Tag Archives: OSX

Backing up a MacOS Time Machine Disk

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Like a lot of Mac users I backup my Mac using Time Machine. But for safety reasons I would like to backup the whole volume of the Time Machine to another network drive (NAS).

One way to do so is by using the Disk Utility to create an Image file (img) of the whole Time Machine volume. However, when trying to do so one gets an “Operation cancelled” message and the process stops without any more information.

The solution is to add the Disk Utility application to the list of applications that can have Full Disk Access.

The steps to take a backup of the volume successfully are the following:

  1. Stop the Automatic Backups of the Time Machine.
  2. Go to Settings -> Security & Privacy. Go to the Privacy tab and scroll down to the “Full Disk Access”.
  3. Add the “Disk Utility” to the applications that can full disk access.
  4. Open the “Disk Utility” and select the Time Machine volume on the left hand side.
  5. In Disk Utility go to: File -> New Image-> Image from…
  6. Select where the image will be saved (it’s a good idea to encrypt it with a password).
  7. That’s it! Make sure you remove the Disk Utility from the Full Disk Access afterwards for security reasons.

 

When one minute is not one minute

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Today I decided to update to OSX Yosemite. How much time would it take? 1 hour, 2hours? It appeared to get stuck to “one minute to finish” the installation for quite some time. During the upgrade process if you move the cursor to the top of the screen a menu will appear. One of the options is: “Show Log”. This option pops up a window that shows detailed information about the process.

In my case for around half an hour it was logging events like this:

 Nov 16 12:54:13 MacBook-Pro.lan OSInstaller[411]: (NodeOp) Move "/Volumes/Macintosh HD/Recovered Items/usr/local/texlive/2012/texmf-dist/source/latex/koma-script/doc/english/common-1.tex" -> "/Volumes/Macintosh HD/usr/local/texlive/2012/texmf-dist/source/latex/koma-script/doc/english" Final name: "common-1.tex" (Flags used: kFSFileOperationDefaultOptions,kFSFileOperationSkipSourcePermissionErrors,kFSFileOperationCopyExactPermissions,kFSFileOperationSkipPreflight,k_FSFileOperationSuppressConversionCopy)

It appears it was taking a lot of time processing the texlive files. I had installed texlive in the past, but i haven’t used it at least in a year. So, before upgrading to Yosemite make sure to delete any unwanted applications for a faster upgrade!

Cannot Shutdown OSX Mavericks with VirtualBox

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I am using VirtualBox 4.3.2. I have recently upgraded to OSX Mavericks and after I close VirtualBox it doesn’t seem to close properly and it’s still running. Doing force quit doesn’t seem to close VirtualBox.

The worse part is that I can’t seem to be able to shutdown my laptop! When try to shutdown after having run VirtualBox the shutdown process gets stuck and the only way to shutdown properly is by pressing the “Power On/Off” button on the laptop for some time.

The solution that works for me, is to go to the “Login Window” screen (by clicking on my account name on the top right corner, next to the clock -> Login Window…”. Then I click on “Shutdown” from that screen and it works.