There is a project called rsync+hfsmode
that will handle backing up to linux formatted disks properly, at least for HFS+, but it does it by creating two files on the backup drive: filename
, containing the data fork, and ._filename
containing the resource fork and Finder metadata. Furthermore, when copying back to an HFS+ disk, a second step is needed to reconstitute those two files into a proper HFS+ data structure. You can see a more complete discussion at the project page. I The filename/._filename system for storing HFS+/APFS files to other filesystems, has a name. It is called AppleDouble format.
I am not clear if this same approach will work for APFS, though the question asked on the Apple Developer Forum was responded to with silence; so perhaps not.
Restoring to a linux disk will produce error messages when metadata can not be reproduced. Whether you will be able to manipulate or save those problematic files separately to some other archive, I am not yet clear.
Backing up to Any Kind of Disk Using Restic
Restic
is similarly cross-platform and available in Homebreaw. I'm not finding any detailed description of its handling of extended attributes, but many people are using it on their Mac's, and it says inIn the docs it says:
There is a detailed bug report describing how restic
behaves when backing up HFS+, showing what it is able to handle and where it fails. Similarly to dar
, restoring to a linux disk will produce error messages when metadata can not be reproduced. Whether you will be able to manipulate or save those problematic files separately, I am not yet clear.