[qnc]

the disk I chose for time machine was doing really well then it's gone to read only all of a sudden.

Any one got a solution?

[macfantn]

try going back in time before it went read only

[TETENAL]

Originally Posted by macfantn 

try going back in time before it went read only

The backup volume is exempt from Time Machine. So you can't go back in time for it.

[JustinHorne]

Right click on the disc, Get info, Sharing & Permissions, choose your username, select access to be read/write? Just a thought.

[qnc]

On get info it says read and write under me but read only under everything else buit I can't get to change that as that area is completely grayed out even the little padlock is grayed out!!

Any solutions

?

[seanc]

How full is the disk?
Have you tried repairing permission on the drive?

[slm135]

I had the identical symptoms as the OP. Disk utility doesn't give the option to repair permissions; it's grayed out. I tried verifying the disk. It said everything was fine and Time Machine seems to be working again.

[frdmfghtr]

I had the exact same problem happen to my Time Machine volume, going into a read-only mode and DU not being able to repair it.

Two days later, the drive went into the infinite "click of death."

I suggest getting a second drive and restoring the new drive from the Time Machine drive immediately. I lost two months of backups fiddling around with drive facing imminent death, so learn from my pain

[qnc]

it was a brand new drive

Not funny so reformat it or get a new one is that is the only suggestion.

As for size Capacity 465GB, available 329GB used 136GB so I can't see that being a problem.

Sorry but its just frustrating.

[oztexan]

I had seemingly identical symptoms with a 500GB Seagate FreeAgent USB drive after moving my Macmini, unplugging & replugging in everything.

Time Machine suddenly started reporting the drive as read only. Get info showed I had R&W permissions but text above the user permission list saying the drive was read only.

Disk utility offered nothing other than "Verify Disk", all other first aid functionality disabled.

So, I clicked verify, it started taking forever, last estimate was 45 minutes to completion during "Checking Catalog FIle" step. I stopped the verification process, went back to the drive in finder, get info and noticed "You can read and write" was now displayed.

Seems to have fixed the issue...

Inexplicable but got there in the end...

P.S. Seagate format "Max OS Extended (Journaled)"

[CharlesS]

DiskWarrior might be able to remedy this situation, if it's able to load the directories.

Unfortunately, DiskWarrior reads the entire directory into RAM, and it's a 32-bit app. So, if the disk directories get larger than 4 GB, DiskWarrior will fail. And due to the insane number of hard links that Time Machine creates, it's definitely plausible for the directories to get that big.

Might be worth a try, though.

[Hal Itosis]

Originally Posted by qnc 

On get info it says read and write under me but read only under everything else buit I can't get to change that as that area is completely grayed out even the little padlock is grayed out!!

I'm sorry but, Finder 'Get Info' windows can't properly communicate conditions on the ground.

Posting results of these two Terminal commands will go a long way in demystifying the problem:

ls -liedO /Volumes/{,"name of backup volume"}
diskutil info /Volumes/"name of backup volume"

[qnc]

verifying the drive with disk utility seems to work thanks guys...

Originally Posted by oztexan 

I had seemingly identical symptoms with a 500GB Seagate FreeAgent USB drive after moving my Macmini, unplugging & replugging in everything.

Time Machine suddenly started reporting the drive as read only. Get info showed I had R&W permissions but text above the user permission list saying the drive was read only.

Disk utility offered nothing other than "Verify Disk", all other first aid functionality disabled.

So, I clicked verify, it started taking forever, last estimate was 45 minutes to completion during "Checking Catalog FIle" step. I stopped the verification process, went back to the drive in finder, get info and noticed "You can read and write" was now displayed.

Seems to have fixed the issue...

Inexplicable but got there in the end...

P.S. Seagate format "Max OS Extended (Journaled)"

[qnc]

Originally Posted by Hal Itosis 

ls -liedO /Volumes/{,"name of backup volume"}
diskutil info /Volumes/"name of backup volume"

[/tt]

I am ignorant about terminal, do I jusy type in what you have up there?

In name of backup volume is that {Time Machine Backups} or {"Time Machine Backups"}?

[JellyBeen]

Leave the quotes out.

[qnc]

~ qncwork$ ls -liedO /Volumes/{Time Machine Backups}
ls: /Volumes/{Time: No such file or directory
ls: Backups}: No such file or directory
ls: Machine: No such file or directory


I hate terminal... what am I doing wrong

[CharlesS]

Hal's just trying to show off that he knows how to use the bash shell, because he thinks it's impressive. Just do the command twice, the first time with "/Volumes" and once with "/Volumes/Time Machine Backups", and have the path in quotes. A little more typing, but easier for you to type. I'm also not sure why he's asking you to list the inode numbers for the directories, but hey.

ls -liedO "/Volumes"
ls -liedO "/Volumes/Time Machine Backups"

Those commands will do what Hal wanted - list the permissions, ACLs, file flags, and... inode number for some reason. The diskutil command just looks like this:

diskutil info "/Volumes/Time Machine Backups"

That will show whether the drive is mounted read-only or not.

A few posts up you said that verifying the drive worked, though - did Disk Utility come up saying the disk needed repairs, or did it say the drive was OK? I've found that sometimes a disk will be mounted read-only if it has directory damage. If you click "Repair Disk", and then wait the inordinate amount of time that it takes to scan Time Machine backup drives (over an hour on my system), does that clear the problem up at all?

[Hal Itosis]

Originally Posted by CharlesS 

Hal's just trying to show off that he knows how to use the bash shell, because he thinks it's impressive.

Actually... that's all in your mind.
Why make waves?
I'm just trying to get some info to help out here.
[like you *never* show off... right? ]

Originally Posted by CharlesS 

Just do the command twice

Why oh WHY?

[Hal Itosis]

Originally Posted by qnc 

I am ignorant about terminal, do I jusy type in what you have up there?
In name of backup volume is that {Time Machine Backups} or {"Time Machine Backups"}?

• If the name has spaces, then the quotes are needed. (Else\ escape\ them\ with\ backslashes).
• If the name doesn't have spaces, then it doesn't matter.

[one can only hope the name itself doesn't contain quotes. ]

[CharlesS]

Originally Posted by Hal Itosis 

Why oh WHY?

Because, your brace expansion makes the syntax of the command more complicated, and the OP is clearly having trouble with it.

The point of this thread isn't to teach the guy how to use the bash shell.

[Hal Itosis]

Originally Posted by CharlesS 

Because, your brace expansion makes the syntax of the command more complicated, and the OP is clearly having trouble with it.

if all Terminal syntax is complicated to a CLI virgin, then braces are just another part of the maze.
Their presence wasn't adding any additional burdon. [all that was needed was a bit of copy/paste,
and some minor text substitution.]

Originally Posted by CharlesS 

The point of this thread isn't to teach the guy how to use the bash shell.

Strange... judging from your last few posts, that seems to be the trend.

It also seems you have a need to call attention to inode numbers, as if there
is something "wrong" with that. This is also childish B.S. and adds more fuel
to a non-existent fire. There is zero harm with showing inode numbers, and
if the inode number for the volume is other than "2", that might be a problem.

--

REDOING MY COMMANDS FOR CLARITY:

ls -liedO /Volumes/{,"name of backup volume"}
diskutil info /Volumes/"name of backup volume"

Replace red text with name of disk. [run commands one line at a time]

[CharlesS]

Originally Posted by Hal Itosis 

if all Terminal syntax is complicated to a CLI virgin, then braces are just another part of the maze.
Their presence wasn't adding any additional burdon (sic).

"/Volumes/Whatever" is just a path. It is relatively simple to understand what it is, and what it is for. The quotes on either end, and not in the middle, also add to the simplicity. It is very difficult to make a mistake and type the wrong thing here.

The brace expansion, on the other hand, adds a construct which most ordinary users will not know what it does unless they take the time to read the man page for bash, which most users are not going to be willing to do. To most users, the brace expansion is some sort of magic voodoo that all they can do is type blindly and hope it does what you say it does. This increases the chances of the user making a mistake and typing the wrong thing. Sure, it's slightly less to type, but if the user has to try it several times, then give up and type stuff in the thread, and then we have to type more stuff to tell them what to do again, then it makes up for that initial savings very quickly.

When you're dealing with a user who neither knows nor wants to know about this stuff, keep it as simple as possible. It's a basic rule of technical support that reduces headaches for everyone in the long run.

[Hal Itosis]

Well... you've managed to twist this thread from finding the problem with qnc's computer
into finding fault with my attempts to help. [you even had to point out a spelling mistake.]

Congratulations.

Somehow, I suspect the brace expansion came as a surprise mainly to you...
and that's why you launched the whole "showing off" tirade in the first place.

[if only qnc had tried with the quote in, we would have been spared your meddlesome lectures.]

[CharlesS]

Originally Posted by Hal Itosis 

Somehow, I suspect the brace expansion came as a surprise mainly to you...
and that's why you launched the whole "showing off" tirade in the first place.

Nice. Nope, it's actually more due to having read your posts over the last couple of years, both on this forum and on MacFixIt. It's a fairly consistent aspect of your style. Suppose someone asks to see the invisible files in a folder. My guess is that you'd have them go ls -aeiouandsometimesyletsfindeveryoptionthatwontactua llybreakthecommand /some/folder when a plain old ls -al /some/folder would do just fine. All I'm saying is that there's something to be said for simplicity.

[if only qnc had tried with the quote in, we would have been spared your meddlesome lectures.]

You may have noticed that he forgot the comma as well. It would have been at least one or two more back-and-forths before he successfully executed the command even with the quotes. You'll notice that a whole little sub-discussion popped up around how to get your command to work, including lines from the original poster saying "I hate the Terminal."

At any rate, this is getting tiresome. The original poster seems to have disappeared - probably he's managed to get his problem fixed one way or another, so let's just let the thread die.

[Hal Itosis]

Originally Posted by CharlesS 

Nice. Nope, it's actually more due to having read your posts over the last couple of years, both on this forum and on MacFixIt. It's a fairly consistent aspect of your style. Suppose someone asks to see the invisible files in a folder. My guess is that you'd have them go ls -aeiouandsometimesyletsfindeveryoptionthatwontactua llybreakthecommand /some/folder when a plain old ls -al /some/folder would do just fine. All I'm saying is that there's something to be said for simplicity.

Troll droppings.
Every option I put there had a purpose.
We can't see ACLs without -e, and we can't see flags without -O.

Originally Posted by CharlesS 

You may have noticed that he forgot the comma as well. It would have been at least one or two more back-and-forths before he successfully executed the command even with the quotes. You'll notice that a whole little sub-discussion popped up around how to get your command to work, including lines from the original poster saying "I hate the Terminal."

Horsefeathers.
If he "forgot" the comma, it may be because you told him to *type* the text.
Basic copy/paste should be used here (obviously).

Originally Posted by CharlesS 

At any rate, this is getting tiresome. The original poster seems to have disappeared - probably he's managed to get his problem fixed one way or another, so let's just let the thread die.

"Getting" tiresome? It was tiresome the second you started this little game.
And stop with the personal psychoanalysis already. [your own neurosis disqualifies you]

[CharlesS]

Originally Posted by Hal Itosis 

Troll droppings.
Every option I put there had a purpose.
We can't see ACLs without -e, and we can't see flags without -O.

And we can't see inode numbers without -i -- oh wait, there's no reason to do that.

Horsefeathers.
If he "forgot" the comma, it may be because you told him to *type* the text.
Basic copy/paste should be used here (obviously).

Yes, that would explain why he typed the command multiple times while forgetting the comma before I said anything at all.

"Getting" tiresome? It was tiresome the second you started this little game.
And stop with the personal psychoanalysis already. [your own neurosis disqualifies you]

Nice. Welcome to my ignore list.

[Hal Itosis]

Originally Posted by CharlesS 

And we can't see inode numbers without -i -- oh wait, there's no reason to do that.

Oh wait... there is if you want to see inode numbers, and I explained why that would be useful.
[i've actually seen cases where some weird inode number [like 3] turned up on a user's home.]

BTW, don't forget: it was inode numbers that helped me DEBUG Pacifist 2.0.
Remember... that thread at MacFixIt, where you talked as if you knew it all... and
then I blew away your whole façade? So, you're not really the final judge of
whether showing inodes is necessary or not.

Originally Posted by CharlesS 

Nice. Welcome to my ignore list.

Sounds good to me. [you like to dish out way more than you can take.]

[seanc]