TimeMachine woes: can’t migrate, can’t restore

[rcfa]

I have a bunch of valid TimeMachine backups on a drive. The backups are from a Mac OS X 10.6.3 server install that used to run on a VMWare Fusion virtualized machine. That VM was corrupted due to a host crash, which resulted in an unreadable virtual disk image. And now the problems start, going on a week and no end in sight.

Problem 1)
Trashing the corrupted virtual disk image, creating a new one, booting from the Mac OS X Server install DVD and trying to restore the TimeMachine backup to this new virtual drive fails because TimeMachine says that this backup was created on a machine with different hardware. That’s a bunch of crap, because the VM configuration wasn’t changed. It’s not even a new VM, just a new virtual disk image.
Needless to say, trying to restore that backup onto a physical computer fails with the same message. What’s the point here? I can yank out a pre-installed Mac OS X Server disk and stick it into virtually any model Mac and things will just work. So then why these counter productive restrictions restoring backups?

Problem 2)
Installing Mac OS X Server onto a new machine (virtual or physical) and migrating data from the TimeMachine backup fails, because during “upgrading services”, some sort of error occurs, and Mac OS X Server says it can’t migrate and must be rebooted. What comes to life after the reboot is a half-assed non-functional configuration.

So now all my data is held hostage by a TimeMachine backup, and I can’t properly restore it.
Currently my only option is to use a tool like Back-in-Time to bypass the artificial restrictions and restore the latest snapshot to a physical drive and then restore the server configuration and databases from what’s stored in /.ServerBackup.

Unfortunately /usr/sbin/ServerBackup also doesn’t seem to do its work, or it’s woefully inadequately documented. (see my post elsewhere in these forums)

If anyone knows how to trick/force TimeMachine into restoring without checking for “compatible hardware”, that would be a great step forward. Anyone who knows how to restore the various configuration databases etc. from what’s in /.ServerBackup in the various TimeMachine backup snapshots would also help a lot.

Backup is kind of useless if the restore is restrictive to the point of being impossible.

[Clinton]

I have not tried this (on a server or client), and I’m only guessing, but:

1) What happens if you use the Migration Assistant and tell it to migrate data from the time machine backup?

2) It appears to me that all the files in your time machine backup are readily accessible and can be copied. I would try installing an OS with a version not exceeding that that you were running, and, while accessing the hard drive while the (virtual) computer is turned off, copy all files from the `Latest` subdirectory in your backup on top or you newly-setup OS. (As I understand it, this will copy everything that is the latest and greatest from your backup, by [url=”http://arstechnica.com/apple/reviews/2007/10/mac-os-x-10-5.ars/14#time-machine-internals”%5Dusing symlinks and hard links[/url] I believe you could copy it any way you like — from a root Finder, using ditto, rsync, or cp -rpV. [ [url=”http://www.bombich.com/mactips/image.html”%5DThis reference[/url], aimed at cloning entire disks, may be helpful. ]

Good luck.

[rcfa]

[QUOTE][u]Quote by: Clinton[/u][p]I have not tried this (on a server or client), and I’m only guessing, but:

1) What happens if you use the Migration Assistant and tell it to migrate data from the time machine backup?
[/p][/QUOTE]

[b]In Mac OS X Server you can only use Migration Assistant during install time, not after; and during install it fails as I described in my original post.
[/b]
[QUOTE][u]Quote by: Clinton[/u][p]
2) It appears to me that all the files in your time machine backup are readily accessible and can be copied. I would try installing an OS with a version not exceeding that that you were running, and, while accessing the hard drive while the (virtual) computer is turned off, copy all files from the `Latest` subdirectory in your backup on top or you newly-setup OS. (As I understand it, this will copy everything that is the latest and greatest from your backup, by [url=”http://arstechnica.com/apple/reviews/2007/10/mac-os-x-10-5.ars/14#time-machine-internals”%5Dusing symlinks and hard links[/url] I believe you could copy it any way you like — from a root Finder, using ditto, rsync, or cp -rpV. [ [url=”http://www.bombich.com/mactips/image.html”%5DThis reference[/url], aimed at cloning entire disks, may be helpful. ]
[/p][/QUOTE]

[b]I ended up having to install from scratch, then transferring the data into a subfolder with a buggy but still very useful tool called Back-in-Time.app
After that I could selectively move various sections into place while booted into single user mode, and then reboot. Took a lot of time and trial and error to make sure things migrate properly. PITA. Certainly this wasn’t in the “just works” category ;)[/b]

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