Migrate from Mac to Ubuntu
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...
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?
1 Answer
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}/
{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:
- Script fuse-time-machine (2012).
- Script copy-from-time-machine.sh (2014).
- Script tmfuse (2014).
- Script restoretmbackup.py (2009).
Marcus Vance is a cybersecurity auditor and technology writer dedicated to educating the public about online safety, data privacy regulations, enterprise security, and emerging cyber threats.
