Leopard and Time Machine

[thully]

Hi,

I've heard that VMware Fusion 1.1 final fixes the issues with Leopard and Time Machine - i.e. by default, Fusion and Time Machine cause crashes when used together due to the constantly updated files.

Anyway, I installed the 1.1 final update (going from 1.1 RC), but evidently the Time Machine issues still persist. Are we in fact required to manually exclude virtual machines from Time Machine in this build, or am I experiencing behavior that is out-of-the-ordinary?

[jgl1975]

As even booting a vm will cause a change in your vm files, It's recommended to manually backup your vm once in a while and to manually exclude them from Time Machine.

At least that's what I do ;-).

[thully]

I thought that 1.1 automatically took care of that - guess not...

[rcardona2k]

I'm not sure what the original poster is suggesting. Fusion 1.1 does exclude virtual machine files from Time Machine. It doesn't hurt to exclude the Virtual Machines folder manually (as a reminder) but that's not strictly necessary.

[thully]

That doesn't seem to b the case for me. I was using Leopard with 1.1 and Time Machine, but soon ran into beachball crashes and a rapidly filling up Time Machine drive. I checked the Time Machine exclusion list, and indeed nothing was on it. Adding the folder was necessary - even though I have 1.1 final...

[admin]

That doesn't seem to b the case for me. I was using Leopard with 1.1 and Time Machine, but soon ran into beachball crashes and a rapidly filling up Time Machine drive.

Can you check which files are the offending ones?

I checked the Time Machine exclusion list, and indeed nothing was on it.

That is expected, 1.1 final works by changing the files themselves to be excluded via the appropriate extended attributes flag. I'm not at a Leopard box to check the syntax right now, but you should be able to use xattr to check the flags.

[thully]

I just created a new VM and reinstalled Fusion 1.1 with 10.5.1 update installed, and the VMs are still being backed up by Time Machine. What should I check in particular? Is this to be expected?

[rcardona2k]

I made an interesting discovery researching this for you. The TIme Machine attributes are not added to the VM files until you open it! I thought Library membership was enough to exclude files.

This is what I did, I opened Terminal and went to the ~/Documents/Virtual Machines directory, and typed:

find . -type f -name "*.vm[des][kms]" -print -exec xattr -l {} \; 

./WinXP.vmwarevm/WinXP-flat.vmdk

com.apple.metadata:com_apple_backup_excludeItem:

0000 62 70 6C 69 73 74 30 30 5F 10 11 63 6F 6D 2E 61 bplist00_..com.a

0010 70 70 6C 65 2E 62 61 63 6B 75 70 64 08 00 00 00 pple.backupd....

0020 00 00 00 01 01 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 01 00 00 00 ................

0030 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 1C .............

./WinXP.vmwarevm/WinXP.vmdk

./WinXP.vmwarevm/WinXP.vmem

com.apple.metadata:com_apple_backup_excludeItem:

0000 62 70 6C 69 73 74 30 30 5F 10 11 63 6F 6D 2E 61 bplist00_..com.a

0010 70 70 6C 65 2E 62 61 63 6B 75 70 64 08 00 00 00 pple.backupd....

0020 00 00 00 01 01 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 01 00 00 00 ................

0030 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 1C .............

./WinXP.vmwarevm/WinXP.vmss

com.apple.metadata:com_apple_backup_excludeItem:

0000 62 70 6C 69 73 74 30 30 5F 10 11 63 6F 6D 2E 61 bplist00_..com.a

0010 70 70 6C 65 2E 62 61 63 6B 75 70 64 08 00 00 00 pple.backupd....

0020 00 00 00 01 01 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 01 00 00 00 ................

0030 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 1C .............

My Ubuntu and Solaris VM files are NOT excluded. I had not fired those up since going to Leopard on this machine, so I started Ubuntu and then re-ran the command and now it's files were excluded. Hmmm.

This is just another reason, IMO, to add "Virtual Machines" explicitly to Time Machine's folder exclusion list,

[thully]

In my case, the attributes are set - I confirmed this. However, the files are being backed up. Maybe it's because I previously had a VM with the same name without the attributes set...

[rcardona2k]

The name should not matter since the exclusion is metadata. Time Machine should simply honor the xattr. A possible reasonable explanation would be the file is already 'known' to Time Machine and backed up and continues to be even if you later add the exclusion xattr. Or Time Machine has latched onto a partially backed up file and will not recognize the xattr until the backup is complete.

Who knows but it certainly seems likes a Time Machine bug if you truly have the exclusion xattr on the VM files.

[thully]

It certainly seems that way - something I'm doing is preventing the xattrs from being seen.

I guess I need to report this to Apple - maybe they can do something for 10.5.2...

[admin]

Or Time Machine has latched onto a partially backed up file and will not recognize the xattr until the backup is complete.

I think that sounds reasonable. I hope your other explanation (once Time Machine backs up a file, it ignores the xattr) is not right - that sounds like a bug.

[rcardona2k]

Eric,

I would put my money on the partial backup guess. As a developer around virtualization, I've discovered, many utilities make bad assumptions about files being small and they don't handle large files well (video, VMs, etc). You would think Apple tested with Macs that had huge Final Cut videos, etc or maybe they likewise assumed these would be "excluded" naturally by end-users.