about 293 errrors about a bunch (all?) of dylib items in /usr/lib are not a directory? And there is no longer a “whatis” file in /usr/share/man and you can’t create one due to the read-only nature of the root file system. I can’t believe no one at Apple didn’t catch this glaring error — don’t they use man pages anymore? EEEKS!!!! What kind of people do they have working there now, to not use man pages any longer? Please, say it isn’t so, Mr. Cook? How can any serious mac user or developer not use man pages a gazillion times a day? Have they no Unix people working there any longer who know what a man page is? YIKES!!!! How to get around this glaring problem???

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- 43
  
  hoakley on November 8, 2019 at 7:54 pm
  Reply
  
  Thank you – good catches.
  However, I hate to break the news to you, but Apple seems to have stopped updating most of its man pages some years ago. If you want to see what the current version allows and does, you normally have to ignore the out-of-date man page and invoke its help option. Even then, what you see may not quite be accurate any more.
  Personally, I prefer using Dash which covers much more than just command tools too.
  Howard.
  
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44

Bob on November 8, 2019 at 8:12 pm
Reply

I agree about how inaccurate the man pages can be at times, but certainly better than nothing, and I can’t guess how many times a day I normally do a “man -k” to look up related items. And now have to wade thru 300 or so lines of errors every time I even try. Have not heard of Dash, where does it come from?

I came across a comment in Apple Discussion forum ( see https://discussions.apple.com/thread/250812698 ) where someone created an alias like this:

apo() { apropos $1 2>/dev/null }

And that at least gets rid of the 300 error messages, so that’s a handy thing.

Thanks …

LikeLiked by 1 person
- 45
  
  hoakley on November 8, 2019 at 8:44 pm
  Reply
  
  Dash is from Kapeli here.
  Howard.
  
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46

Bob on November 9, 2019 at 11:00 pm
Reply

Have you come across Catalina changing the names of TimeMachine sparse image names that end in “.sparsebundle” to end in “.backupbundle” by chance? I was doing a TM test backup on a TimeCapsule from a Catalina test system today and was very surprised that it made this change and even more surprised it didn’t mention that it did it anywhere. That change makes the TimeCapsule backups a problem for non-Catalina systems, although I did successfully mount the “.backupbundle” file using the DiskImageMounter.app in /System/Library/CoreServices folder on a High Sierra system and it looked like a TM backup but didn’t actually use TimeMachine to try and get a file off of it. Didn’t want to corrupt a real backup, so will try a test and see what happens later in the week.

Any idea why this happens and if there is anything to keep it from doing this? Or most importantly is the Time Machine backups that Catalina creates on TimeCapsule or other network devices (sparseimages) really capable of being used by TimeMachine on non-Catalina systems?

Thanks…

-bob

LikeLiked by 1 person
- 47
  
  hoakley on November 9, 2019 at 11:17 pm
  Reply
  
  No, but I haven’t upgraded my main system on which I run TM backups, yet.
  Apple’s documentation on TM in Catalina is sparse, and doesn’t detail this change, but it does refer (vaguely) to backward incompatibilities between 10.15 backups and earlier versions of macOS. You may have found the reason for this, and you may experience problems if you try to access those backups from Mojave or earlier.
  Howard.
  
  LikeLike
48

holaluisemilio12341 on September 4, 2020 at 1:54 pm
Reply

thank you very much for all this help Howard!

LikeLiked by 1 person
49

malcolm on September 25, 2020 at 7:49 pm
Reply

I have a big problem with Catalina, I cannot repare it with Disk FirstAid with reboot CMD-R. The structure of my disks Fusion are not ok. Also, i have a couple of small programs from the System appearing not working. I own a iMac Retina 5K, 27-inch, 2019, 3.8ghz, 32gig Ram, Radeon Pro Vega48, 8gig. What can i do ? Thank you very much.
I have a copy image of the result of the test of DiskAid, but i cannot join it to this mail,

LikeLiked by 1 person
- 50
  
  hoakley on September 25, 2020 at 7:57 pm
  Reply
  
  I’m sorry to hear that. If you can’t repair it in Recovery Mode, you’ll need to restart in Remote Recovery Mode holding Option-Command-R, to ensure that the latest version of Catalina is installed. Open Disk Utility, select your internal disk and Erase it before selecting Install macOS from the main menu. That should wipe your internal storage altogether and set up a fresh copy of Catalina. Once that’s done, you should be able to restore what you need from your most recent backup.
  If your Data volume doesn’t have any problems with it, you might be able to get away with erasing just your System volume, then installing the new system on the disk Macintosh HD, which should connect the new system with your old Data volume. However, if this is a problem with your Fusion Drive, that is likely to fail.
  I wish you success,
  Howard.
  
  LikeLike
- 51
  
  blackxacto on September 25, 2020 at 9:12 pm
  Reply
  
  I erased my fusion configuration. Forget fusion w Catalina. Used my inner 128 ssd for storage. Booted from the hard drive. Later bought an internal 2tb ssd and installed it myself to boot from. Forget fusion.
  
  LikeLiked by 1 person
52

Frank on October 2, 2020 at 11:11 am
Reply

Hi.

I’m really sorry for bothering you with my mac problem but I couldn’t find a solution anywhere/myself.

I use the Music app and my media is stored on an external drive that’s only switched on when I need it.

The problem is a process called media-indexer (path: /System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/AssistantServices.framework/Versions/A/XPCServices/media-indexer.xpc/Contents/MacOS/media-indexer) that seems to be associated with Siri (not enabled on my Mac).

media-indexer eats a lot of my CPU. A lot. Probably always trying to update the index when my external drive is not switched on.

Is there any way I can disable (the launch of) that process permanently?

My thinking was: disable SIP, disable some launchjob and reenable SIP.

I’ve listed the active launchjobs with launchctl list but it’s not there.

Do you think it’s possible? And what you think I’d have to disable to permanently disable media-indexer?

Thank you so much for your help.
Very much appreciated.

Best regards,

Frank

LikeLiked by 1 person
- 53
  
  hoakley on October 2, 2020 at 11:28 am
  Reply
  
  Thank you.
  I don’t think your proposed solution will work, because media-indexer isn’t controlled in that way, but seems to be run as an XPC service on demand.
  Two suggestions which are worth trying:
  – disable Siri, as this appears linked to the Siri search system
  – when that disk is mounted, try adding it to the Spotlight exclusion list. That will remove it from Spotlight search, of course, but may stop this process from looking for it too.
  I wish you success,
  Howard.
  
  LikeLike
  - 54
    
    Frank on October 2, 2020 at 12:29 pm
    Reply
    
    Thank you for your quick answer.
    Siri was already disabled and the drive already on the Spotlight exclusion list.
    
    I think AMPLibraryAgent may have kicked off the media-indexer because I saw it using a lot CPU right before media-indexer started to the same.
    
    Do you think emptying ~/Library/Containers/com.apple.siri.media-indexer/Data/ and then changing the permissions/ownership of this folder to something like root/admin, read-only could work?
    
    Sometimes I wish I could still delete or rename things in /System/Library/…
    
    LikeLiked by 1 person
    - 55
      
      hoakley on October 2, 2020 at 1:14 pm
      
      I have absolutely no idea. As I don’t know how that service works, it could make your problems worse.
      Howao
      
      LikeLike
56

Kevin on December 9, 2020 at 1:22 am
Reply

Hacked. Any solutions welcome

Hacker took control of root account.
Hacker renamed root account system administrator and put in the wheel account group.

How do I regain control over macOS. This is a 2015 Mac air. I suspect hacker did the same to my 2019 MacBook Pro.

Installed Big Sur.

Next solution is to wipe drive and reinstall. But I suspect this will not work. Hacker hardcoded changes to macOS. Copied over folders and made programming changes. Same hacker did This to my Lenovo running Windows pro.

For those of you who would like to know, I am former IRS. IRS has a BYOD program, bring your own device. To use your device, irs installs apps to insure device is not jailbroken and meets security standards.

I did not think about it at the time, but those apps remain in your Apple ID account.

I did not see a profile on my iPad or iPhone. It seems IRS injected code.

I left the IRS but no one explained to me how to remove the code.

And the apps remain in my Apple ID account ripe for the picking if someone knows how to exploit.

LikeLiked by 1 person
- 57
  
  hoakley on December 9, 2020 at 7:27 pm
  Reply
  
  I’m very sorry to hear that. If you haven’t discovered it already, this article explains what to do next.
  I wish you success.
  Howard.
  
  LikeLike
58

blackxacto on December 21, 2020 at 4:33 am
Reply

https://www.flickr.com/photos/83082658@N00/50741895683/
Sir, I booted my 19,1 iMac Catalina 10.15.7 into internet recovery mode and ran Disk Utility on an external backup RAID HD. The procedure revealed within the red circle a curious text. Is all it is saying that the internet APSF was Big Sur unlike my Catalina APSF? Why was dislocating overallocation repairs necessary?

LikeLiked by 1 person
- 59
  
  hoakley on December 21, 2020 at 10:05 am
  Reply
  
  Thank you.
  These are informative rather than errors. APFS keeps a record of which version has been used to mount its file systems, etc., and that is just reporting that container has been mounted using a more recent version of APFS, which may have written newer data to it, so it’s going to play cautious in what it does to ensure that the older version doesn’t damage anything it doesn’t understand.
  Those checks look fine, though.
  Howard.
  
  LikeLike
  - 60
    
    blackxacto on December 21, 2020 at 2:28 pm
    Reply
    
    Thank you for your generous help
    
    LikeLiked by 1 person
    - 61
      
      hoakley on December 22, 2020 at 12:04 am
      
      It’s my pleasure.
      Howard.
      
      LikeLike
62

David Garratt on January 1, 2021 at 9:57 pm
Reply

I have an odd snapshot file which is taking up 115 GB of disk space since upgrading to Big Sur. I don’t know if it’s important or how to remove if it is safe to do so. The file is at the bottom of the list.

tmutil listlocalsnapshots /
Snapshots for disk /:
com.apple.TimeMachine.2020-12-31-210401.local
com.apple.TimeMachine.2021-01-01-093125.local
com.apple.TimeMachine.2021-01-01-115216.local
com.apple.TimeMachine.2021-01-01-140357.local
com.apple.TimeMachine.2021-01-01-164149.local
com.apple.TimeMachine.2021-01-01-192054.local
com.apple.asr.1015

LikeLiked by 1 person
- 63
  
  hoakley on January 1, 2021 at 10:26 pm
  Reply
  
  Thank you.
  The last snapshot listed there isn’t one of Time Machine’s, but was made by asr, the command tool used to image and restore volumes. The number suggests that it was made in Catalina, possibly immediately before the Big Sur install started. Few tools could remove it – the one that I use is Carbon Copy Cloner, although in this case it might be protected and thus almost impossible to remove. I can’t find one here, though.
  Howard.
  
  LikeLike
64

Jim Beaupre on December 29, 2021 at 1:40 pm
Reply

Well, it’s more of a new M1 mac problem. I have a lot of VBA code for MS Excel and I find that very little of it works on the Excel for Mac 16.56 (latest, as of today). My questions are these:
1- Does anyone else have this problem?
2- I know the code works for Windows Excel, what is available for running windows on a mac or better yet just the windows version of office?
Any comments / relevant experiences would be appreciated.
Thanks

LikeLiked by 1 person
- 65
  
  hoakley on December 29, 2021 at 3:23 pm
  Reply
  
  I’m sorry, I doubt whether many will see that here, and it’s not a subject I normally cover.
  Although I have Office365, I don’t use VBA. There is essentially only the one game in town, and that’s the version of Excel that you’re using.
  Running Windows on an M1 Mac is possible, but it has to be Windows for ARM, as M1 Macs have ARM not Intel processors. And that has to be a Virtual Machine within VMware or Parallels. The right Windows is easy to set up in Parallels, and runs very well, I gather, but again that’s not a subject I cover here.
  Howard.
  
  LikeLike
  - 66
    
    jvbeaupre on December 29, 2021 at 4:00 pm
    Reply
    
    I was hoping that wasn’t the case. Thank you for your reply.
    I’ve reported the problem to both apple and microsoft, but don’t really expect even an acknowledgment
    
    LikeLiked by 1 person
    - 67
      
      hoakley on December 29, 2021 at 4:20 pm
      
      Microsoft’s front page for VBA for its Office for Mac products is here. One issue it does point out is sandboxing and its consequences, which could be significant to your code, perhaps. Otherwise it links to the standard references pages for VBA for Excel.
      I wish you success.
      Howard.
      
      LikeLike
    - 68
      
      jvbeaupre on December 29, 2021 at 4:36 pm
      
      I’ve solved the sandboxing issue in previously.
      The most common problem is an overrun at the end of a For-Next loop. Often disappears when I step through the code. When I “continue” it happens every iteration.
      Something is really flaky with VBA in Excel 16.56. Most all is OK with my last previous version 16.54 on an intel Mojave system. Incompetent implementaion and testing?
      
      LikeLiked by 1 person
    - 69
      
      hoakley on December 29, 2021 at 7:53 pm
      
      I suspect that you should have the option to run that earlier version, if you still have a copy. You could also try forcing either version to run using its Intel code: select the app, and press Command-I to display the Get Info dialog. You there have a checkbox which lets you make the app run using Rosetta 2 translation. If that results in any difference, it would be very interesting to know!
      I wish you success,
      Howard.
      
      LikeLike
    - 70
      
      James Beaupre on December 29, 2021 at 8:18 pm
      
      I used the migration assistant to port all my apps & data. When I tried to run old excell, I was forced to update. Results were indifferent to Rosetta2. Adobe forced a paid update on PS Elements.
      Less than happy with the switch to M1.
      Jim
      
      LikeLiked by 1 person
71

jvbeaupre on December 29, 2021 at 9:57 pm
Reply

I believe I found the suspect statement:
Runtime Error 6 occurs when there is a debug.print statement in a For-Next or Do loop.
Context: M1 iMac running MacOS Monterey and Excel 16.56. Results indifferent to Rosetta2.

LikeLiked by 1 person
- 72
  
  hoakley on December 29, 2021 at 10:53 pm
  Reply
  
  That looks like a Microsoft bug, then.
  Howard.
  
  LikeLike
  - 73
    
    jvbeaupre on December 29, 2021 at 11:20 pm
    Reply
    
    Yes, it does. But it seems M1 specific.
    
    LikeLiked by 1 person
74

Bill Halberstadt on January 24, 2022 at 3:24 am
Reply

Installed and did my first run of SilentKnight, and it shows XProtect not running (only error). Monterey 12.1 on a MacBook Pro 16 (2019). Possible causes? CSRUTIL is enabled. Scans by Malwarebytes and CleanMyMacX do not find malware.

LikeLiked by 1 person
75

halberstadt on January 24, 2022 at 4:17 am
Reply

To clarify… It shows “XProtect disabled”. When I use Activity Monitor, I have seen results showing no entries for XProtect, or one entry for XprotectService, or sometimes two entries with that name.

LikeLiked by 1 person
- 76
  
  hoakley on January 24, 2022 at 8:51 am
  Reply
  
  Open Terminal, and type the following command:
  spctl –status
  noting that there’s a *double-hyphen* before the word status.
  What does that return?
  Howard.
  
  LikeLike
  - 77
    
    halberstadt on January 24, 2022 at 3:39 pm
    Reply
    
    It reports “assessments disabled”. Currently Activity Monitor shows two instances of XprotectService running; one with me as owner and one with root as owner.
    
    LikeLiked by 1 person
    - 78
      
      hoakley on January 24, 2022 at 3:45 pm
      
      Thank you.
      SilentKnight is correct in finding this issue for you.
      I’m writing an updated article about this, which will publish here on Wednesday morning. Essentially at some time someone has entered the command in spctl to disable those checks. You should be able to re-enable them with the command
      sudo spctl –master-enable
      again with a double-hyphen in front of the word master. You’ll then need to enter your admin user’s password, and once that has been done, you should restart your Mac.
      I hope that helps.
      Howard.
      
      LikeLike
79

halberstadt on January 24, 2022 at 4:03 pm
Reply

Howard, you have lived up to your reputation once again. That worked perfectly. But, it’s scary that XProtect had been disabled for an unknown amount of time. I certainly never knowingly did anything to touch XProtect. Could CleanMyMacX be a suspect? I have always avoided it and any of its automated clean-up cousins, with a feeling that it was ambiguous as to whether they were “helpful and benign” or “helpful but malware installers”. Against better judgement, I installed CleanMyMacX recently and let it do some of its clean-up tasks.

Thank again. I feel safer now.

LikeLiked by 1 person
- 80
  
  hoakley on January 24, 2022 at 6:33 pm
  Reply
  
  Thank you. It’s what SilentKnight is for.
  I doubt whether CleanMyMacX did that, but can’t be sure. At least it’s fixed now.
  Howard.
  
  LikeLiked by 1 person
81

ct2193 on February 1, 2022 at 11:25 pm
Reply

Wish where was an easy way to force a firmware update on these newer Macs without having to go through OS updates. As I envision it, take LockRattler and/or SilentKnight and include a button / script that can get the firmware updates and install them. I’d even find benefit if it could at least tell me what update I need to manually download and them for the script to probe that package to extract the firmware update. Sometimes I want / need the firmware update even when I’m an OS version behind. The same is true when decommissioning quantities of computers for refurb & resale.

LikeLiked by 1 person
- 82
  
  hoakley on February 2, 2022 at 8:28 pm
  Reply
  
  Thank you.
  Unfortunately, if any old software could download and install new firmware, most Macs would now have malicious firmware. It’s simply insecure to manage firmware in that way, as well as causing huge support problems. Although it’s inconvenient, it’s far better within a macOS installer or updater.
  Howard.
  
  LikeLike
83

AA on February 1, 2022 at 11:39 pm
Reply

Over the past few days, I’ve encountered problems with the macOS Catalina 2022-001 security update. I maintain a large network of Mac computers (without MDM) and about 25 of the last batch I was updating simply wouldn’t finish installing the update. All are running Catalina 10.15.7 with 2021-008 security updates and none seemed to have problems with any previous updates. Some units check for updates and after a black screen with an apple and x minutes remaining, returns to still show the old build number. Some units spin forever “checking for updates”. Also tried downloading the Catalina 2022-001 update (~1.5GB) and installing from the Admin account. These go through the install process and never present the reboot icon. I let a few machines sit for 2 days and no change. Force quit and reboot does not change anything. Google search has been useless.

LikeLiked by 1 person
- 84
  
  hoakley on February 2, 2022 at 8:32 pm
  Reply
  
  I’m sorry to hear that.
  Have you contacted Apple?
  Howard.
  
  LikeLike
85

Stuart Munro on February 3, 2022 at 3:59 am
Reply

Another 2022-001 Security Update issue: after installing on my 2020 MadBook Pro, my machine is now crashing at some point after I put it to sleep. Sometimes throws an error message, sometimes not. Various users reporting this issue on the MacRumors website.

LikeLiked by 1 person
- 86
  
  hoakley on February 3, 2022 at 6:46 am
  Reply
  
  Thank you.
  What you mean by “crashing”? Do you mean a kernel panic, in which case what do you see in the Panic Log shown when your Mac restarts? Is this occurring when the Mac tries to wake up, which is the normal time when such events occur?
  Howard.
  
  LikeLike
87

Stuart Munro on February 3, 2022 at 6:30 pm
Reply

Thanks for your reply, Howard. I have only seen a panic log/message once, but yes, I am assuming kernel panics. I am usually returning to the machine in the morning; since it crashes at some point overnight, my assumption is that the panic log may have appeared and then disappeared. What I do know is that once this has happened, when I press a key to wake the machine up, it restarts instead.

LikeLiked by 1 person
- 88
  
  hoakley on February 3, 2022 at 7:43 pm
  Reply
  
  OK – a little while after it has successfully restarted, you should see a Panic Log.
  I think they’ve moved into /var now, and suspect their path is something like /var/db/PanicReporter, but my production Mac hasn’t had any for a long time, so I can’t check.
  Howard.
  
  LikeLike
  - 89
    
    Stuart Munro on February 3, 2022 at 7:57 pm
    Reply
    
    I followed that path and there is indeed a PanicReporter folder, but it is empty. –SM
    
    LikeLiked by 1 person
90

Stuart Munro on February 3, 2022 at 6:44 pm
Reply

However, I find no kernel panic log files in /library/Logs/DiagnosticReports

LikeLiked by 1 person
91

Stuart Munro on February 8, 2022 at 2:13 pm
Reply

As it turns out, whatever is going on does not appear to be due to a kernel panic, at least if I’m reading these results correctly, which show that all shutdowns are correct:

bash-3.2$ log show –style syslog –predicate ‘eventMessage contains “shutdown cause”‘
Filtering the log data using “composedMessage CONTAINS “shutdown cause””
Skipping info and debug messages, pass –info and/or –debug to include.
Filtering the log data using “composedMessage CONTAINS “shutdown cause””
Skipping info and debug messages, pass –info and/or –debug to include.

Timestamp (process)[PID]
2022-02-02 13:08:03.437306-0500 localhost kernel[0]: (AppleSMC) Previous shutdown cause: 5
2022-02-02 14:50:34.062989-0500 localhost kernel[0]: (AppleSMC) Previous shutdown cause: 5
2022-02-02 18:08:58.702167-0500 localhost kernel[0]: (AppleSMC) Previous shutdown cause: 5
2022-02-03 21:20:51.885803-0500 localhost kernel[0]: (AppleSMC) Previous shutdown cause: 5
2022-02-07 07:37:24.744440-0500 localhost kernel[0]: (AppleSMC) Previous shutdown cause: 5
2022-02-07 18:38:38.785379-0500 localhost kernel[0]: (AppleSMC) Previous shutdown cause: 5
2022-02-08 07:41:52.605067-0500 localhost kernel[0]: (AppleSMC) Previous shutdown cause: 5

That explains why I cannot find any reports of kernel panics. It seems that something in the security update is triggering a normal shutdown after the machine has been put to sleep.

LikeLiked by 1 person
- 92
  
  hoakley on February 8, 2022 at 8:34 pm
  Reply
  
  That’s interesting. There are very few things in macOS which trigger a normal shutdown at an arbitrary time like that. I presume that you’ve reset NVRAM and the SMC?
  Howard.
  
  LikeLike
  - 93
    
    Stuart Munro on February 8, 2022 at 9:28 pm
    Reply
    
    The weird thing is how long it seems to take to happen. In the case of the two early morning shutdowns listed above, the machine was put to sleep probably around midnight, and is set to wake itself up at 3:00 a.m. to back up and then go back to sleep at 4:00 am. So the shutdowns didn’t happen until three-plus hours later.
    
    I’ve reset SMC. Did not reset NVRAM. I’m going to reset both to see if it has any effect.
    
    Thanks again for your responses.
    
    LikeLiked by 1 person
    - 94
      
      hoakley on February 8, 2022 at 10:33 pm
      
      Ah: you don’t think this is a clock/timing issue? I hadn’t realised that you had timed event active. Have you checked your location settings?
      Howard.
      
      LikeLike
    - 95
      
      Stuart Munro on February 9, 2022 at 2:05 am
      
      Location settings are as they should be. There is only a single timed event, at 3-4 a.m. The machine has also been shutting itself down when that event is not in play.
      
      I reset SMC/NVRAM, so will see if that has any effect.
      
      LikeLiked by 1 person
    - 96
      
      hoakley on February 9, 2022 at 3:36 pm
      
      I wish you success.
      It would be interesting to see if removing your wake schedule alters this problem.
      Howard.
      
      LikeLike
    - 97
      
      Stuart Munro on February 9, 2022 at 5:59 pm
      
      I will try that next, Howard. I had hopes that my successful reset of SMC/NVRAM last evening had some effect, but no such luck. Again, much weirdness: the machine made it through the night, including backup, without shutting down. Then I stepped out of my office for 15 minutes this morning after putting it to sleep, and when I came back, it had shut itself down.
      
      LikeLiked by 1 person
    - 98
      
      hoakley on February 9, 2022 at 10:02 pm
      
      Have you run hardware diagnostics? The only times I have come across Macs like that are when there’s a hardware fault. In some very old models, it was with the mechanical connection used for the Power button.
      Howard.
      
      LikeLike
    - 99
      
      Stuart Munro on February 10, 2022 at 2:25 am
      
      I have run Apple Diagnostics. No issues found. I thought about running Disk Utility as well, but this doesn’t strike me that sort of issue.
      
      I’ve deactivated my sleep/wake schedule, so I’ll see if anything has (or better, has not) happened tomorrow morning.
      
      LikeLiked by 1 person
    - 100
      
      Stuart Munro on February 14, 2022 at 5:34 pm
      
      Sadly, sleep schedule has been deactivated for a few days, but the problem remains. I’m now contemplating a reinstall of Catalina.
      
      LikeLiked by 1 person
    - 101
      
      hoakley on February 14, 2022 at 6:33 pm
      
      I’m sorry to hear that. Can you not upgrade to Monterey, which is at least maintained still?
      Howard.
      
      LikeLike
    - 102
      
      Stuart Munro on February 14, 2022 at 6:44 pm
      
      Alas, my machine is not my own, but belongs to the academic institution for which I work. The last time I checked, IT here was still only at Catalina. I’m going to check with them to see whether they’d have a problem with me moving to Monterey, or at least to Big Sur.
      
      Thanks again for your replies.
      
      LikeLiked by 1 person
    - 103
      
      hoakley on February 14, 2022 at 6:54 pm
      
      “IT here was still only at Catalina”
      I’m so sorry for them, and for you. At one time academia used to lead, not lag by a couple of years!
      Howard.
      
      LikeLike
104

Said Nuseibeh on February 14, 2022 at 6:37 pm
Reply

Dear Howard,
Thanks for your website and extraordinary contributions to the Mac and art-loving communities.

I’m trying to use cmpxat to compare photographic tiff files which have been flagged by Unison (File Synchronizer) as being different on two volumes which I use as archives.

2006_D/01/0601-14-014_D-02.tif
Masters-0… : new file modified on 2022-01-28 at 6:38:25 size 107268264 rw-r–r– TIFF 8BIM
Masters-0… : new file modified on 2014-03-03 at 22:54:42 size 107267838 rw-r–r– TIFF 8BIM

Note the different Modification Dates (likely the result of dates copied to volume nad NOT a sign of file modification) and File Sizes.

In Photoshop the image and metadata appear to be identical. But before I start overwriting files willy-nilly on the basis of Photoshop, I would like to identify how these (and other similar) files are indeed different. Most Command Line resources thqt I know just compare text files.

After reading your contributions here …

I tried CMPXAT, and received a peculiar response:

MiniMo:~ sn$ cd /Users/sn/Documents/2022_stuff/testing/compare1
MiniMo:compare1 sn$ ls -a
. .. 0601-14-014_D-02 2.tif 0601-14-014_D-02.tif
MiniMo:compare1 sn$ cmpxat 0601-14-014_D-02.tif 0601-14-014_D-02 2.tif
compare error: No such file or directory

Thinking that maybe CMPXAT just does not recognize the Tiff format, I tried your XATTRED and was told:

com.apple.FinderInfo are the same
com.apple.ResourceFork are the same

Two questions: Why the ‘compare error’? and Any suggestions for sleuthing out the ese differences in photographic files?

Thanks much for your thoughts

LikeLiked by 1 person
- 105
  
  hoakley on February 14, 2022 at 6:52 pm
  Reply
  
  I’m sorry to hear that.
  I’m not sure that you’re using the right tool here, although I can’t explain why you’re seeing that error.
  cmpxat doesn’t look at metadata within a file. It only compares extended attributes. It is therefore completely independent of the data within the file, including its format. As image metadata in TIFF images is stored within the data, it won’t see any differences in that, I’m afraid, nor will xattred, which again only deals with extended attributes.
  Howard.
  
  LikeLike
- 106
  
  hoakley on February 14, 2022 at 7:39 pm
  Reply
  
  Ah. I’ve found your error: try using
  cmpxat 0601-14-014_D-02.tif “0601-14-014_D-02 2.tif”
  or
  cmpxat 0601-14-014_D-02.tif 0601-14-014_D-02\ 2.tif
  because there’s a space in the second file name.
  Howard.
  
  LikeLike
107

Said Nuseibeh on February 14, 2022 at 7:07 pm
Reply

Thank you.
If metadata or image data were changed in a tiff file, would the change(s) not be reflected in different extended attributes?
Exiftool by Phil Harvey could perhaps be made to identify different internal metadata. I’m circling around the flagged problem.
Respectful of your time….

LikeLiked by 1 person
- 108
  
  hoakley on February 14, 2022 at 7:41 pm
  Reply
  
  No. Extended attributes seldom contain metadata about images. I have a whole section here about extended attributes – it’s listed among the pages at the bottom right of each page.
  Howard.
  
  LikeLike
  - 109
    
    Said Nuseibeh` on February 14, 2022 at 10:08 pm
    Reply
    
    I mistakenly conflated two different meanings of the word ‘metadata’:
    > An introduction to extended attributes, xattrs
    > Origin and Purposes
    > Extended attributes associate metadata with individual files and folders….
    
    The metadata you describe is “stored centrally on each volume” (as you mention later in the post) whereas mine in internal to the file itself.
    
    Thank you for increasing my understanding of extended attributes.
    
    The solution to the original problem of identifying differences between two photographic tiffs is here:
    https://exiftool.org/forum/index.php?topic=3276.msg21140#msg21140
    
    Each time i interact with a file, my software logs the info and, over time, that increases the file size. I may or may not be able to filter these false positives. At least now I have an important tool to inform me whether or not I can simply ignore them.
    
    Thanks again
    -Said
    
    LikeLiked by 1 person
    - 110
      
      hoakley on February 14, 2022 at 11:00 pm
      
      No problems. I’m glad you’ve solved it.
      Howard.
      
      LikeLike
111

albert on July 5, 2022 at 12:45 pm
Reply

Today I started Mail, and the first posts show up.
As I move from one mail to another and back again, the content is there.
and when I do that 3-4 times, then all at once the contents are not shown anymore.

So to me it seems like this is a memory problem of the MAIL app that started with Monterey 12.4. (iMac 2017 4K, 8Gb, Fusion Drive, where the Fusion is dead as a donkey and I have to run the computer from a Thunderbolt drive).

There are several mentions on the apple community, but it seems not addressed. I am reluctant to go to another mail program (migration issues of course) – and seeing the large list of Monterey problems, to upgrade.

LikeLiked by 1 person
- 112
  
  hoakley on July 5, 2022 at 12:52 pm
  Reply
  
  I think you need to go through a systematic and interactive diagnostic session, which is best performed with Apple Support. I’m no expert on Mail, as I use it as little as I have to, and use Postbox instead.
  I wish you success.
  Howard.
  
  LikeLike
  - 113
    
    albert on August 4, 2022 at 6:33 am
    Reply
    
    The Old Toad at Apple Support came up with a very good analysis after looking at my Etrecheck diagnosis: it could be F-Secure (that is bundled in my internet subscription) and that bogged down the system. I disabled it. Now I just let Google et al serve me the feeds of bad websites. I recon F-Secure is like a shell over all programs & that it intercepts all calls to ports; diverts them (privacy???) and filters for nuisance. A good concept for Windooze maybe. Anyway, since I disabled it, every thing is fine. I might say: All programs sort of react faster, not just mail.
    
    LikeLiked by 1 person
    - 114
      
      hoakley on August 4, 2022 at 2:11 pm
      
      Thank you. I’m delighted that you’re back to full speed again.
      Howard.
      
      LikeLike
115

Yashka on October 22, 2022 at 4:56 pm
Reply

Just wanted to let you know that your articles on Ownership helped me resolve a mystifying problem with my M1 Mac.

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/254298649

LikeLiked by 1 person
- 116
  
  Jim Beaupre on October 22, 2022 at 5:35 pm
  Reply
  
  Me too!
  
  LikeLiked by 1 person
  - 117
    
    hoakley on October 22, 2022 at 8:48 pm
    Reply
    
    Thank you.
    Howard.
    
    LikeLike
- 118
  
  hoakley on October 22, 2022 at 8:47 pm
  Reply
  
  Thank you.
  I’m delighted that it helped you.
  Howard.
  
  LikeLike
119

Nathan on December 22, 2022 at 4:48 pm
Reply

Hi, Howard. I’ve been reading your Mac posts for a while now. I’m curious if you’ve ever stumbled upon an issue similar to this: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/m1-air-ghosting-flickering-with-external-display.2271670/ ?

When I plug in my M1 Mac into an external HDMI (or DVI–same digital signal) display that’s 1080p, I get these weird vertical line artifacts. They’re faint but visible. Never was an issue on Intel Macs or any other PC.

LikeLiked by 1 person
- 120
  
  hoakley on December 22, 2022 at 10:14 pm
  Reply
  
  There have been reports of similar and worse problems since the first M1 Macs shipped.
  Unfortunately, these are very difficult to resolve. I think it’s fair to say that early versions of Big Sur didn’t help compatibility with external displays, and that Apple has matured its drivers considerably since then.
  However, these problems aren’t necessarily the fault of the Mac, and there are plenty of bad cables and displays too. Working out where the problem lies is very difficult, even if you have multiple Macs, cables and displays to test.
  In the first instance, I recommend that you contact Apple Support. They must now have a lot of experience, and should know what to advise. Ensuring your Mac is running macOS 13.1 should help too.
  I wish you success.
  Howard.
  
  LikeLike
121

Bob Freeman on October 2, 2023 at 1:17 pm
Reply

Hi … having a weird problem with Time Machine on a Mac Pro 2013 system running High Sierra. TimeMachine is not able to finish it’s first backup, after several attempts, and it fails with usually a -128 error and then aborts and leaves the “inProgress” folder. The TM destination disks are new 8TB Seagate drives so don’t think that’s the problem. The TM log says it’s gonna backup about 6TB of stuff, so it should all fit fine. Have tried about 5 times now — the first attempt had two -43 errors backing up the boot volume followed up by a -128 error a little bit later, then the other three attempts had only one -128 error (not any -43 errors) on a volume that the first time had no such errors, but all three times the error occurs when processing the same volume (there were three other volumes that finished without errors on any of the TM attempts). I’m backing up about 5 volumes to the one TM backup, and it seems to always fail at the same point – about 20-24 hours after it starts. I don’t have the “Back Up Automatically” enabled in Time Machine System Preferences pane – I just want to do backups once a week or so as don’t use the computer all that much. One thing odd I did notice is that when I manually start the TM process (just right-click on one of the TM volumes listed and select “Back Up to xxxx Now”) is that if I do a “tmutil listlocalsnapshots /” it shows one item which is the manual TM backup I just started – it’s a bit confusing to me why it calls these manual backups to an external volume a “local snapshot” – any ideas on why it thinks that?

Also discovered – purely by accident – an option in the “tmutil” command line program, ie “tmutil status” that prints out some interesting info – not documented on the man page or via a “tmutil –help” — here is what it shows:

$ tmutil status
Backup session status:
{
BackupPhase = Copying;
ClientID = “com.apple.backupd”;
DateOfStateChange = “2023-10-02 00:45:08 +0000”;
DestinationID = “longUUIC value that I’ve edited out”;
DestinationMountPoint = “/Volumes/TMCG8-101-CD1”;
FirstBackup = 1;
Percent = “0.0175853549360803”;
Progress = {
TimeRemaining = 162818;
“_raw_totalBytes” = 5957935661056;
bytes = 116413792540;
files = 731164;
totalBytes = 6553729227161;
totalFiles = 12842329;
};
Running = 1;
Stopping = 0;
“_raw_Percent” = “0.01953928326231145”;
}
===============end_of_tmutil_status_command==============

Here is some of the output contains in the TM Backup log file named /Volumes/TMSG8-101-CD1/Backups.backupdb/TCMacPro/2023-10-01-17445.inProgress/.Backup.717900295.633622.log — I’ve hand edited out the UUID info in case that reveals any personal info:

….bunch of preflight status info with no errors…
Preflight complete for “ROG” (device: /dev/disk13s2 mount: ‘/Volumes/ROG’ fsUUID: xxxxx eventDBUUID: yyyy)
Time elapsed: 0.017 seconds

Processing preflight info
Space needed for this backup: 5.96 TB (727850519 blocks of size 8192)
Finished processing preflight info

Copying items from “SATA-BAY2” (device: /dev/disk3s3 mount: ‘/Volumes/SATA-BAY2’ fsUUID: zzzz eventDBUUID: aaaa)
Finished copying items for “SATA-BAY2” (device: /dev/disk3s3 mount: ‘/Volumes/SATA-BAY2’ fsUUID: zzzz eventDBUUID: aaaa)
Time elapsed: 7 hours, 44 minutes, 50.000 seconds
Copied 4455861 items (835.99 GB)
Gathering events since 527694985.

Copying items from “eDrive” (device: /dev/disk2s4 mount: ‘/Volumes/eDrive’ fsUUID: bbbb eventDBUUID: cccc)
Finished copying items for “eDrive” (device: /dev/disk2s4 mount: ‘/Volumes/eDrive’ fsUUID: bbbb eventDBUUID: cccc)
Time elapsed: 16 minutes, 33.000 seconds
Copied 4845000 items (844.72 GB)
Gathering events since 527694985.

Copying items from “BobsFiles” (device: /dev/disk3s2 mount: ‘/Volumes/BobsFiles’ fsUUID: dddd eventDBUUID: eeee)
c :ERROR:-128, copy /Volumes/BobsFiles to /Volumes/TMCG8-102-CD2/Backups.backupdb/TCMacPro/2023-09-29-184244.inProgress/qqqq
Finished copying items for “BobsFiles” (device: /dev/disk3s2 mount: ‘/Volumes/BobsFiles’ fsUUID: qqqq eventDBUUID: rrrr)
Time elapsed: 5 hours, 21 minutes, 44.000 seconds
Copied 5307565 items (2.5 TB)
Copy stage canceled

Backup canceled.
Total time elapsed: 13 hours, 23 minutes, 18.000 seconds

In case it’s pertinent, the TM drives are attached to USB ports on a CalDigit dock that is attached to one of the MacPro’s TB port (via a TB3-TB2 Apple adapter) and the other volumes that are getting backed up are either the SSD inside the MacPro 2013, or are in a OWC Thunderbay (with Thunderbolt 2 interface) 4-drive enclosure cabled to another Thunderbolt port on the MacPro 2013 system.

I’ve searched for these mysterious -43 and -128 errors on Google, but so far no luck as to what can cause them. I’m now running another TM backup, for the fifth time, and before it ran, I ran a Terminal window with the command:

log stream –predicate ‘subsystem == “com.apple.TimeMachine”‘ –info –debug

and am capturing all that log info – but it takes many hours for the failure to occur, so if you want to see what it says after the next failure (almost certain to fail as I’ve not done anything other than start over) I will that if/when it fails again.

Do you know if it matters if Spotlight is enabled or disabled on Time Machine backup volumes?

Anyway, appreciate any input or suggestions you might be able to share. Thanks very much.

-bob freeman

LikeLiked by 1 person
- 122
  
  hoakley on October 2, 2023 at 2:36 pm
  Reply
  
  I’m sorry to hear that. As you’re still using High Sierra, TM is backing up to HFS+, not APFS. I think what you’re trying to do is way past its limits. TM was designed to back up relatively small amounts of data frequently, every hour. It really doesn’t work well trying to back up 6 TB in over 10 million files in this way.
  I think you’d be much better off using an alternative, like Carbon Copy Cloner, although I don’t think the current version supports High Sierra or HFS+ any more. It could then make copies of the individual volumes you want copied to your backup store, rather than what TM does.
  I really don’t think that you’ll keep TM working reliably, if at all.
  Howard.
  
  LikeLike
  - 123
    
    Bob Freeman on October 2, 2023 at 7:32 pm
    Reply
    
    TM worked fine backing up this much stuff for several years when I had my CheeseGrater style Mac Pro 2006 system running High Sierra, with about this much data on internal SATA drives which was backing it all up to external USB 8TB drives with no problems.
    
    I switched over to the MacPro 2013 system about a year ago and never got around to getting TM setup until the last week or so. The really odd thing is that I can’t find any mention of what exactly causes these -43 and -128 errors or even what exactly the problem is that the error message is trying to talk about.
    
    The fact that it’s failing at the same phase (“copying items from” the same volume) for four times now is quite the puzzle. I’ve verified/FirstAid that file system in Disk Utility and it says that everything is OK.
    
    The other odd thing is that why do I see a TM local snapshot listed when I’m running the TM manually – local snapshots are local to the boot disk I thought, not on external TM volumes??? Any idea why the two styles of TM backups think they are happening at the same time. Is there a way to disable TM local snapshots? Or is this some sort of TM behavior – whenever TM is running it thinks of it as a local snapshot?
    
    I’ve used CCC before to clone disks, but never as a backup solution. If I can’t get this working perhaps that will be Plan-B. But years of using TM as a backup has never given me these kinds of problems before. Same version of macOS and about the same amount of stuff to backup to the same sort of backup volumes. The new part of the equation is the MacPro 2013 system and the Thunderbay enclosure holding the volumes.
    
    Perhaps I will try to get a complete TM finished by doing the 5 volumes individually rather than all together at once?
    
    Thanks for taking a look…
    
    -bob
    
    LikeLiked by 1 person
    - 124
      
      hoakley on October 3, 2023 at 11:10 am
      
      I think I might understand what is going on here, at least as far as the differences you’re seeing in TM.
      The system volume on your old Mac Pro remained formatted in HFS+, while that on your new Mac has been converted to APFS when installing High Sierra.
      When TM makes a backup from an APFS volume in High Sierra, it makes a snapshot which is stored on the volume it’s backing up. It then compares that with the previous snapshot (if it’s not running the first full backup) to determine which files it backs up.
      Apple only used that for High Sierra, as it didn’t work out as the best way to determine what to back up. But TM has continued to make snapshots to APFS volumes that it backs up ever since. As the HFS+ format doesn’t support snapshots, TM there proceeds as it did before, looking at the FSEvents database on the volume to determine what to back up, which is how it does it now for APFS too!
      This is one of the reasons why I wouldn’t recommend using TM in your situation. Although it didn’t get into even deeper water until Catalina (when it almost stopped working altogether for many), TM isn’t good news for demanding backup tasks in High Sierra, whose APFS was also early and suffered some significant bugs, just to make matters worse.
      Howard.
      
      LikeLike
125

Bob Freeman on October 3, 2023 at 8:36 pm
Reply

I think you’re spot on!!!! Before I saw your reply, I did a couple of backups this morning involving only some HFS+ volumes (and not the APFS boot disk) and they worked without any problems – not because I had the same idea, but because I started with the smallest volumes and worked my way up – they just happened to all be HFS+ volumes. So am now trying a backup of just the HFS+ volumes but not the APFS boot disk, which is about 5.75TB. That takes about a day, so by tomorrow, I hope, will know for sure if at least the HFS+ stuff can be backed up.

Do you know if, and if so how, I can back up my APFS boot disk on the MacPro running High Sierra, even if I just have to do it all by itself, with no other HFS+ volumes? Do I need to configure another disk as APFS to backup just the APFS volumes? So, basically have one HFS+ 8TB disk that backs up all the HFS+ filesystems and another APFS 8TB disk that backs up only the APFS filesystems? Or is the issue TimeMachine itself when the boot volume is APFS? So, is the real issue the fact that TimeMachine under High Sierra, doesn’t like APFS under any circumstances, or just that I can’t mix HFS+ and APFS volumes during the same backup? Or something else?

You’re exactly correct about the High Sierra installation on the Mac Pro 2013 system when I first got it – I remember when I first got it, thinking should I create the boot volume as an APFS disk or as an HFS+ disk – guess that was where I went in the wrong direction – with regard to doing TimeMachine backups anyways.

I have another Mac system running Mojave, that also has an APFS boot volume – if I relocated the Thunderbay enclosure to it, would backups work better there?

Before APFS, life was so simple 😉 From what I have read, it seems that APFS is better with modern SSD drives than HFS+, but seems like APFS has some issues on older versions of macOS, at least with TimeMachine anyways.

But still, the most puzzling thing is, why I have yet to find any web page that talks about these -128 and -43 errors that happened during the TimeMachine backups. I found one in Apple Discussion forum but it had no answers, after several years.

Now that you’ve pointed out the APFS difficulties that High Sierra has, I can do more research in that direction. Because of some existing software that is really important to me, I really can’t upgrade past 10.13 or 10.14, due to the software no longer working, so I’m kind of stuck in the past for now.

Thanks again for the brilliant beam of light exploring this problem. You’re a WIZARD of extraordinary talent!!! The ability to back up, at least some of my files, is a really good feeling and will be a very happy day!!! Thank you very, very, much.

-Bob

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- 126
  
  hoakley on October 3, 2023 at 10:05 pm
  Reply
  
  Thank you.
  As I wrote before, I think you’d be much better off using another backup utility, like CCC, for a whole load of reasons, including the APFS issues. Backing up APFS volumes to HFS+ isn’t good news, and when APFS still had plenty of bugs, it could prove really bad news.
  -43 errors are general “something’s broken” errors that are notoriously non-specific. They’re a common occurrence in backups that have run into trouble for various reasons.
  APFS is wonderful file system now, but the early years were sometimes quite tense and frustrating. Mixing the file systems can still get messy, and APFS doesn’t work well on hard disks, no matter what anyone claims.
  Howard.
  
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127

Bob Freeman on October 4, 2023 at 1:40 pm
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Have a suggestion for your wordpress blog – choose a “darker” font (more black – it’s almost grey) – I went to print this page from Safari to a PDF file to save your comments, and the result was almost unreadable because it was so faint. Thanks again for all the TM advice.

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- 128
  
  hoakley on October 4, 2023 at 3:01 pm
  Reply
  
  Thank you. Unfortunately that’s not within my control: the style is that comment body text is displayed in grey, as this is a blog and not a discussion forum, so the priority is given to article not comment content.
  Howard.
  
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129

Bob Freeman on October 6, 2023 at 2:22 pm
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Well, finally some good news!! I tried a TM backup on the High Sierra system that has an APFS boot disk volume all by itself (removed all the volumes except boot disk from list of disks to backup) and it worked without any problems, so it would appear that the issue is mixing up APFS volume(s) with HFS+ volumes in one backup session that causes TM to not finish correctly, although there is one other possible issue in that all previous TM failures there was at least one of the HFS+ volumes in the volumes I was trying to back up that was a “Case Sensitive” HFS+ volume, so it’s possible that was also part of the problem.

Also, tried TM on an APFS system running Mojave that had several APFS volumes on one internal SSD and it had no problems at all creating the TM backup onto an HFS+ TM disk.

So, the good news is that I’m not completely dead if I want to continue with a TM based backup solution, but still want to look into your suggestion to explore other backup options as TM is a bit difficult to get a valid backup finished without other problems. Since I only do manual backups when I feel the need at the moment, it’s not too bad now that I have a way to bypass the problems that caused the backups to fail.

So, still think I will try adding an HFS+ volume to the Mojave TM test to see if it can deal with all types of backup volumes, and want to try the High Sierra setup without the case sensitive volume to find out for sure if that was or wasn’t part of the issue.

Thanks again for your help.

-bob

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- 130
  
  hoakley on October 6, 2023 at 8:23 pm
  Reply
  
  Thank you, and well done. I admire your perseverance.
  Howard.
  
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131

Bob Freeman on October 6, 2023 at 2:37 pm
Reply

Forgot to tell you that the High Sierra TM test worked fine when all the volumes to backup were only HFS+ plus one was a Case Sensitive HFS+ – about 5.23TB successfully backed up in about 24.5 hours.

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132

ysengrain on April 5, 2024 at 1:43 pm
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I use Pages on a 2021 MBP M1 Max running Sonoma 14.4.1. I’ve written about 5000 documents since 2019.These are medical texts. I’m adding to the spelling dictionary as I go along.Since Sonoma 14.3, I’ve noticed a noticeable loss of words in the dictionary: today “electrocardiogram” was not recognized, for example.Apple can do nothing about it. I sent a feedback… with no answer.

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- 133
  
  hoakley on April 5, 2024 at 2:58 pm
  Reply
  
  I’m sorry to hear that.
  It’s hard to know whether that’s a bug in macOS or Pages, but the spelling system has changed with Sonoma’s predictive word completion. First, I suggest that you update to the latest version of Pages, now 14.0. If the problem continues with that, then I suggest you contact Apple Support. Feedback is for providing potential bug reports etc. to Apple, and seldom results in any helpful response to you. If you want help to address a problem like this, that’s what Apple Support is for.
  I wish you success.
  Howard.
  
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  - 134
    
    ysengrain on April 6, 2024 at 9:06 am
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    I did update Pages in 14.0: same things
    
    I contacetd Apple support: my correspondent told me she didn’t have any data on the subject and suggested I communicate the bug to Apple feedback, which I did, without any reply for 2 weeks.
    
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    - 135
      
      hoakley on April 6, 2024 at 9:35 am
      
      You won’t get any reply to a Feedback. Replies are rare, and I know of some who haven’t received a reply or any type of acknowledgement for many years. Whether the bug will ever be fixed is equally unclear – sometimes they are, sometimes nothing happens at all.
      Sorry.
      Howard.
      
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