Sparsebundle asking for password that I didn't set.

[RupertL]

Hi,

A few weeks ago my MacBook Pro was stolen. Luckily, I was periodically backing up, but now I am having great difficulty retrieving my back up to a new machine.

To back up I was in the habit of using Time Machine to backup over my home network to a rather old desktop PC running XP SP3 with a big 2nd hard drive. When I set this up I found a guide online explaining how to get Time Machine to recognise a folder on the PC across the network and it (generally) worked well. On the 2nd drive on the PC, I have a 100GB "TMBU.Sparsebundle" file.

The problem is, that having acquired a replacement MBP today (a 2011 13" running Sierra 10.12.3; 2.8ghz i7 with 8GB of RAM), when I try to mount the TMBU.Sparsebundle, I am asked for a password before it will mount the file. The thing is that I never set a password for that Back Up, the PC has no user password on it and neither does the Mac.

Can anyone offer any helpful suggestions? It is so frustrating looking at this big Sparsebundle, that I can see in Finder across the network, but not being able to get to any of my files.

R

 

[MacInWin]

Welcome to the forum!

You had to have a password, the Mac OS requires one. When you initially set up the stolen MBP, creating an account, you entered a password. You may have then set the MBP to not require that password on start up in your user profile, so you never had to enter it, but it's there nevertheless. Also, when you installed software to that MBP, it asked for a password, so you had to enter something there, too. That may be the password for that backup.

 

[IWT]

Completely agree with Jake.

The Password concerned will almost certainly be your Admin PW (for logging-on, allowing new apps to install and the like).

I live and learn each day. I had no idea that you could use a PC - especially XP - as a Time Machine Backup.

Ian

EDIT: No offence, but just clarify: how are you attempting to recover data from TM. I mean, exactly how are you going about it? If you don't mind.

 

[RupertL]

Thanks for your replies.

No offence, but just clarify: how are you attempting to recover data from TM. I mean, exactly how are you going about it? If you don't mind.

None taken - I feel that I have enough knowledge to follow internet guidance to set up Time Machine back up to a PC, but not enough to do anything more than blunder through recovering that back up!

In answer to your question, it seemed pretty obvious that I'd just connect the new MBP to the PC over my home network, mount the back up, and ask TM to restore. For good measure, I have made an ethernet connection to my router (and the PC is hard connected anyway).

As regards the password, the stolen MBP did have a password, and it was required at every login and I know with 100% certainty what it was - but that password gives me an authorisation error work when it comes to mounting the sparsebundle.

So now you have got me thinking - did I change my MBP password after I set up the back up? I really don't think so, but of that I am only 80% sure. Can it really be that to access a back up you have to remember previous passwords? That would be crazy.

 

[gsahli]

How about username? Did you use exactly the same one on the new MBP?

 

[RupertL]

How about username? Did you use exactly the same one on the new MBP?

Well no - I'll try to set the new MBP up the same as the old when I'm home later. Could that really matter - it only asks for a password?

 

[IWT]

RupertL

Thank you for being so considerate and patient. I've already admitted that I was unaware that you could create a Time Machine (TM) Backup (BU) on a PC.

If I may, I'm going to imagine your setup and think through how I'd try to get TM to restore to a new Mac based on how it is done conventionally. I'm assuming the new Mac was properly set up by the previous owner so that it opened with the Welcome screen.

Your setup was stolen Mac > Home Network > PC (TM)

Now you have New Mac > Home Network > PC (TM). No special network PW? I guess not.

The conventional method of restoring from TM to a brand new Mac ( or one set up properly by the previous owner), is to Power-On, go through the Welcome in innumerable languages until it comes up "Do you want to restore from backup".

At this point it gives you the choice of TM, Migration Assistant, other Mac - I think, this is from memory!

You would choose TM. Either the Mac would find it automatically or, more usually, invite to to navigate to the TM BU from whatever sources were mounted - in your case PC (TM). Your select PC (TM) and click on Continue. No PW needed.

The pre-requisites for this working are that you have NOT created a User account (Username) on your new Mac. This is because TM restores everything including your User Account, settings etc, etc.

If you did create a User Account on your Mac immediately after you Powered-On, then there could be a conflict, I'm thinking. Especially if it was DIFFERENT from that on the TM - which is what Member gshali was alluding to, I believe.


May I stop here and ask you if your situation is different from the way I've set out the usual manner of things - especially: did it open to the Welcome screen; did you enter a User Name and if so, was it different from your stolen Mac's User Name?

From your answers, we can sort things out. Either by using Migration Assistant; or even by reformatting your Hard Disk and starting over.

Thanks again for your patience.

Ian

 

[RupertL]

RupertL

Thank you for being so considerate and patient. I've already admitted that I was unaware that you could create a Time Machine (TM) Backup (BU) on a PC.

If I may, I'm going to imagine your setup and think through how I'd try to get TM to restore to a new Mac based on how it is done conventionally. I'm assuming the new Mac was properly set up by the previous owner so that it opened with the Welcome screen.

Your setup was stolen Mac > Home Network > PC (TM)

Now you have New Mac > Home Network > PC (TM). No special network PW? I guess not.

The conventional method of restoring from TM to a brand new Mac ( or one set up properly by the previous owner), is to Power-On, go through the Welcome in innumerable languages until it comes up "Do you want to restore from backup".

At this point it gives you the choice of TM, Migration Assistant, other Mac - I think, this is from memory!

You would choose TM. Either the Mac would find it automatically or, more usually, invite to to navigate to the TM BU from whatever sources were mounted - in your case PC (TM). Your select PC (TM) and click on Continue. No PW needed.

The pre-requisites for this working are that you have NOT created a User account (Username) on your new Mac. This is because TM restores everything including your User Account, settings etc, etc.

If you did create a User Account on your Mac immediately after you Powered-On, then there could be a conflict, I'm thinking. Especially if it was DIFFERENT from that on the TM - which is what Member gshali was alluding to, I believe.


May I stop here and ask you if your situation is different from the way I've set out the usual manner of things - especially: did it open to the Welcome screen; did you enter a User Name and if so, was it different from your stolen Mac's User Name?

From your answers, we can sort things out. Either by using Migration Assistant; or even by reformatting your Hard Disk and starting over.

Thanks again for your patience.

Ian

Thanks for my patience? You're the one helping me for no good reason other than a sense of community! Thank you so much.

I didn't want to complicate the scenario before as it shouldn't be strictly relevant but the situation is that I have bought a PC (Think Pad) to replace the MBP and as an early attempt to use some s/ware to allow access to the sparsebundle which I had copied to the new PC didn't work at all, I have rented a MBP for 4 days to allow me to access my back up and process what I need to the new PC.

The MBP is effectively empty but it has of course been initially set up and does have a user name (rentaluser) but I was advised just to "click through" as "no password is set".

Other than that the set up is as you surmise. For good measure, when I first had the problem, I went and turned off the firewall on the desktop and ensure that the sharing settings were reasonably liberal.

Given that one of the whole reasons for a machine back up is that the machine may be lost, it does seem strange that there is such a reliance on the new machine's setup matching the old. Do Apple not imagine the situation where one needs to restore a back up to another Mac which may already be in use?

R

 

[MacInWin]

What I am thinking is going on is that the TM backup is on what looks like a networked drive. That is, the PC is presenting the drive space to the MBP as if it were the same as an NAS. So, on first boot, the question is how to get the MBP to see the networked drive so that the sparcebundle is visible to TM or Migration Assistant for the restore. It may be that when the PC was set up to display the drive as networked (shared may be the better term), that a password was required by either Windows or the Mac to set up the share. And that may well be the password that is needed now.

Also, even if you pick the exact same login name, OS X will know that it's not the same account. Names are not how the system tracks who the login is, but rather an identification number that is associated internally with that user and that machine. So even if the name on the new MBP is exactly like the name on the stolen one, to the system they are two different accounts. What Migration assistant does is to create a new account on the new system and then as the files are moved over the new account is given the same access as the old account had when the backup was made. That's how the end product has the same functionality and why using MA later on, after establishing an account on the new MBP, creates problems with file permissions.

 

[IWT]

That's it Jake. Completely agree.

Now that we all know a little bit more about the general setup, could we get Migration Assistant to copy over all the data to a new account on the Mac? Having 2 accounts in this very special situation might not matter at all because RupertL has the Mac on loan and simply wants access to some of the data so that he can pull it off for use on his new PC - at least that's how I see things??

Is there a way we can do this? Would Migration Assistant need a PW?

Ian

 

[RupertL]

What I am thinking is going on is that the TM backup is on what looks like a networked drive. That is, the PC is presenting the drive space to the MBP as if it were the same as an NAS. So, on first boot, the question is how to get the MBP to see the networked drive so that the sparcebundle is visible to TM or Migration Assistant for the restore. It may be that when the PC was set up to display the drive as networked (shared may be the better term), that a password was required by either Windows or the Mac to set up the share. And that may well be the password that is needed now.

Also, even if you pick the exact same login name, OS X will know that it's not the same account. Names are not how the system tracks who the login is, but rather an identification number that is associated internally with that user and that machine. So even if the name on the new MBP is exactly like the name on the stolen one, to the system they are two different accounts. What Migration assistant does is to create a new account on the new system and then as the files are moved over the new account is given the same access as the old account had when the backup was made. That's how the end product has the same functionality and why using MA later on, after establishing an account on the new MBP, creates problems with file permissions.

Thanks MacInWin.

What is NAS?

If a password was required by PC or MAC with regard to the set up share, and I don't think that it was, I am sure that I would have used one of my standard 'simple' passwords, none of which are working in answer to the password request to mount the drive.

The impression I am forming is that things MAY work better if I were to 'factory reset' the rented MBP.

R

 

[MacInWin]

NAS = Network Attached Storage

Basically, a drive that it not directly attached to the Mac, but over a network. That connection allows the drive to be any format (including Windows format) and still work with the Mac because the network protocols do the work of converting from one drive format to another. Without that, any TM backup drive MUST be formatted for the Mac.

 

[MacInWin]

Thanks for my patience? You're the one helping me for no good reason other than a sense of community! Thank you so much.

I didn't want to complicate the scenario before as it shouldn't be strictly relevant but the situation is that I have bought a PC (Think Pad) to replace the MBP and as an early attempt to use some s/ware to allow access to the sparsebundle which I had copied to the new PC didn't work at all, I have rented a MBP for 4 days to allow me to access my back up and process what I need to the new PC.

The MBP is effectively empty but it has of course been initially set up and does have a user name (rentaluser) but I was advised just to "click through" as "no password is set".

Other than that the set up is as you surmise. For good measure, when I first had the problem, I went and turned off the firewall on the desktop and ensure that the sharing settings were reasonably liberal.

Given that one of the whole reasons for a machine back up is that the machine may be lost, it does seem strange that there is such a reliance on the new machine's setup matching the old. Do Apple not imagine the situation where one needs to restore a back up to another Mac which may already be in use?

R

Ah, this complicates things significantly. What you have is a MBP that isn't yours, it's rented, and it has an account on it and that account has been set up to accept null as a password. Have you tried just not entering anything for the password to try to mount the shared drive? I suspect that the rental user is not set up as an Admin, and that you don't have Admin access to the Mac, which means you cannot change things on the machine. If you DO have admin access, and if the rental company is OK with you totally reinstalling the operating system, you can do that, and at the first opportunity try to get the Mac to see the sparcebundle on the shared drive. I don't know if the OS will, at that point, be able to see the shared drive or not, but as it is now, there isn't much hope of getting to that sparcebundle any other way.

Oh, and by the way, IF you can get the sparcebundle to show on the rental machine under the rental account name, the issue will then be that TM will restore your files, but it won't be under that user's name. It will create a new account on the rental and put the files there. TM will not overwrite any existing user account data, which is why it does that. For full restores, it was designed to be used with a new system with no users on it at all. What it then does is to create an account exactly like what was on the old machine, same name, same password. But on a system with an account already done, it won't write into that account for anything.

You also said

to use some s/ware to allow access to the sparsebundle which I had copied to the new PC didn't work at all,

Does that mean that you have moved the sparcebundle from where it was to this new PC? Do you have the original files? Apple embeds a lot of security into backups to protect your data and moving that sparcebundle around may have broken something. Sparcebundles are very tightly compressed files and are not meant to be moved around, particularly in an "alien" drive structure.

As for Apple not anticipating needing to restore to another Mac, the process works perfectly on a new Mac, but gets complicated when there is an account already established on the new Mac because of security. I don't think Apple anticipates that a rented Mac, with an account on it, would need to access a backup sparcebundle on a Windows PC with a shared drive on an operating system as old as Windows XP, which even Microsoft no longer supports. Your setup is awkward, to say the least!

 

[RupertL]

Yes, I have tried entering a null password - does not work.

I am not with the rented MBP at the moment, but a) I'm pretty sure that I won't have admin rights, and b) the rental company are small and helpful and may be OK with me reinstalling the OS - I can contact them tomorrow (Sunday) to ask.

I did not move the sparsebundle to the new PC, I copied it. The original files are on the old XP desktop and that is the folder/file that I am trying to mount on the MBP. Had no idea that these things were so pernickety!

Yes, I can see that the setup is 'awkward'. I somewhat naively thought that a back up is just a file (albeit a very large one) and that if it could be written to a PC, it could just as simply be restored from there. Silly me!

R

 

[MacInWin]

Well, sparcebundle is a file format unique to Apple, so moving it to a Windows machine certainly added a layer of complexity. What you need to do is to get the rental mac to see the drive on which the sparcebundle is stored as a network drive. It's been a very loooooong time since I last wrestled with Windows XP, but in general terms, get the drive or partition on which the sparcebundle is stored shared to your network. Then, on the rental, see if your rental account will allow you to mount that drive under OS X. IF you can get that done, then you can open Time Machine and point it to that drive as the backup location and do a restore. That will, at least, get the files off the sparcebundle and onto the rental in a format that you can then get to your new Thinkpad. Security is going to be a bear in this, so depending on the OS on the Thinkpad, be prepared to have to deal with ownership and read/write permission issues even if this works.

But the first step is to get that WinXP drive shared and visible to the rental.

Is this rental company Mac-smart? You might ask them to assist with this if they are. If they are just an appliance rental and know nothing about Macs, they won't be able to help at all.

 

[RupertL]

Well that is pretty well what I've been trying to do all along:

The 500GB drive on the PC is set to be shared on the network and 'seeing' that drive from the MBP is no problem. When I see it and click on it the contents open up, the largest file being the TMBU.sparsebundle. Whether I click on the file, or navigate to it via go>connect to server and then type the network address or browse to the sparsebundle, the result is the same: "Enter password to access TMBU.sparsebundle"

R

 

[pm-r]

You had to have a password, the Mac OS requires one.

Just in case it happened to apply in this user's case, that is not accurate.

I have used an Admin user account without a password, well if one accepts just clicking the OK button as none, with Mac OS X versions right up to and including Sierra.




- Patrick
======

 

[MacInWin]

Patrick, in that case your account ends up with <null> for password. You still have one, it's just null. Yes, I'm splitting hairs, but if you have an account, you have SOMETHING for password.

 

[pm-r]

Patrick, in that case your account ends up with <null> for password. You still have one, it's just null. Yes, I'm splitting hairs, but if you have an account, you have SOMETHING for password.

Thanks Jake and good to know I guess and it's sure nice in that it saves a lot of typing when asked. But "null" or whatever, Terminal won't accept it as a password when it needs one.

Anyway, I'll get off the OT and get back to the regular program.





- Patrick
======

 

[MacInWin]

Yeah, I'm not sure how Terminal and the OS interact for passwords, particularly <null>. I think what happens is that Terminal sees the <CR> when you hit Return and compares that to <null> and balks. But who know what evil lurks in the heart of *nix???