Skip to main content

Accessing Time Machine backup from Windows/Linux laptops


I'm wondering if I can access my time machine backup from Windows or Linux computers... I'm just wondering what'll happen if my computer fails and I don't have enough money to buy a new mac...



Answer



It CAN be read from linux (By using Ubuntu for example) but it is a tough nut to crack. Windows can't do it at all.



The following commands need to be executed as a privileged user. To gain the necessary rights do


$ sudo su

You should then be prompted with the root shell.



The following came from http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20080623213342356



It turns out Apple does a couple slick things with the file system to make incremental backups work, including hard linking to directories, which isn't allowed in Linux. So for anyone that needs to access their Time Machine from something other than its associated Mac, here's how you do it...


1 - Mount the drive. On linux, it should automount if you have gnome-volume-manager installed. If you don't see it in /media, then run nautilus and check the desktop. Still don't see it? Read man mount. And then don't forget the -t hfsplus flag.


2 - Change directory. My mount point is /media/Time Machine/. Within that path, I find the directory Backups.backupdb. This represents the directory layout of your backup system. Inside that directory is the name of your disk. Inside that are folders labeled with dates corresponding to each incremental backup that was made. Pick the one you want, or choose the Latest symlink. For example, my path is now:



/media/Time Machine/Backups.backupdb/Drive 1/2008-06-05-073745


3 - Find your file's folder. Within that path is a complete representation of your filesystem. Navigate to the location of your file. If it's not too big or nested too deep, it may be plainly visible. However, there's a good chance that its parent directory doesn't exist. Instead you'll see a zero-byte file for the parent that takes its name and acts as a pointer. Run ls -l and take note of the first numbered column. Example:



...
-r--r--r-- 2155704 root 5791966       0 2007-06-25 02:54 Wallpaper
-r--r--r-- 2155725 root 5791967       0 2007-06-25 02:54 Web-Identity
-r--r--r-- 5441953 root 5791968       0 2007-06-25 02:54 Windows
-r--r--r-- 5511926 root 5791969       0 2007-06-25 02:54 Work


After the permissions, you'll see the directory number that typically refers to the number of directories within that folder. For a file, it should always be 1, but here it is not. What Apple has done is adjust the information in this file's inode to use it as a pointer to the directory that contains the actual file. That way, multiple revisions of the same drive can coexist without duplicating data.


4 - Find the data. In my case, I want to grab something out of the Wallpaper folder. First I made a note of the directory number, 2155704, and then did cd /media/Time Machine/.HFS+ Private Directory Data -- this is where the data really lives. From there, I just did cd dir_2155704, and voilà !



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular Posts

Use Google instead of Bing with Windows 10 search

I want to use Google Chrome and Google search instead of Bing when I search in Windows 10. Google Chrome is launched when I click on web, but it's Bing search. (My default search engine on Google and Edge is http://www.google.com ) I haven't found how to configure that. Someone can help me ? Answer There is no way to change the default in Cortana itself but you can redirect it in Chrome. You said that it opens the results in the Chrome browser but it used Bing search right? There's a Chrome extension now that will redirect Bing to Google, DuckDuckGo, or Yahoo , whichever you prefer. More information on that in the second link.
Post a Comment
Read more

linux - Using an index to make grep faster?

I find myself grepping the same codebase over and over. While it works great, each command takes about 10 seconds, so I am thinking about ways to make it faster. So can grep use some sort of index? I understand an index probably won't help for complicated regexps, but I use mostly very simple patters. Does an indexer exist for this case? EDIT: I know about ctags and the like, but I would like to do full-text search. Answer what about cscope , does this match your shoes? Allows searching code for: all references to a symbol global definitions functions called by a function functions calling a function text string regular expression pattern a file files including a file
Post a Comment
Read more

How do I transmit a single hexadecimal value serial data in PuTTY using an Alt code?

I am trying to sent a specific hexadecimal value across a serial COM port using PuTTY. Specifically, I want to send the hex codes 9C, B6, FC, and 8B. I have looked up the Alt codes for these and they are 156, 182, 252, and 139 respectively. However, whenever I input the Alt codes, a preceding hex value of C2 is sent before 9C, B6, and 8B so the values that are sent are C2 9C, C2 B6, and C2 8B. The value for FC is changed to C3 FC. Why are these values being placed before the hex value and why is FC being changed altogether? To me, it seems like there is a problem internally converting the Alt code to hex. Is there a way to directly input hex values without using Alt codes in PuTTY? Answer What you're seeing is just ordinary text character set conversion. As far as PuTTY is concerned, you are typing (and reading) text , not raw binary data, therefore it has to convert the text to bytes in whatever configured character set before sending it over the wire. In other words, when y
Post a Comment
Read more

linux - CentOs 7.1 - Install Tomcat 8

I am using this tutorial as a setup reference to getting a Tomcat 8 running on CentOs 7.1 , but after typing: [root@localhost tomcat]# sudo systemctl start tomcat I get the error: Job for tomcat.service failed. See 'systemctl status tomcat.service' and 'journalctl -xn' for details. systemctl status tomcat.service prints the following: [root@localhost tomcat]# systemctl status tomcat.service tomcat.service - Apache Tomcat Web Application Container Loaded: loaded (/etc/systemd/system/tomcat.service; disabled) Active: failed (Result: exit-code) since Wed 2015-11-25 16:54:33 CET; 1min 19s ago Process: 45873 ExecStart=/opt/tomcat/bin/startup.sh (code=exited, status=203/EXEC) Nov 25 16:54:33 localhost.localdomain systemd[1]: Starting Apache Tomcat Web Application Container... Nov 25 16:54:33 localhost.localdomain systemd[1]: tomcat.service: control process exited, code=exited status=203 Nov 25 16:54:33 localhost.localdomain systemd[1]: Failed to start Apache Tomcat Web App
Post a Comment
Read more