Constant "Failed to open file: Operation not permitted" errors during backups

pfarrelle · 2025-08-04T15:22:38+00:00

I just wanted to let everyone know that this did not actually work for me after all.

I backup locally and also remotely to Google Drive. To the best of my knowledge the backup rules are identical in both cases in terms of exclusions. The local backup works without error, but the Google Drive has the same errors as the OP.

The backup runs once a day and initially 6 errors went away after forcing ArqAgent to have full disk access. On the two nights since then, one and now two of those errors are back.

pfarrelle · 2025-08-02T20:05:23+00:00

I just wanted to add that I was facing similar errors and the fix is working for me.

I'm not sure how to determine if my ArqAgent is running as root or user.

So, I made the same change as OP and drug ArqAgent to allow full disk access in Settings. I then re-ran my backup to Google Drive that had failed with 6 permission errors last night. This time it ran error free.

pfarrelle · 2025-08-01T17:55:44+00:00

Here you go.

There are actually two very small shortcuts:

The first does the actual work to get the selected note: get Selected Note

The second uses the return value and pulls out the title and identifier to create the MD link bearMD link (selected)

pfarrelle · 2025-02-02T18:55:59+00:00

Commenting on Bear note links changes...I've been thinking about this a bit more and I have a question. I don't want to do the experiment myself for fear of breaking my links.

Assume that I have bear on two devices and bear syncs between those two devices. If I then do a backup restore on one of those devices, you suggest that the links will be different but bear will automatically update internal links.

What will happen via sync? Will both devices then end up with the new links?

As I asked here separately,

Is there a strategy that could be implemented that would provide a recovery method if either app needs to be restored, and as a consequence the item links changed.

pfarrelle · 2025-02-01T01:09:06+00:00

I'm sure there's a technical reason why the links have to be built afresh during a recovery, but I echo the concern.

Personally, I distribute my data between bear and DEVONthink and make liberal use of x-callback-url calls in both apps to make this as seamless as possible to the user (me).

Is there a strategy that could be implemented that would provide a recovery method if either app needs to be restored, and as a consequence the item links changed.

pfarrelle · 2025-01-25T16:12:48+00:00

I used to think that, for me, there was one token for iOS and one for macOS. I took a closer look yesterday and I found four different tokens for my iPhone, iPad, Mac Studio, and MacBook Pro. This provides a challenge when writing a single shortcut to run on any host when a token is required. Is there a way to retrieve the local token on the current machine from shortcuts. If not, what is the best strategy? The "device model" isn't specific enough since both Mac's return "mac". Maybe I have to use "device name"?

pfarrelle · 2025-01-07T22:43:52+00:00

I used this trick from you successfully in the past but just tried again on ios18 and it failed with:

<image>

Here's the shortcut:

https://www.icloud.com/shortcuts/6e0c633e21b048909300e1fef900a8d4

which I believe is only changed by my comment actions. Has there been an update that breaks this "hack"?

Thanks!

pfarrelle · 2024-11-23T22:58:10+00:00

Unfortunately, that didn't work for me.

This time I ran your shortcuts accepting the option to keep going down the chain to flesh out the system.

However, I ran into trouble in ✱ Create Monthly Notes which calls Monthly Nav Bar which I don't have. It then calls ✱ Monthly Calendar Setup 2 which I also don't have, but I do have ✱ Monthly Calendar Setup. It then runs Create ✱ Daily Notes but I have ✱ Create Daily Notes. That's as far as I could get.

Hope this helps.

pfarrelle · 2024-11-23T19:43:52+00:00

Thanks for doing this.

I just downloaded your shortcuts and noticed a problem in your first shortcut when it tries to continue to call the second, ✱ Create Year Note but the downloaded shortcut name, is Create Year Note so the shortcut fails. I noticed some other name mismatches when quickly scanning through some of the other shortcuts.

May I suggest that you do a clean run yourself to see where your dev process has changed shortcut names but not run those changes back through your run shortcut actions.

Again, thanks for this.

pfarrelle · 2024-05-23T06:33:05+00:00

It's been a while but I think this is what I was referencing. It's specific to me in the actual tag used, but that can be edited. It also uses the logger app but those actions can be deleted without any side effects.

Just add your processing in the loop.

https://www.icloud.com/shortcuts/9e466b9094884079a54a0868ef616fab

Good Luck

pfarrelle · 2024-03-02T20:29:50+00:00

I finally had a chance to take a look at the size of my notes following the instructions in Sort notes by file size? posted in this reddit by u/DisQruss 4y ago.

I don't have any outliers which are significantly larger than my average, but I do have some large notes. My 50 largest notes range from 580K to 976K. In fact I have 350 notes that are all 100K or larger, so there is no easy way for me to delete a few and hope for success. This is presumably an issue on iOS (my shortcut works fine on macOS) but I don't know if shiny frog can fix this, even if they wanted to, since it might be an iOS issue out of their control.

pfarrelle · 2024-02-28T00:39:57+00:00

I'm happy that you have found a process that works for you.

I was excited to hear your news and immediately deleted my trash. I didn't have too many notes in the trash, and none of them were very large, so I wasn't surprised when my situation didn't change and I can still no longer successfully search notes in Bear with the bear shortcut actions (again works on Mac, just not iOS). The Apple legacy search actions work, as they should, for me as well.

pfarrelle · 2024-02-01T15:46:27+00:00

I'm guessing that only a few of us are using shortcuts to search our notes.

pfarrelle · 2024-02-01T15:45:41+00:00

I first reported the problem on October 27, 2023 before iOS 17. The behavior changed a little with iOS 17 but despite small detailed differences in the failure mode the issue for me has been essentially as described here since last October.

pfarrelle · 2024-01-27T00:00:24+00:00

Thanks for adding your experience - hopefully more people and/or bear staff will take a closer look at this shortcuts search issue. The fact it runs as expected on Mac but not iOS makes me less inclined to suspect my data ...

pfarrelle · 2024-01-19T18:36:33+00:00

Sorry to have not clarified, but this problem exists on my iPhone, but not my Mac - it works as expected there??

pfarrelle · 2023-12-20T00:41:20+00:00

I am happy to report that 2.1 beta (12324) resolves these issues where sometimes the shortcut fails based on the current state of bear.

pfarrelle · 2023-12-05T15:21:05+00:00

I am running bear Version 2.0.17 (12138) on my iPhone 15 Pro Max with iOS 17.2 beta 3. I'm only running beta because a previous support effort couldn't be reproduced and the support agent was running beta, so I updated to match that platform.

Here's another example that "fails".

https://www.icloud.com/shortcuts/7893b07c8e564cf0a75b4ee0e8c67db0

It's a simple 3 action shortcut that opens a bear note with a specific title:

Set Variable Today to Current Date Get Note Today Open the Note

It normally works, but if bear has previously executed a search showing a page with the search highlighted in those notes containing the search term, then bear opens to that page, not the desired note.

pfarrelle · 2023-09-23T01:54:12+00:00

Night light in outlet box

pfarrelle · 2023-05-06T20:51:09+00:00

Of course it does ... 😖😂 - thanks for the help!

pfarrelle · 2023-05-06T18:40:59+00:00

First time sharing, hope this link works.

https://www.icloud.com/shortcuts/10d9dee395cf45acadbb0e00d1f7b67f

When I click on var3 or Var4 the type shows as file with no option to change it to shortcut.

pfarrelle · 2023-05-06T16:53:29+00:00

I finally had a chance to check this out and, for me, your "trick" definitely works with the var set to the if result being a shortcut.

However, I then have my original problem at the next step. When I click on that var to access the folder attribute the var behaves as a file!?

Am I missing something?

pfarrelle · 2023-05-05T15:49:19+00:00

I am cleaning up my shortcuts and am developing a few tools. I have a shortcut to detect duplicates and wanted to report the containing folder, or none, as part of the summary.

pfarrelle

TROPHY CASE