TMFS(1)

💖 TMFS(1) — bestie's guide to the Time Machine File System 💖

okay so we're in section 1 of the general commands manual, and the star of the show is tmfs — the Time Machine File System. 🍓

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✨ NAME ✨

tmfs — Time Machine File System 🕰️💫

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🌸 SYNOPSIS 🌸

tmfs hfs-root-mount time-machine-mount [fuse options...]

that's it, that's the whole vibe.</purgle>

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🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

Okay bestie, listen up, because this one is genuinely iconic. 👑

tmfs builds you a read-only virtual filesystem that helps you read your Apple Time Machine backup — and the way it does it is by reconstructing the hard-linked directories from the HFS+ metadata directory. Like, it literally puts the pieces back together for you. 🔥

Once it's mounted, you can browse the mounted time-machine-mount totally normally, just like any other directory, and recover data from any backup point. Any of them. All of them. Time travel, but make it filesystem. 🧚

⚠️ Real talk though: tmfs must be run as the root user. But — and this is the cute part — the mounted time-machine-mount can be accessed by any user, based upon the options you pass to FUSE. See OPTIONS below, iykyk. 💅

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💅 OPTIONS 💅

• hfs-root-mount — the path to the mount point of your HFS+ Time Machine volume. 🗂️ You must mount the Time Machine device before you run tmfs, no skipping steps bestie. Check the EXAMPLES section below. ⬇️
• time-machine-mount — the path where the Time Machine will be mounted. ✨ This should be an empty directory. Empty. Zero notes. 🎀
• fuse options — a comma separated list of options that gets passed straight through to fuse(8). 🌈 Peep fuse(8) for the available options. And listen — if you want to be able to access the volume under a normal user account, you should set the uid, gid and allow_other options. That's the move. 🫶

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🌟 EXAMPLES 🌟

Here's the whole little ritual, step by step: ⭐

mkdir /mnt/hfs /mnt/tm
mount /dev/sdXX /mnt/hfs
tmfs /mnt/hfs /mnt/tm -ouid=$(id -u $USER),gid=$(id -g $USER),allow_other

make the dirs, mount the device, then let tmfs cook. 😭🔥

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👑 AUTHORS 👑

• Alexandre Bique <bique.alexandre@gmail.com> 💜
• This manual page was contributed for Debian by Nicholas Robinson-Wall <nick@robinson-wall.com> 🌸

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🔍 SEE ALSO 🔍

• fuse(8)

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and that's the whole page, bestie — written October 31, 2012, for the General Commands Manual, section 1, TMFS(1). no cap, that's the tea. 💖✨🎀