backupd(8) [mojave man page]
BACKUPD(8) BSD System Manager's Manual BACKUPD(8) NAME
backupd -- Time Machine backup daemon DESCRIPTION
backupd is the Time Machine backup daemon. It is responsible for creating Time Machine backups and managing its backup history. There are no configurations to backupd, aside from exclusions, and users should not run backupd manually. SEE ALSO
backupd-helper(8), tmutil(8) macOS November 10, 2016 macOS
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TMUTIL(8) BSD System Manager's Manual TMUTIL(8) NAME
tmutil -- Time Machine utility SYNOPSIS
tmutil verb [options] DESCRIPTION
tmutil provides methods of controlling and interacting with Time Machine, as well as examining and manipulating Time Machine backups. Common abilities include restoring data from backups, editing exclusions, and comparing backups. Several, but not all, verbs require root privileges. BACKUP STRUCTURE
Throughout this manual, specific language is used to describe particular "realms" associated with Time Machine backups. It is important to understand this terminology to make effective use of tmutil and its manual. backup source A volume currently being backed up by Time Machine. backup disk The HFS+ volume that contains Time Machine backups. backup destination In the case of a local destination, a synonym for backup disk. For network destinations, this is the AFP share on which the backup disk image resides. backup disk image (or backup image) A sparsebundle that, when mounted, is the backing store for a volume that is a backup disk. backup store The top-level "Backups.backupdb" directory at the root of a backup disk. machine directory A directory inside a backup store that contains all the backups for a particular computer. For local destinations, a backup store can contain multiple machine directories, all for separate computers. snapshot A directory inside a machine directory that represents a single initial or incremental backup of one computer. The word "snapshot", in most contexts, is a generic term and is not to be confused with a "local Time Machine snapshot", which is simply a snapshot stored locally on the computer. snapshot volume A directory inside a snapshot that represents a single initial or incremental backup of one backup source. E.g., /Volumes/Chronoton/Backups.backupdb/thermopylae/2011-07-03-123456/Mac HD VERBS
Each verb is listed with its description and individual arguments. help [verb] Print extended usage for a given verb. If no verb is provided, print a list of verbs and usage summaries. enable Turn on automatic backups. Requires root privileges. disable Turn off automatic backups. Requires root privileges. enablelocal Turn on local Time Machine snapshots. Requires root privileges. disablelocal Turn off local Time Machine snapshots and trigger automatic cleanup of accumulated local snapshot data. Requires root privileges. snapshot Create new local Time Machine snapshot. startbackup [-a | --auto] [-b | --block] [-r | --rotation] [-d | --destination dest_id] Begin a backup if one is not already running. Options: --auto Run the backup in a mode similar to system-scheduled backups. --block Wait (block) until the backup is finished before exiting. --rotation Allow automatic destination rotation during the backup. --destination Perform the backup to the destination corresponding to the specified ID. The --auto option provides a supported mechanism with which to trigger "automatic-like" backups, similar to automatic backups that are scheduled by the system. While this is not identical to true system-scheduled backups, it provides custom schedulers the ability to achieve some (but not all) behavior normally exhibited when operating in automatic mode. stopbackup Cancel a backup currently in progress. delete path ... Delete one or more snapshots, machine directories, or backup stores. This verb can delete items from backups that were not made by, or are not claimed by, the current machine. Requires root privileges. restore [-v] src ... dst Restore the item src, which is inside a snapshot, to the location dst. The dst argument mimics the destination path semantics of the cp tool. You may provide multiple source paths to restore. The last path argument must be a destination. When using the restore verb, tmutil behaves largely like Finder. Custom Time Machine metadata (extended security and other) will be removed from the restored data, and other metadata will be preserved. Root privileges are not strictly required to perform restores, but tmutil does no permissions preflighting to determine your ability to restore src or its descendants. Therefore, depending on what you're restoring, you may need root privileges to perform the restore, and you should know this ahead of time. This is the same behavior you would encounter with other copy tools such as cp or ditto. When restoring with tmutil as root, ownership of the restored items will match the state of the items in the backup. compare [-@esmugtndEUX] [-D depth] [-I name] [snapshot_path | path1 path2] Perform a backup diff. If no arguments are provided, tmutil will compare the computer to the latest snapshot. If a snapshot path is provided as the sole argument, tmutil will compare the computer to the specified snapshot. If two path arguments are provided, tmutil will compare those two items to each other. tmutil will attempt to inform you when you have asked it to do something that doesn't make sense or isn't supported. The compare verb allows you to specify what properties to compare. If you specify no property options, tmutil assumes you want to analyze standard Time Machine behavior. The default property set in this case is equivalent to the -@smugt option set. Specifying any property option overrides the default set. Options: -a Compare all supported metadata. -@ Compare extended attributes. -e Compare ACLs. -s Compare sizes. -m Compare file modes. -u Compare UIDs. -g Compare GIDs. -t Compare modification times. -n No metadata comparison. -d Compare file data forks. -D Limit traversal depth to depth levels from the beginning of iteration. -E Don't take exclusions into account when comparing items inside volumes. -I Ignore paths with a path component equal to name during iteration. This may be specified multiple times. -U Ignore logical volume identity (volume UUIDs) when directly comparing a local volume or snapshot volume to a snapshot vol- ume. -X Print output in XML property list format. setdestination [-ap] arg Configure a local HFS+ volume or AFP share as a backup destination. Requires root privileges. When the -a option is provided, arg will be added to the list of destinations. Time Machine will automatically choose a backup desti- nation from the list when performing backups. When the -a option is not provided, the current list of destinations will be replaced by arg. If you wish to set an HFS+ volume as the backup destination, arg should be the mount point of the volume in question. When setting an AFP destination arg takes the form: afp://user[:pass]@host/share In the AFP case, the password component of the URL is optional; you may instead specify the -p option to enter the password at a non- echoing interactive prompt. This is of particular interest to the security-conscious, as all arguments provided to a program are vis- ible by all users on the system via the ps tool. destinationinfo [-X] Print information about destinations currently configured for use with Time Machine. For each backup destination, the following information may be displayed: Name The volume label as shown in Finder. Kind Whether the destination is locally attached storage or a network device. URL In the case of a network destination, the URL used for Time Machine configuration. Mount Point If the volume is currently mounted, the path in the file system at which it was mounted. ID The unique identifier for the destination. When more than one destination is configured, the most recent backup destination will be marked with the > indicator. When the -X option is provided, output will be printed in XML property list format. removedestination identifier Remove the destination with the specified unique identifier from the Time Machine configuration. Requires root privileges. To obtain the unique identifier for a destination, see destinationinfo. addexclusion [-p] item ... Configure an exclusion that tells Time Machine not to back up a file, directory, or volume during future backups. There are two kinds of user-configurable exclusions in Time Machine. The first, which is the default behavior for the addexclusion verb, is a location-independent ("sticky") exclusion that follows a file or directory. When the file or directory is moved, the exclusion goes with the item to the new location. Additionally, when the item is copied, the copy retains the exclusion. The second kind of exclusion is what is known as a fixed-path exclusion. In this scenario, you tell Time Machine that you want a spe- cific path to be excluded, agnostic of the item at that path. If there is no file or directory at the specified path, the exclusion has no effect; if the item previously at the path has been moved or renamed, the item is not excluded, because it does not currently reside at the excluded path. As a consequence of these semantics, moving a file or directory to the path will cause the item to be excluded--fixed-path exclusions are not automatically cleaned up when items are moved or deleted and will take effect again once an item exists at an excluded path. The -p option sets a fixed-path exclusion as described above. Requires root privileges. Volume exclusions can be set with the addexclusion verb. The -p option is ignored for volumes; exclusions set on volumes track the volume regardless of volume name or mount path changes. Erasing the volume will cause it to be included in future backups. (See associatedisk.) Requires root privileges. removeexclusion [-p] item ... Configure Time Machine to back up a file, directory, or volume during future backups. This verb follows the same usage, exclusion style, and privilege semantics as addexclusion. isexcluded [-X] item ... Determine if a file, directory, or volume are excluded from Time Machine backups. When the -X option is provided, output will be printed in XML property list format. # example output for an excluded item thermopylae:~ thoth$ tmutil isexcluded /Users/admin/Desktop/foo.txt [Excluded] /Users/admin/Desktop/foo.txt # example output for an item that is not excluded thermopylae:~ thoth$ tmutil isexcluded /Users/admin/Desktop/bar.txt [Included] /Users/admin/Desktop/bar.txt inheritbackup {machine_directory | sparsebundle} Claim a machine directory or sparsebundle for use by the current machine. Requires root privileges. Machine directories and sparsebundles are owned by one computer at a time, and are tracked by unique identifiers rather than computer name, host name, or ethernet address. The inheritbackup verb reassigns the identity of the specified item, reconfiguring it so the current host recognizes it during backups. When inheriting a sparsebundle, the machine directory within will also be claimed. Inheriting is typically only one step in the process of configuring a backup for use by a machine. You may also need to use setdestination, associatedisk, or both, depending on the situation. One machine can own multiple machine directories and sparsebundles, but it is ill-advised for them to reside in the same place. In such a situation, which will be chosen during a backup is undefined. As a result, inheritbackup will attempt to detect possible iden- tity collisions before making changes. associatedisk [-a] mount_point snapshot_volume Bind a snapshot volume directory to the specified local disk, thereby reconfiguring the backup history. Requires root privileges. In Mac OS X, HFS+ volumes have a persistent UUID that is assigned when the file system is created. Time Machine uses this identifier to make an association between a source volume and a snapshot volume. Erasing the source volume creates a new file system on the disk, and the previous UUID is not retained. The new UUID causes the source volume -> snapshot volume assocation to be broken. If one were just erasing the volume and starting over, it would likely be of no real consequence, and the new UUID would not be a concern; when erasing a volume in order to clone another volume to it, recreating the association may be desired. A concrete example of when and how you would use associatedisk: After having problems with a volume, you decide to erase it and manually restore its contents from a Time Machine backup or copy of another nature. (I.e., not via the Mac OS X installer's System Restore feature or Migration Assistant.) On your next incremental backup, the data will be copied anew, as though none of it had been backed up before. Technically, it is true that the data has not been backed up, given the new UUID. However, this is probably not what you want Time Machine to do. You would then use associatedisk to reconfigure the backup so it appears that this volume has been backed up previously: thermopylae:~ thoth$ sudo tmutil associatedisk [-a] "/Volumes/MyNewStuffDisk" "/Volumes/Chronoton/Backups.backupdb/thermopylae/Lat- est/MyStuff" The result of the above command would associate the snapshot volume MyStuff in the specified snapshot with the source volume MyNewStuffDisk. The snapshot volume would also be renamed to match. The -a option tells associatedisk to find all snapshot volumes in the same machine directory that match the identity of MyStuff, and then perform the association on all of them. latestbackup Print the path to the most recent snapshot for this computer. listbackups Print paths for all of this computer's completed snapshots. machinedirectory Print the path to the current machine directory for this computer. calculatedrift machine_directory Analyze the snapshots in a machine directory and determine the amount of change between each. Averages are printed after all snap- shots have been analyzed. This may require root privileges, depending on the contents of the machine directory. uniquesize path ... Analyze the specified path and determine its unique size. The figure reported by uniquesize represents things that only exist in the specified path; things that are hard-linked in other places are not tallied. EXIT STATUS
In most situations, tmutil exits 0 on success, >0 otherwise. Mac OS X 10 April 2013 Mac OS X