Ok - Mikuro, thanks for the link. This proves to be the case with me. Here are the conclusions of my reading and testing:
Apparently Apple does provide a manner to block archiving by TimeMachine. This can be set using the "com.apple.metadata:com_apple_backup_excludeItem" file attribute and the xattr command in terminal.
VMware seems to think that Time Machine backups could compromise an "open" virtual machine, so they decided to block Time Machine using the above mentionned file attribute.
I have tried to manually remove the file attribute using the following 3 commands (use ls -l@ to check your results). This releases the TimeMachine backup.
Code:
xattr -d com.apple.metadata:com_apple_backup_excludeItem Windows.vmwarevm
cd Windows.vmwarevm
xattr -d com.apple.metadata:com_apple_backup_excludeItem *.*
However, the file attributes are reset to "block TimeMachine" as soon as you restart the virtual machine. So this is a short lived solution.
I am quite saddened by VMware because:
- they block TimeMachine without warning me in anyway or form. Potentially exposing them to some court case I think.
- I can understand blocking TimeMachine on "open" virtual machines but applying the same logic on "closed" ones seems excessive.
- the ideal setup would be for VMware to set the file attribute at virtual machine start, and remove it at VMware quit. But this seems to be to complex for them!
The only other solution I can think of is either using ZIP or a DMG image, but both add some silly overhead.
I remain surprised that VMware decided to block TimeMachine without any form of warning. I discovered this sillyness when I wanted to recover a virtual machine I had accidently deleted... relying on TimeMachine... just to find out VMware bypassed my archiving system - how stupid!