App settings will not persist on macOS 14
scottrobertson opened this issue · comments
I have been trying to work out why my app settings are all resetting, and not persisting in macOS 14. This has been happening for apps such as Raycast, iTerm, Rectangle, Bartender etc. I just tried running mackup uninstall and everything is fixed. And then when i run mackup backup again, none of my settings will persist or save again. Any ideas?
Which files storage method are you using? Can you share your ~/.mackup.cfg with us?
[storage]
engine = icloud
[applications_to_ignore]
oh-my-zsh
espanso
iCloud
I've seen other mackup users using iCloud have has similar issues. Could you try turning off the feature to optimize mac storage and see if that helps? It will be under the iCloud settings.
My thinking is iCloud is removing these config files from your hard drive to save storage.
Hey. Just tried that, and it did not help, sadly.
I also did the following:
mackup uninstall- Open an app, all settings are fine
- Rename/remove
~/Library/Mobile Documents/com~apple~CloudDocs/Mackup - Run
mackup backup - Reopen the same app, and it has reset all settings
mackup uninstall- Reopen the app, and all the settings are back
Can you confirm the symbolic links that are generated are valid? The Rename/remove step you mentioned could be causing the symbolic links to break.
@lra any ideas?
To be clear, I had already run mackup uninstall before the rename/remove. I ran that earlier today to get things working. I did the rename/remove just to basically do a "fresh start" to rule out any old files causing issues etc.
Hey. Just an update here. I just tried this again using
[storage]
engine = file_system
path = Mackup/
And i get the same result. I run mackup backup, open iTerm2 for example, and all settings have wiped, run mackup uninstall and open it again, and settings are back. So i don't think iCloud is the issue.
I have same issue
Same issue. Started happening when I updated to Dropbox beta, and then tried moving to iCloud. Now it's a mess. Not sure what's wrong, unable to predict a pattern here but with latest macOS this happens:
- All of a sudden some apps loose their config (have to reconfigure)
- Some apps like iTerm2 or Terminal don't keep their configs no matter what I do (uninstall/install fresh doesn't help)
+1 on this issue. I was going to say I wonder if this is related to the Apple update that basically made it harder for Cloud apps to work on mac. It also meant you had to change the location of your Dropbox drive.
https://help.dropbox.com/installs/macos-support-for-expected-changes
+1 on this issue. I was going to say I wonder if this is related to the Apple update that basically made it harder for Cloud apps to work on mac. It also meant you had to change the location of your Dropbox drive.
https://help.dropbox.com/installs/macos-support-for-expected-changes
I don’t think it’s that, no. It even stops working if I just use the file system storage method.
Then I would say it's a recent Apple update. For me this started happening in the last week, which is when I updated to Ventura 13.4.1 (might've also been when I updated to 13.4).
It's possible that there's an unknown bug with the latest update or a "security improvement" that's messing with symlinks 🤔
I've done mackup uninstall for now which has fixed everything but it would be interesting if mackup has any logs stored somewhere? To see exactly what was erroring out. Perhaps a permissions issue that was going undetected? Who knows at this point.
Just lost a couple days on this exact issue because it took me a while to figure why a lot of my settings weren't saving and that mackup was the culprit. Hope this gets solved quickly.
cc me
Any updates on this one? I am having the same issues and it's maddening. I will uninstall for now, but hope it gets fixed soon because I really love Mackup.
MacOS: 14.0 Public Beta (23A5286i)
Mackup: 0.8.37
[storage]
engine = file_system
path = SynologyDrive/Backups
[applications_to_ignore]
illustrator
mackup
zsh
path-finder
streamdeck
If for some reason this issue is due to symlinks and effectively impossible to fix going forward, it might be a good idea to offer an alternate mode of backup by copying over files instead of symlinking them, so that at least the tool doesn't become fully obsolete. I wouldn't mind doing a manual export/import every once in a while as a compromise instead of ditching Mackup altogether.
I'm quite frustrated with losing all the settings again and again. To a point where I'm planning on rewriting this project one way or the other. It's been mentally taxing. 😮💨
I understand life gets in a way and this free software. Appreciate all the hardwork.
If for some reason this issue is due to symlinks and effectively impossible to fix going forward, it might be a good idea to offer an alternate mode of backup by copying over files instead of symlinking them, so that at least the tool doesn't become fully obsolete. I wouldn't mind doing a manual export/import every once in a while as a compromise instead of ditching Mackup altogether.
Exactly. Honestly, I wish this was a feature today. I don’t really need the symlinking anyway. I just want the peace of mind that when I run mackup backup, my settings are copied somewhere that is versioned and backed up.
I've seen other mackup users using iCloud have has similar issues. Could you try turning off the feature to optimize mac storage and see if that helps? It will be under the iCloud settings.
My thinking is iCloud is removing these config files from your hard drive to save storage.
same with the new Dropbox in CloudStorage.
I've seen other mackup users using iCloud have has similar issues. Could you try turning off the feature to optimize mac storage and see if that helps? It will be under the iCloud settings.
My thinking is iCloud is removing these config files from your hard drive to save storage.same with the new Dropbox in CloudStorage.
I don't use either of these. I use SynologyDrive and have it set to sync everything. I don't think it has anything to do with the storage engine. I've had to temporarily remove Mackup to get things working, but like I said, I'm hoping they add a way to "copy" your prefs to another location instead of doing the whole symlink thing. That would be fine and preferable, for me.
for me things started failing with Dropbox when they moved to the new CloudStorage shit. (see #1891.) now you can't be certain that Dropbox starts at a proper time. i think the whole symlink thing should be gone yeah. maybe there's something also related to macOS 14 itself, where now it seems we need Apple's approval to read and write our own UserDefaults 🤣️
I've been debugging same issue for past hour, and finally understood that it's due to mackup.
I'm running Sonoma beta.
Here's how it look:
rejecting write of key(s) mainWindowPositionCache in { com.raycast.macos, sergey.petrov, kCFPreferencesAnyHost, /Users/sergey.petrov/Library/Preferences/com.raycast.macos.plist, managed: 0 } from process 7061 (Raycast) because Path not accessible
Same problem here with Sonoma RC. Mackup is broken :(
I am experiencing a similar issue, but it is quite strange. My Intel iMac is functioning properly, while my M2 MacBook has stopped working.
Can confirm, having major issues in Sonoma, both for app settings but also system plists; (com.apple.* for example). Discovered it when settings for Tower (the Git-client) and system-level keyboard shortcuts (Library/Preferences/com.apple.symbolichotkeys.plist) didn't persist between reboots.
mackup.cfg:
[storage]
engine = icloud
[applications_to_ignore]
zsh
Same issue, settings are not persisted.
Only 'fix' for now is mackup uninstall
my backup workflow is now mackup backup --force && mackup uninstall
Just as additional information, defaults also doesn't work if the preferences file is a symlink but works with a plain file. So definitely symlinks are the problem.
Same here as soon as I installed Sonoma, damn… I have a lot of other "non-standard" setup with symlinks too, I really hope they're not all broken…
Edit… They still seem to work thankfully.
Same problem when upgraded to Sonoma, really want a copy option or use FSEvents API to auto copy config files
Apps use plist are broken, eg iTerm2, Apple Music, others like vim are fine
If anyone with MacOS 13.6 or 12.7 could confirm then it could be it.
My temp workflow:
Saving configs (when leaving a machine): mackup backup && mackup uninstall
Loading configs (on new machine): mackup restore && mackup uninstall
Mackup sync feature is bypassed but still better than nothing as mackup still locates/copies files.
Same for me, except I skip prompts:
$ mackup backup --force && mackup uninstall --force$ mackup restore --force && mackup uninstall --force
Going to just chime in for subbing that I'm also seeing this issue. Started when my Zoom global keyboard shortcut somehow kept resetting after a reboot. Turns out that is synced with mackup, and found the same symlink issue. Will take this workaround for now to backup/restore as mentioned. Hoping someone can figure out what Apple did.
I'm on Ventura 13.6, 2020 m1, and just tried to reinstall mackup after I already brew uninstall mackup (as that didn't remove the symlinks) and eventually tracking the issue that I had with iina not saving prefs to here (ref'd above).
EDIT: seemed to get to uninstall after much finnaggling (still shows a dropbox not installed error when dropbox was neither confgured nor listed in mackup.cfg, go figure), still to test if prefs are saving in various apps properly.
This is a helluva mess!
So, I brew install mackup again (along with crap-ton of dependencies) so I could try mackup uninstall, which I hoped would remove symlinks (which I didn't even realise Mackup was doing, should have RTFM) but instead got:
mackup uninstall
/opt/homebrew/Cellar/mackup/0.8.37/libexec/lib/python3.12/site-packages/docopt.py:165: SyntaxWarning: invalid escape sequence '\S'
name = re.findall('(<\S*?>)', source)[0]
/opt/homebrew/Cellar/mackup/0.8.37/libexec/lib/python3.12/site-packages/docopt.py:166: SyntaxWarning: invalid escape sequence '\['
value = re.findall('\[default: (.*)\]', source, flags=re.I)
/opt/homebrew/Cellar/mackup/0.8.37/libexec/lib/python3.12/site-packages/docopt.py:207: SyntaxWarning: invalid escape sequence '\['
matched = re.findall('\[default: (.*)\]', description, flags=re.I)
/opt/homebrew/Cellar/mackup/0.8.37/libexec/lib/python3.12/site-packages/docopt.py:456: SyntaxWarning: invalid escape sequence '\S'
split = re.split('\n *(<\S+?>|-\S+?)', doc)[1:]
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "/opt/homebrew/bin/mackup", line 8, in <module>
sys.exit(main())
^^^^^^
File "/opt/homebrew/Cellar/mackup/0.8.37/libexec/lib/python3.12/site-packages/mackup/main.py", line 66, in main
mckp = Mackup()
^^^^^^^^
File "/opt/homebrew/Cellar/mackup/0.8.37/libexec/lib/python3.12/site-packages/mackup/mackup.py", line 24, in __init__
self._config = config.Config()
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
File "/opt/homebrew/Cellar/mackup/0.8.37/libexec/lib/python3.12/site-packages/mackup/config.py", line 46, in __init__
self._parser = self._setup_parser(filename)
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
File "/opt/homebrew/Cellar/mackup/0.8.37/libexec/lib/python3.12/site-packages/mackup/config.py", line 150, in _setup_parser
parser = configparser.SafeConfigParser(
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
AttributeError: module 'configparser' has no attribute 'SafeConfigParser'. Did you mean: 'RawConfigParser'?
Doesn't bode well.
Also tried:
mackup backup --force && mackup uninstall --force
/opt/homebrew/Cellar/mackup/0.8.37/libexec/lib/python3.12/site-packages/docopt.py:165: SyntaxWarning: invalid escape sequence '\S'
name = re.findall('(<\S*?>)', source)[0]
/opt/homebrew/Cellar/mackup/0.8.37/libexec/lib/python3.12/site-packages/docopt.py:166: SyntaxWarning: invalid escape sequence '\['
value = re.findall('\[default: (.*)\]', source, flags=re.I)
/opt/homebrew/Cellar/mackup/0.8.37/libexec/lib/python3.12/site-packages/docopt.py:207: SyntaxWarning: invalid escape sequence '\['
matched = re.findall('\[default: (.*)\]', description, flags=re.I)
/opt/homebrew/Cellar/mackup/0.8.37/libexec/lib/python3.12/site-packages/docopt.py:456: SyntaxWarning: invalid escape sequence '\S'
split = re.split('\n *(<\S+?>|-\S+?)', doc)[1:]
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "/opt/homebrew/bin/mackup", line 8, in <module>
sys.exit(main())
^^^^^^
File "/opt/homebrew/Cellar/mackup/0.8.37/libexec/lib/python3.12/site-packages/mackup/main.py", line 66, in main
mckp = Mackup()
^^^^^^^^
File "/opt/homebrew/Cellar/mackup/0.8.37/libexec/lib/python3.12/site-packages/mackup/mackup.py", line 24, in __init__
self._config = config.Config()
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
File "/opt/homebrew/Cellar/mackup/0.8.37/libexec/lib/python3.12/site-packages/mackup/config.py", line 46, in __init__
self._parser = self._setup_parser(filename)
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
File "/opt/homebrew/Cellar/mackup/0.8.37/libexec/lib/python3.12/site-packages/mackup/config.py", line 150, in _setup_parser
parser = configparser.SafeConfigParser(
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
AttributeError: module 'configparser' has no attribute 'SafeConfigParser'. Did you mean: 'RawConfigParser'?
I'm on Ventura 13.6, 2020 m1, and just tried to reinstall mackup after I already
brew uninstall mackup(as that didn't remove the symlinks) and eventually tracking the issue that I had with iina not saving prefs to here (ref'd above).EDIT: seemed to get to uninstall after much finnaggling (still shows a dropbox not installed error when dropbox was neither confgured nor listed in mackup.cfg, go figure), still to test if prefs are saving in various apps properly. This is a helluva mess!
So, I
brew install mackupagain (along with crap-ton of dependencies) so I could trymackup uninstall, which I hoped would remove symlinks (which I didn't even realise Mackup was doing, should have RTFM) but instead got:
#1948 - this find helped me fix this issue. Seems widespread. I made the change myself manually in config.py and appsdb.py per the linked PR, you can see what needs to change.
This will help anyone having similar error of:
AttributeError: module 'configparser' has no attribute 'SafeConfigParser'. Did you mean: 'RawConfigParser'?
Does the latest version fix this? It seems to fix other issues, but iTerm specifically still has the same error
Doesn't fix it for me. It seems like new macOS doesn't follow symbolic links in Preferences. I think that the only fix is to replace symbolic links with the files.
I think this is still able to set symbolic links in Sonoma https://github.com/nickzman/symboliclinker/blob/master/SymbolicLinker.m
I thought it was (apart from iTerm) and then I restarted and everything reset, so uninstalled again for now :(
I think the only thing we can do is to change the mackup behaviour from symlinking to copying files to the backup dir. @lra what do you think?
I think the only thing we can do is to change the
mackupbehaviour from symlinking to copying files to the backup dir. @lra what do you think?
Personally, I’d love this option anyway. I don’t necessarily need symlinks. I just want to copy all my prefs to another folder that’s backed up and revisioned.
I think the only thing we can do is to change the
mackupbehaviour from symlinking to copying files to the backup dir. @lra what do you think?
I think this is the way. Only concern is this could be an unexpected change for a lot of users who don't read the repo and for users who have symlinks currently in place.
I think the only thing we can do is to change the
mackupbehaviour from symlinking to copying files to the backup dir. @lra what do you think?I think this is the way. Only concern is this could be an unexpected change for a lot of users who don't read the repo and for users who have symlinks currently in place.
We can either change a major version number, to indicate a breaking change or fork it to the new repo that will have only copying feature. Migrating from symlink to copy will be easy as mackup restore && mackup uninstall.
I'm wonder what @lra thinks as he is the author ;)
I'm unsure if this is related, but I'm also finding that now even though I have uninstalled mackup completely, certain applications keep losing their preferences on quit, I am not even sure if they write a preferences file. I can see console is full of prefsd errors and I am not really sure what to do about this one and it's getting quite annoying 😅
@ChrisChinchilla I'm experiencing the same thing.
Has anyone found a fix for that? Using mackup uninstall removes some symlinks but many applications now cannot save their preferences.
iTerm
BetterTouchTool
F.lux
VS Code
Yeah, it seems latest versions of mac don't like symlinking .plist files.
EDIT: For anyone who finds this -- here's what worked for me to recover some stuff:
mackup uninstalldidn't remove all the symlinks that I had. Some still stuck around.- The above applications have
.plistfiles stored in directories like~/Library/Preferences/com.microsoft.vscodeor similar folders. So in terminal you can find all your apps like this by doingcd ~/Library/Preferences && ls -la-- you will see the symlinks. You might check your~/Library/Application Support/folder too (escape the space in the terminal). - I replaced those symlinks with the actual folders and those apps will now persist settings correctly again.
- Replacing all symlinks in both those folders with the original config files (still stored in Dropbox thankfully) fixed it for me
Will be looking to another symlink-free backup solution. 🥵
As a temporary measure, I replaced all plist soft links with hard links:
for file in $MACKUP_DIR/**/*.plist; do
ln -f "$file" "~/$file"
doneThey are still backed upmackup backupwill consider these new, and ask to soft-link again - say "No"
Update: It seems the hard links get overwritten with the actual files, so this method is not reliable.
Note that I also maintain a Git repository with a separate remote in the Mackup folder, so I can revert if everything goes haywire.
Yeah, I ended up just manually replacing everything.
Thanks for all the feedback, I understand that there is a big problem, but before taking any decision, I'd like to understand what is the actual underlying problem? Is it related to linked plist files? Is it soft links? Would hard links solve the issue?
Can anyone reproduce the issue?
macos 14 is still not available as a github runner for tests (https://docs.github.com/fr/actions/using-github-hosted-runners/about-github-hosted-runners/about-github-hosted-runners#supported-runners-and-hardware-resources) but I'd like someone to pinpoint the issue so I can reproduce it.
Regarding the copy feature, I'll do it, not sure how yet, I made a poll if you want to discuss it: #1969
Let's keep this issue about the link lost problem.
Thanks.
Thanks @lra for answering.
To reproduce this issue, you can do the following:
- Install
iTerm2 - Run it
- Set
Settings -> Appearance -> General -> ThemetoMinimal. You should be able to see the difference with the Regular theme.- This step is needed to see the problem
- Close it with
Cmd + Q - Backup it up using
mackup backup
I've added simple code inappsdb.py:34to narrow downmackup, to only that app:
if config.read(config_file):
if not config_file.endswith("iterm2.cfg"):
continue- Run
iTerm2again. - You should see something similar to this image and your theme should be set to
Regular.
That shows, that theme was not persisted on disk. That have to have something with symlinking plist files, because when I make a hard link, it persists all settings.
I'm not sure if this is new behavior but it seems like using ln -s (at least sometimes) doesn't create a symlink but rather an alias.
Has anyone tried to use mackup on a fresh install of macos instead an upgrade?
Here is a little background context on the different APFS links for those trying to look into this, I didn't know there was a difference between alias and a soft link.
aws has mac instances available for testing https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/UserGuide/ec2-mac-instances.html
I lost my sanity a little bit trying to figure out what was going on here between Sonoma versions - eventually gave up.
For me things were working OK for almost all plists on 14.0 and 14.1 except losing Keyboard shortcuts from System Settings, but on 14.2 everything then seemed broken, extending to iTerm2, Zoom, Stats, dock preferences and other things resetting to defaults and then not retaining values.
Quite difficult to figure out what was going on, but moved to the workflow suggested in #1924 (comment)
I never did manage to get Zoom to recognise my old settings though, started from scratch :-)
If anyone with MacOS 13.6 or 12.7 could confirm then it could be it.
I just wanted to chime in here that I have a home-grown solution that is not mackup, and previously it had worked for years with no issues. It's just this:
# Install all the configured preferences for our various apps
ln -sfn ${DOTFILES_LOCATION}/prefs/*.plist "${HOME}/Library/Preferences"
ln -sfn ${DOTFILES_LOCATION}/prefs/.GlobalPreferences.plist "${HOME}/Library/Preferences"And today I've been trying to get it to work on a brand new MacOS Sonoma instance, and it did not work at all. Trying to run defaults read NSGlobalDomain returns:
Domain Apple Global Domain does not exist
But I can see it right there in the file system. So I double-checked on my other mac running Venture 13.3.1 and had no issues running defaults read NSGlobalDomain and it is also the exact same symlink I see on the mac that's not working. After reading everything here, I figured I'd try just copying the files over instead of sym-linking and sure enough, it just works.
As a final act of desperation I read the actual sym-linked file on the Sonoma Mac and its contents match the contents of the Venture mac 1:1—it just doesn't read the file at all. This seems to confirm my suspicion (along with a few others) that Sonoma will not allow sym-linking certain preference files anymore.
Big bummer, but hopefully this anecdote can help mackup find a solution.
Same problem after update to Sonoma. I currently found two apps are not working. KarabinerElements and Clash for Windows. They seem can't access the files which are symbolic links in iCloud. KarabinerElements said [2024-01-05 15:55:01.092] [error] [grabber] failed to open /Users/xxx/.config/karabiner/karabiner.json and Clash for Windows said .config/clash/Country.mmdb: operation not permitted in their logs. I also find that other apps which are working well showed a dialog to request the permission to access the file inside iCloud as shown below (I'm not sure they are totally working well since I just update to Sonoma for several hours):
It seems KarabinerElements and Clash for windows didn't show the dialog (I'm not 100% sure). If this is the root cause of these problems, is there a way to grant the permission to access files inside iCloud manually?
BTW, how does the app to show that dialog programatically when it need to access files inside iCloud? I'm not a mac os programmer but I guess there should be a way.
Granting permissions doesn't change anything. What breaks mackup on Sonoma are the symlinks.
Yeah - I believe the behavior possibly varies between applications and system elements based on the various versions of MacOS APIs/SDKs they use to load preferences/settings etc, and whether it uses the logic that is now blocking following symlinks when reading from a given path (likely for security reasons).
Is the takeaway that Mackup is, at present, hopelessly broken on 14.* with no fix in sight?
I guess so, unless it works for you to use an approach like #1924 (comment)
I am still using Mackup with this approach, which is OK for me because I wasn't relying on using Mackup to have a constantly updated backup of my settings into cloud storage, and was only saving/updstint a backup periodically anyway.
So I guess it depends on your needs/workflow.
Does anyone have an understanding of why this is happening?
IIUC from the discussion, if a config file is a symlink, then the config file can't be read correctly — is that correct? Which would be surprising, given that symlinks should be transparent to most file reads
I think this could be the root cause #1924 (comment)
@lra Can this issue be pinned? I think it's quite important currently.
Linking tangental issue MonitorControl/MonitorControl#1419
Yeah - I believe the behavior possibly varies between applications and system elements based on the various versions of MacOS APIs/SDKs they use to load preferences/settings etc, and whether it uses the logic that is now blocking following symlinks when reading from a given path (likely for security reasons).
This is definitely what's going on. Probably some silly NSBundle or swift OS lib that refuses to follow smylinks and some programs either do things differently or have updated their dependency chain. I'm not looking into it further.
mackup backup --force && mackup uninstall as @gabrielkoerich suggested above got me back in order. I thought that would uninstall my configs but it just copies your things back as regular files. Just have to remember to edit configs where they are backed up and "push" updates.
Any Idea on resolving this issue? For me it was caused by incremental update to 14.3 before 14.3 it worked 😞
edit: I guess this planned feature will address the issue: #1969
Has anyone tried to use mackup on a fresh install of macos instead an upgrade?
Fresh install of 14.4.1 on M1 and mackup (installed with homebrew) and I'm experiencing this.
I'm not an OSX Dev, but I have noticed many of my applications (OneDrive, Google Drive, Resilio Sync), now prompt for me to enable a Finder Extension during installation
I've found a few other sources of people reporting the same issue, but I have yet to find why or how the symlinks are causing the apps to break. It likely does have something to do with the CVE
- https://adamtaylor.me/posts/sonoma-breaks-symlinks/
- https://discussions.apple.com/thread/255320737?sortBy=best
- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38842561
- https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/406920/icloud-drive-not-syncing-sandbox-bird983-deny1-file-read-data-users-me
One interesting quote from WWDC 2023
In macOS 14 and later, the operating system uses your app’s code signature to associate it with its sandbox container. If your app tries to access the sandbox container owned by another app, the system asks the person using your app whether to grant access. If the person denies access and your app is already running, then it can’t read or write the files in the other app’s sandbox container. If the person denies access while your app is launching and trying to enter the other app’s sandbox container, your app fails to launch.
The most likely explanation that I can find is that Sonoma has a more aggressive App Sandbox.
The first time the user launches your sandboxed app, the system creates its container — a folder in ~/Library/Containers that your app has exclusive read-write access to.
To minimize the risk to user data, the system restricts your app’s file system access to just its container, but that container does include a number of symbolic links that resolve to common user folders, such as ~/Downloads and ~/Pictures. However, the system considers those sensitive folders and requires that your app include certain entitlements before it grants access to the resolved locations of the symbolic links. An unauthorized attempt to access one of those folders results in an “Operation not permitted” error.
Logs
I have 1 app named 'Rectangle' configure to sync to icloud.
Looking in the console logs I see
19 duplicate reports for Sandbox: cfprefsd(45201) deny(1) file-read-data /Users/spuder/Library/Mobile Documents/com~apple~CloudDocs/Mackup/Library/Preferences/com.knollsoft.Rectangle.plist
Conclusion
This is most certainly due to OSX sandboxing, and there likely isn't a solution besides copying files
For now this can be used when using Git as a backup store.
To backup your files:
mackup backup --force
mackup uninstall --force
This will create a new backup from your current setup, and save it to the storage path specified in .mackup.cfg. It will quickly add symlinks, and then remove them immediately after, ensuring it works on MacOS 14+.
To restore your files:
mackup restore
mackup uninstall --force
This will restore the backup from your storage path specified in .mackup.cfg. It will sync the backup to your system and quickly add symlinks, and then remove them immediately after, ensuring it works on MacOS 14+.
I have not tested if this works well with other backup stores. But feel free to try it out :-)
For now this can be used when using Git as a backup store.
That workaround is already known for half a year: #1924 (comment), the point is - it should simply become a native mode as mentioned here: #1924 (comment)
For now this can be used when using Git as a backup store.
That workaround is already known for half a year: #1924 (comment), the point is - it should simply become a native mode as mentioned here: #1924 (comment)
That is true, I just wanted to highlight it a bit more, as the comment you link to does not explain how to do this when restoring. So I just commented to make it a bit easier to understand for anyone else landing here in a search for a quick fix :-)
Not all apps break when symlinking to
~/Libraryand for other things in home symlinks aren't affected at all. I know this adds to the complexity of the app .cfg files, but w
Do you have an example of app configs persisting when linking to ~/lLibrary? Does this issue seem to only be impacting ~/Library/Application Support and be related to where the files are stored on the file system or more of an issue with the permission set of the consuming application?
I have to say that I also tried everything I could and it breaks on macOS 14 w/Dropbox, still working perfectly on my macOS 13. I have to avoid shutting down or restarting the Mac under Sonoma… 😢 Don't know if it is coming from Sonoma and/or CloudStorage 😠
I love both Mac and mackup!
Could it be some kind of permissions change or else?
I also could see the issue before the switch of Dropbox in CloudStorage…
Not all apps break when symlinking to
~/Libraryand for other things in home symlinks aren't affected at all. I know this adds to the complexity of the app .cfg files, but wDo you have an example of app configs persisting when linking to
~/lLibrary? Does this issue seem to only be impacting~/Library/Application Supportand be related to where the files are stored on the file system or more of an issue with the permission set of the consuming application?
I've modified my configuration a lot over the past few months until finally stumbling on this thread on symlinks breaking so it's quite possible I'm not correct about some apps working. This comment #1924 (comment) reinforced my belief that and app could possibly support write through on symlinks but I'm really not sure.
I'm running into this issue on Sonoma and finally took the time to track it down and came across this issue.
After reading most of this thread, am I correct in assuming there is no current fix for iCloud sync? It seems the solution mentioned above is only for GitHub.
Is the current recommendation to uninstall Mackup?
Same problem, It's causing many of my apps to work exceptionally (e.g. iterm2's config file won't save), and all the app's shortcut keys reset automatically on every restart.
It took me quite a while to locate the problem 😭
For me, after running mackup uninstall, some files are just straight up missing, and I can't find them in the Mackup folder. I'm using file_system as the engine. My iTerm's settings don't seem to stick either.
Same issue. It's so bad that I basically can't use Apple Music when using Mackup. Every single login to my computer it shows me the welcome screen for Apple Music, Bartender, etc. Only when having it set to iCloud storage.
I'm running into this issue on Sonoma and finally took the time to track it down and came across this issue.
After reading most of this thread, am I correct in assuming there is no current fix for iCloud sync? It seems the solution mentioned above is only for GitHub.
Is the current recommendation to uninstall Mackup?
I've been doing what's suggested above which is to mackup backup --force && mackup uninstall. This will overwrite your saved config with the files in place and it's good enough to generate a git diff which I then commit and push up. You'll have to edit your config files in place because they are no longer symlinked.
I really wish at least the README would get updated because right now this tool will basically break your system forcing you to
I'm doing this until another solution comes along because I don't think there will be any solution for symlinks to work with ~/Library anytime soon. Apple shut it down quietly perhaps due to an exploit and AFAIK don't recognize it as an issue to be resolved.
It's possible, somehow, to just disable this files backups. Something like this?
[applications_to_ignore]
macos
It's possible, somehow, to just disable this files backups. Something like this?
[applications_to_ignore] macos
Would love to see that!
I'm running into this issue on Sonoma and finally took the time to track it down and came across this issue.
After reading most of this thread, am I correct in assuming there is no current fix for iCloud sync? It seems the solution mentioned above is only for GitHub.
Is the current recommendation to uninstall Mackup?I've been doing what's suggested above which is to
mackup backup --force && mackup uninstall. This will overwrite your saved config with the files in place and it's good enough to generate agit diffwhich I then commit and push up. You'll have to edit your config files in place because they are no longer symlinked.I really wish at least the README would get updated because right now this tool will basically break your system forcing you to
I'm doing this until another solution comes along because I don't think there will be any solution for symlinks to work with
~/Libraryanytime soon. Apple shut it down quietly perhaps due to an exploit and AFAIK don't recognize it as an issue to be resolved.
Thx @jhirn , assuming I'd need to switch from iCloud to Github as my storage system?
I'm looking for an alternative to mackup, since soft links no longer work on macOS 14, and mackup temporarily doesn't support copying (the only solution is mackup backup --force && mackup uninstall).
I found unison to be a good alternative. It can perform two-way synchronization between directories with many advanced features (including watch, merge, backup, atomic directory, etc.).
The only thing needed to migrate from mackup to unison is to manually convert mackup's configuration to unison's profile. For example, this is my default profile.
Then we can use the unison -batch -repeat watch to synchronize our configurations. I hope this can help others with similar needs.