Sonntag, 20. Februar 2011

Restore a time machine backup from linux share (afp/smb)

There are many tutorials on how to backup your data onto a linux server via afp (or even smb), but few information on how to restore the data in case of emergency. So here are some infos i found useful:

- i assume your disk was replaced with an empty one and no Mac OS is installed

- boot your Mac, press 'c' during boot up

- insert MacOS install disk

- go through language settings, but do not start the installation

- open disk utitily tool from toolbar. Choose the new disk and create a new partition, name it "Macintosh HD" (don't know if this is necessary, but worked for me)

- close disk utility tool, resume to installation

- Open terminal

- create a mountpoint for mount your network share to:

# mkdir /Volumes/MountPoint

- make sure your network is up and running, then manually mount the share containing your time machine sparsebundle in the terminal:

# mount -t afp afp://username:password@hostname/ShareName /Volumes/MountPoint

e.g: # mount -t afp afp://peter@secret@192.168.2.42/Home\ Directory /Volumes/MountPoint

- exit terminal, go back to installation. Your Volume should show up in the selections dialogue now. If it does not, go back right to the start of the installation and step through it again (only through the installation steps, mounting and partitionioning is required only once).

- Choose the right backup and date, choose the newly created partition for restore and start the restore.

- Get a coffee or beer, as restoration takes some time, depending on your disk-size, bandwidth and user data.