Apples TimeMachine Backups to BackInTime

Tools used

• Linux machine
• Apple computer
• sshfs
• rsync

Pre-Work

An apple computer is needed to read the backup from the (external) harddrive. Linux is not able to read Apples (encrypted) file system properly, so we have to remount it for Linux.

Steps to reproduce

• On Linux machine mount the remote Apple Time Machine Volume with sshfs (https://github.com/libfuse/sshfs)

sshfs user@machine:/Volumes/BACKUP /media/MOUNT_POINT

• The Apple Time Machine Backup is now mounted on the Linux machine. SSHFS does not support hardlinks, so we rebuild them with rsync's link-dest

• Adjust SRC and DST variable in shell script.

• Make script executable

chmod 700 transformToBackInTime.sh

• Check if some more files from Apple TimeMachine has to be excluded (see exclude.txt)

• Always test the script with rsync's --dry-run parameter

• Run script

Inspired by

https://gist.github.com/tyzhnenko/d17b3cdc7ec6edf4164d788b552c1513#file-tmclone-sh

Open Issue

• How to consolidate Backups, also see bit-team/backintime#1235
• Synchronization to BackInTime is only possible with one machine name