How to restore a folder via tmutil in sequoia
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Latest macOS Sequoia. tmutil version 4.0.0 (built Apr 22 2025)
Because I am remote at the moment, I would like to use the command line
tmutil
to restore one folder (with many subfolders) on my computer to the state that it had 24 hours ago. since its 2025-06-10, this means 2025-06-09.
I first want to restore the folder (/Users/me/Sync) to /tmp/ then inspect it, and if it is what I want, replace the current bad folder Sync with the good backup folder Sync. Started out well:
$ sudo bash
# tmutil listlocalsnapshots /
Snapshots for disk /:
com.apple.TimeMachine.2025-05-31-122127.local
com.apple.TimeMachine.2025-06-09-042552.local
com.apple.TimeMachine.2025-06-09-052552.local
com.apple.TimeMachine.2025-06-09-062552.local
com.apple.TimeMachine.2025-06-09-072552.local
good start. Using /bin/df
, I can infer that there are a whole lot of volumes, none with 2025-06-09, though, so I hope TM built the 2025-06-09's on top of the earlier one somehow. It is a bit odd that the 2025-05-31 one has a different time stamp in the df
version, one 122127 in the list, but 122147 .
# df | grep 2025-0
...
com.apple.TimeMachine.2025-05-31-122147.backup@/dev/disk7s2 3907025072 752036512 3089037832 20% 1067260 15445189160 0% /Volumes/.timemachine/708C5462-0DBA-483C-9AED-590D75ADC0A0/2025-05-31-122147.backup
...
ok, let's try to restore:
# mkdir /tmp/SSS
# tmutil restore "/Volumes/com.apple.TimeMachine.localsnapshots/Backups.backupdb/puck2025/2025-06-09-20255.local/Data/Users/me/Sync" "/tmp/SSS/"
/Volumes/com.apple.TimeMachine.localsnapshots/Backups.backupdb/puck2025/2025-06-09-20255.local/Data/Users/ivo/Sync: The operation couldn’t be completed. No such file or directory (error 2)
Restore failed
The error is pretty nondescript. There is more than enough space on the volume itself, and I just created the destination, so this is probably not it. It's probably my description of the source.
so, I then tried a number of variations of this, with and without quotes, with the 2025-05-31-122127 and the oddly slightly different 2025-05-31-122147 , but always the same error.
is there a more up-to-date guide to tmutil with working examples, or a way to elicit valid source listings, as in ls?
pointers appreciated.
Asked by TheGeckomeister
(1 rep)
Jun 10, 2025, 11:05 AM
Last activity: Jul 11, 2025, 12:44 AM
Last activity: Jul 11, 2025, 12:44 AM