Clonezilla / Support Requests / #98 APFS is cloned as RAW

Geert-Jan Uijtdewilligen - 2017-09-29

Last edit: Geert-Jan Uijtdewilligen 2017-09-30

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Geert-Jan Uijtdewilligen - 2017-09-29

Please find attached image of a 1.8 GB USB pendrive formatted as APFS and containing 10.13 High Sierra.jpg archived with 7zip 15.12 on MS-Win-Pro-64bit. I succesfully restored the image.

2017-09-29-18-img.7z

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Steven Shiau - 2017-09-30

assigned_to: Thomas
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Steven Shiau - 2017-09-30

Thanks for asking this. AFAIK there is no any open source program supporting to mount APFS on GNU/Linux ATM. We do not know when we can start working on that. If such a program exists, then Thomas Tsai, the main developer of Partclone could start to investigate and see if it's possible to support it in Partclone. If you know such open source software/free software exists, let us know. Thanks.

Steven

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Geert-Jan Uijtdewilligen - 2017-10-01

I can't mount the APFS filesystem on linux yet.
But i did some reverse engineering on the 7zipped image:

0x000027 Disk size: multiply int32 by16-byte

0x7BE2C0 volume name 1

0x7E12C0 volume name 4

0x876000 start of file VolumeConfiguration.plist

0xD52000 start of file 10.13 High Sierra.jpg

0x20C9A6F eof 10.13 High Sierra.jpg

0x20CBA6F end of last block 10.13 High Sierra.jpg

0x20CC000 looks like a fat table

0x20D061C 64-bit filepointer 0x8000 0000 0000 520D to the jpg file, used in macOS file info
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Steven Shiau - 2017-10-11

Thanks. I believe we need more for that. If you know how to code, maybe you can refer to:
https://github.com/Thomas-Tsai/partclone
and try to have a patch for that.

Steven

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Ecoflac - 2018-03-21

Is there any disadvantage by cloning APFS as raw?
I want to backup several MacPros and want this done by Clonezilla ;)

Best,
Moritz

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Steven Shiau - 2018-03-25

Partclone has not supported APFS yet, so that's why it's processed in dd mode.
Thomas Tsai is very busy recently and I hope maybe he could find some time to implememnt APFS support for Partclone in a few months.

Steven

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benny j - 2018-09-17

Steven Shiau: any updates on this yet? its almost been a year since this request was made. really looking forward to apfs support. :)

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Steven Shiau - 2018-09-30

Thanks for asking. Yes, it's been almost a year. I wish we have more time to focus on this. About half a year ago, Thomas Tsai did try to implement that, and it seems very promising that APFS can be supported. I will ask Thomas Tsai again about this. Thanks.

Steven

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benny j - 2018-10-29

Thanks Steven, much appreciated!

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Morgan - 2018-11-09

Hi,

when it's support to APFS ??

Morgan

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Steven Shiau - 2018-11-19

Thanks for asking this. We are just very busy these months, but Thomas has some progress about Partclone supporting APFS. He will spend some more time about this when our other projects are finished. I can not guarantee when this will be finished, but we will do our best. Please be patient. Thanks.

Steven

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EDOX - 2019-01-29

Hello
Have you any news about eh APFS support ?

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Rodolph Georges - 2019-01-29

For many years I have been using clonezilla to keep backups of my systems, mainly windows and OSXs. And never failed me to date. Its an excellent peice of software. However, I have been patiently waiting for more than a year to see APFS supported. Currently I have stopped upgrading my mac OSs and managed to remain with High Sierra using the older file system. I am no allowing any of my machines to upgrade to Mojave simply because APFS is forced and CloneZilla still does not suport it. Hence I would like to first thank you so much for creating this peice of excellence, and second, hope that you'd continue (a bit faster) it development to support APFS. I'm almost sure there are a lot out there feeling the same.

Thanks... Rodolph

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Steven Shiau - 2019-02-01

Partclone 3.13 was released today, and it has experimental APFS support. However, there are some known issues. Hence please be patient.

Steven

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EDOX - 2019-02-04

it is possible to test partclone 3.13 ? what is the issue ?

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Steven Shiau - 2019-02-06

@EDOX,
If you really want to test it, you can:
1. Download testing Clonezilla live 2.6.1-6, then boot it on the machine you want to test. Then enter command line prompt.
2. Run "sudo ocs-live-netcfg" to configure network
3. sudo apt-get update
4. sudo apt-get install partclone (This should upgrade your Partclone to 0.3.13)
5. Edit /etc/drbl/drbl-ocs.conf, append "apfs" in partclone_support_fs. Make it like:
partclone_support_fs="hfs+ hfsplus reiser4 reiserfs xfs jfs ext2 ext3 ext4 ext4dev fat12 fat16 fat32 vfat ntfs ufs btrfs exfat minix vmfs3 vmfs5 f2fs nilfs2 dd apfs"
6. Run "sudo clonezilla" to start Clonezilla wizard.
Partclone 0.3.13 now only works for the test environment we have, the file system image is a smaller one. However, when we tested it on MacBook pro or Macmini, for APFS it failed with error message like:
root@debian:~# partclone.apfs -z 10485760 -d2 -L /var/log/partclone.log
-c -s /dev/sda2 -O /home/partimag/macbookpro-10.13-apfs/sda2.apfs-ptcl-img.
Partclone v0.3.13 http://partclone.org
Starting to clone device (/dev/sda2) to image
(/home/partimag/macbookpro-10.13-apfs/sda2.apfs-ptcl-img.)
Reading Super Block
Calculating bitmap... Please wait...
clear block 12974543460976514235 out of boundary(77932904)

After the 9-day holidays here, we will continue to fix this issue. Of course, patches are welcome.

Steven

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oberberger - 2019-03-28

Hi Steve.

Are there any news about APFS support in Clonezilla? I have a couple of MacBook waiting for an update to HighSierra or Mojave.

Kind Regards

Michel

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Geert-Jan Uijtdewilligen - 2019-03-28

@oberberger there is no exact solution possible because APFS is only partly documented by reverse engineering. An APFS partition is cloned as raw and restorable as raw and experimental support for APFS does exist in the newest release. This means Apple (company registration number: unknown) is to be blamed for any bugs.

Last edit: Geert-Jan Uijtdewilligen 2019-03-28

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EDOX - 2019-04-05

@Steven Shiau
Have you any news about 100% working partclone with APFS ?

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Steven Shiau - 2019-05-02

Sorry, no. Thomas Tsai told me that the upstream program (apfs-fuse) he adopted from has changed a lot. He has to find some time to re-implement that, but we are so busy these days...
Hope he can squeeze more free time to do that.

Steven

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Bryan Cooper - 2019-09-07

I have a new Mac and I'd like to make a backup with Clonezilla. However, the dd mode is not efficient. When will this be possible with Clonezilla?
From this discussion, I can see people have been waiting this for a long time. Personally I would like to donate some money, .like $300, to have the APFS support. Is that possible?

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Steven Shiau - 2019-09-22

Thanks Bryan. Probablly yes... However, the problem is, where is the guy who is capable to do this?

Steven

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Dmitry Victorov - 2020-03-26

Hi! Maybe this reference will help to integrate APFS support? Apple File System (APFS) It looks like well reserached.

Last edit: Dmitry Victorov 2020-03-26

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APFS is cloned as RAW

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#98 APFS is cloned as RAW

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