timedog runs without a hitch but doesn't seem to work

[rEes9P]

I'm trying to use timedog on macOS Mojave and am able to run the script just fine but, regardless of whether I run the simple /path/to/timedog -d 5 -l command or try to compare the latest backup to an older one, all I get is Total Backup: 0 changed files/directories, 0B. I tried using sudo but that didn't help. Could this be because my Time Machine backup is encrypted? Should I try any other steps? Thanks

[nlfiedler]

Good question, I don't know how encrypted affects things, the script is just reading files and extended attributes, so I trust that macOS is serving decrypted content after you've logged in. When I get back home, I'll give it try.

[rEes9P]

Thanks for looking into this @nlfiedler :-)

[nlfiedler]

I set up my old MacPro with Mojave (well, it was already) and attached a new drive, formatted with encryption, then I left TM running overnight so it would make a few backups. When I'm logged onto the desktop (either locally or with Screen Sharing), I can run ./timedog -d 5 -l and I get a bunch of files and directories with file sizes, as expected. If I log out of the desktop and then SSH into the system and run the same command, I get this:

$ ./timedog -d 5 -l
No machine directory found for host.
No TimeMachine backups found at ./timedog line 192.

So not seeing any output means something else is happening, but I don't know what. The output you're seeing seems like it might be a file permissions issue, that the script quietly cannot read the files and ends up finding nothing to report. If you're at all familiar with Perl, maybe try adding print calls here and there to narrow down where the problem is happening.

Sorry that's all I've got.

[r3a1d3a1]

I'm facing the same issue on Catalina.
11 GBs were backed up last time which piqued my curiosity.
When I run sudo tmutil listbackups | tail -2 | sed 's/.*/"&"/' | xargs sudo tmutil compare based on this, I get a lot of (mtime) cases.
timedog gives me no results, however.
Assuming timedog doesn't do a bit by bit comparison, would you please clarify which metadata it takes into account?

[nlfiedler]

I didn't write timedog, but from what I can tell, it is simply comparing the inode values. If they are the same, then no change is reported.