{"id":18770,"date":"2017-08-31T14:12:39","date_gmt":"2017-08-31T18:12:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/?p=18770"},"modified":"2017-08-31T15:14:43","modified_gmt":"2017-08-31T19:14:43","slug":"reliability-of-macos-sierra-scheduled-and-background-activities","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2017\/08\/31\/reliability-of-macos-sierra-scheduled-and-background-activities\/","title":{"rendered":"Reliability of macOS Sierra: Scheduled and Background Activities"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/eclecticlight.co\/2017\/08\/26\/reliability-of-macos-sierra-scheduled-and-background-activities\/\">Howard Oakley<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote cite=\"https:\/\/eclecticlight.co\/2017\/08\/26\/reliability-of-macos-sierra-scheduled-and-background-activities\/\">\n<p>In Sierra, the DAS and CTS dispatching system now manages more than <a href=\"https:\/\/eclecticlight.co\/2017\/05\/31\/an-incomplete-list-of-sierras-dispatched-services\/\">seventy activities<\/a> at most times, one of which is Time Machine&rsquo;s scheduled backups. However, in Sierra at least, <a href=\"https:\/\/eclecticlight.co\/2017\/07\/30\/sierra-10-12-6-doesnt-fix-the-time-machine-bug-but-changes-it\/\">this system has a bug<\/a> which results in its breakdown: backups suddenly become irregular or stop altogether, and the other activities also become unreliable.<\/p>\n<p>When this happens, it is tempting to revert to scheduling backups using the older <code>launchd<\/code> mechanism, and that will certainly restore them. But it does nothing for the seventy or so other services which the DAS and CTS dispatching system manages. [&#8230;]<\/p>\n<p>For anyone needing to run their Mac continuously, particularly as a server, this is a devastating flaw. Although I and others have tried various solutions, the only way currently known to restore normal dispatching services is <a href=\"https:\/\/eclecticlight.co\/2017\/07\/18\/sierras-time-machine-irregular-backup-bug-prevention-and-treatment\/\">to restart the Mac<\/a>. That is literally a showstopper for any server, and is more than inconvenient for many other Mac users.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Previously: <a href=\"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2017\/05\/10\/sierra-bluetooth-problems-due-to-gcd\/\">Sierra Bluetooth Problems Due to GCD?<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Update (2017-08-31): <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/tclementdev\/status\/903326491487989760\">Thomas Clement<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote cite=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/tclementdev\/status\/903326491487989760\">\n<p>You can use <a href=\"https:\/\/tclementdev.com\/timemachineeditor\/\">TimeMachineEditor<\/a> if you need a third-party Time Machine scheduler.<\/p>\n<p>btw TimeMachineEditor used to be implemented via <code>xpc_activity<\/code> but eventually had to switch to a custom implementation due to various issues.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Howard Oakley: In Sierra, the DAS and CTS dispatching system now manages more than seventy activities at most times, one of which is Time Machine&rsquo;s scheduled backups. However, in Sierra at least, this system has a bug which results in its breakdown: backups suddenly become irregular or stop altogether, and the other activities also become [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"apple_news_api_created_at":"","apple_news_api_id":"","apple_news_api_modified_at":"","apple_news_api_revision":"","apple_news_api_share_url":"","apple_news_coverimage":0,"apple_news_coverimage_caption":"","apple_news_is_hidden":false,"apple_news_is_paid":false,"apple_news_is_preview":false,"apple_news_is_sponsored":false,"apple_news_maturity_rating":"","apple_news_metadata":"\"\"","apple_news_pullquote":"","apple_news_pullquote_position":"","apple_news_slug":"","apple_news_sections":"\"\"","apple_news_suppress_video_url":false,"apple_news_use_image_component":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[131,500,30,1381,216],"class_list":["post-18770","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology","tag-bug","tag-launchd","tag-mac","tag-macos-10-12","tag-timemachine"],"apple_news_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18770","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18770"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18770\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18782,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18770\/revisions\/18782"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18770"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18770"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18770"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}