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My Mac has failed, and I need a new machine. I have a full Time Machine backup. I'd like to switch to Ubuntu (or some other Linux distro) rather than buying another Mac. If I do so, will I be able to recover my files? Where can I find instructions?

saulspatz
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  • It depends on what is the backup format. We have no idea what is Mac "full Time Machine backup" here and how to get files from there. Maybe you would need another Mac for that. i wouldn't be surprised. – Pilot6 Feb 25 '20 at 15:15
  • @Pilot6 fuse filesystem with some custom alterations (they used the 2nd column in ls -l to store a directory number. – Rinzwind Feb 25 '20 at 15:28

1 Answers1

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Manual method:

Mount the drive with the backup using the -t hfsplus option.

If you mount it in media you will have something like this:

/media/{mountpoint}/Backups.backupdb/Drive/{date}/

{date}: the newest data obviously has the newest backup. ls -l will show a list of directories with a number behind the permissions. The data is actually stored in a hidden dir and with that number like this: 

cd /media/{mountpoint}/.HFS+ Private Directory Data/dir_{the number you found}/

and you can use cp to copy your data to a Ubuntu partition.

Some scripts others made to automate it:

Rinzwind
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