Apple Time Machine Come To Linux, Sort Of

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Apple Time Machine Come To Linux, Sort Of

Apple Time Machine is a feature that was introduced in Mac OS X 10.5 nearly four years ago, which allows the automatic creation of incremental file back-ups that can be restored at a later date, either for the entire system or just an individual file. Mac OS X programs can also become Time Machine-aware themselves to take advantage of these incremental backups. Basic read-only support for better managing Apple Time Machine back-ups is now available to Linux users via a new virtual file-system aptly called the Time Machine File-System...

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=OTY0NQ

[babali]

Hi,

I wrote tmfs with no interest in performances. A friend of mine lost its macbook and could not read its Time Machine. So I wrote tmfs to help him recovering its data.

The main goal is to provide a read only access to the data, performance is a non goal. So fuse is the best solution for this task.

=> going to update the README

Thank you for the article!

[RealNC]

How did you manage to do this without support for directory hard links? (Linux lacks support for this.)

[babali]

Hi RealNC,

You should read https://github.com/babali/tmfs/blob/...t_real_path.cc

I used a simple trick, when I see a regular file with a size of 0, I suppose that it's a directory hardlink.
So I check: I stat the path ${hfs_root}/.HFS+ Private Directory Data\r/dir_${nlink}/ and if it exists then I suppose it's a directory hardlink. If the file does not exists I know that it's not a directory hardlink.

This may fail, but it's not common to have high nlink count on regular file.

[babali]

How did you manage to do this without support for directory hard links? (Linux lacks support for this.)

Hi RealNC,

You should read https://github.com/babali/tmfs/blob/...t_real_path.cc

I used a simple trick, when I see a regular file with a size of 0, I suppose that it's a directory hardlink.
So I check: I stat the path ${hfs_root}/.HFS+ Private Directory Data\r/dir_${nlink}/ and if it exists then I suppose it's a directory hardlink. If the file does not exists I know that it's not a directory hardlink.

This may fail, but it's not common to have high nlink count on regular file.

PS: I have some troubles with forums, I hope I didn't sent it many times....

[Drago]

@babali: Well done, sir!

[devius]

I wrote tmfs with no interest in performances. A friend of mine lost its macbook and could not read its Time Machine. So I wrote tmfs to help him recovering its data.

Amazing! What a noble use of software writing skills. If you want something done do it yourself.

[droidhacker]

... How come I didn't get an article when I wrote dishpvrfs-fuse?
Hmmmm?

It allows reading of dishnetwork pvr disks.