Skip to main content
Ask Different

Return to Question

added 202 characters in body
Source Link
natevw
natevw
  • 293
  • 1
  • 3
  • 9

I just clean installed macOS on a new VM and now need to set it up with various preferences and stuff to customize it. What I am curious about is where all those customizations actually get stored.

I think most are probably in Preferences plists but others might be in other system databases or third party app configuration files. Regardless, really I'm just wanting to see a list of files changed between "Point A" and some later "Point B" and this is probably interesting in a lot of other cases too.

Is there a way I can use the command line to:

  1. Trigger an APFS snapshot of my "Macintosh HD" boot disk — starting point "A"
  2. …then do whatever using the computer…
  3. Then trigger a new snapshot and/or at least compare now at time "B" what files have been modified since the snapshot at "A"?

Don't need a GUI or anything, just commands that would mark the snapshot and echo out a list of files that changed later. And I don't really need any sort of diff showing the changes within each files, just the overall paths/names of ones that did. (Also not really interested here in solutions based on file modification timestamps; I want to really know at the lower level even if some file's metadata didn't get touched for some reason.)

I just clean installed macOS on a new VM and now need to set it up with various preferences and stuff to customize it. What I am curious about is where all those customizations actually get stored.

I think most are probably in Preferences plists but others might be in other system databases or third party app configuration files. Regardless, really I'm just wanting to see a list of files changed between "Point A" and some later "Point B" and this is probably interesting in a lot of other cases too.

Is there a way I can use the command line to:

  1. Trigger an APFS snapshot of my "Macintosh HD" boot disk — starting point "A"
  2. …then do whatever using the computer…
  3. Then trigger a new snapshot and/or at least compare now at time "B" what files have been modified since the snapshot at "A"?

Don't need a GUI or anything, just commands that would mark the snapshot and echo out a list of files that changed later. And I don't really need any sort of diff showing the changes within each files, just the overall paths/names of ones that did.

I just clean installed macOS on a new VM and now need to set it up with various preferences and stuff to customize it. What I am curious about is where all those customizations actually get stored.

I think most are probably in Preferences plists but others might be in other system databases or third party app configuration files. Regardless, really I'm just wanting to see a list of files changed between "Point A" and some later "Point B" and this is probably interesting in a lot of other cases too.

Is there a way I can use the command line to:

  1. Trigger an APFS snapshot of my "Macintosh HD" boot disk — starting point "A"
  2. …then do whatever using the computer…
  3. Then trigger a new snapshot and/or at least compare now at time "B" what files have been modified since the snapshot at "A"?

Don't need a GUI or anything, just commands that would mark the snapshot and echo out a list of files that changed later. And I don't really need any sort of diff showing the changes within each files, just the overall paths/names of ones that did. (Also not really interested here in solutions based on file modification timestamps; I want to really know at the lower level even if some file's metadata didn't get touched for some reason.)

Source Link
natevw
natevw
  • 293
  • 1
  • 3
  • 9

Can I use an APFS snapshot to generate a list of all files changed since an earlier point?

I just clean installed macOS on a new VM and now need to set it up with various preferences and stuff to customize it. What I am curious about is where all those customizations actually get stored.

I think most are probably in Preferences plists but others might be in other system databases or third party app configuration files. Regardless, really I'm just wanting to see a list of files changed between "Point A" and some later "Point B" and this is probably interesting in a lot of other cases too.

Is there a way I can use the command line to:

  1. Trigger an APFS snapshot of my "Macintosh HD" boot disk — starting point "A"
  2. …then do whatever using the computer…
  3. Then trigger a new snapshot and/or at least compare now at time "B" what files have been modified since the snapshot at "A"?

Don't need a GUI or anything, just commands that would mark the snapshot and echo out a list of files that changed later. And I don't really need any sort of diff showing the changes within each files, just the overall paths/names of ones that did.