Copy data from a Time Machine volume mounted on a Linux box.

copy-from-time-machine.sh

#!/bin/bash
# 
# Copy data from a Time Machine volume mounted on a Linux box.
#
# Usage: copy-from-time-machine.sh <source> <target>
#
# source: the source directory inside a time machine backup
# target: the target directory in which to copy the reconstructed
#         directory trees. Created if it does not exists.
#
# Details:
#
# Time machine implements directory hard links by creating an
# empty file in place of the directory and storing in its
# "number of hard links" metadata attribute a pointer to a
# real directory in "/.HFS Private directory data^M" named
# "dir_$number".
#
# This script reconstructs a plain directory tree from this
# really ugly apple hack. Tested on a 650GB backup from OSX
# 10.6 mounted on a Linux 3.2.0-38 Ubuntu box. YMMV.
#
# MIT License.
# 
#  - vjt@openssl.it
#

self="$0"
source="$1"
target="$2"
hfsd="$3"

unset LANG

set -e

if [ -z "$source" -o -z "$target" ]; then
  echo "Usage: $self <source> <target>"
  exit -1
fi

if [ ! -d "$target" ]; then
  mkdir -p "$target"
fi

if [ -z "$hfsd" ]; then
  # Look for HFS Private directory data
  sysname="$(echo -ne '.HFS+ Private Directory Data\r')"
  hfsd=$source
  while [ "$hfsd" != "/" -a ! -d "$hfsd/$sysname" ]; do
    hfsd=`dirname "$hfsd"`;
  done

  if [ "$hfsd" = '/' ]; then
    echo "HFS Private Directory Data not found in $source, is it an HFS filesystem?"
    exit -2
  else
    echo "HFS Private Directory Data found in '$hfsd'"
    hfsd="$hfsd/$sysname"
  fi
fi

read hlnum type <<<$(stat -c '%h %F' "$source")
if [ "$type" = 'regular empty file' -a -d "$hfsd/dir_$hlnum" ]; then
    source="$hfsd/dir_$hlnum"
    echo "using source from HFS Private Directory Data"
fi

find "$source" -mindepth 1 -maxdepth 1 -and -not -name . -and -not -name .. | while read entry; do
  dest="$target/`basename "$entry"`"
  read hlnum type <<<$(stat -c '%h %F' "$entry")

  case $type in
    'regular file'|'symbolic link')
      cp -van "$entry" "$dest"
      ;;

    'directory')
      # Recurse
      $self "$entry" "$dest" "$hfsd"
      ;;

    'regular empty file')
      if [ -d "$hfsd/dir_$hlnum" ]; then
        # Recurse
        $self "$hfsd/dir_$hlnum" "$dest" "$hfsd"
      else
        echo "Skipping empty file $entry"
      fi
      ;;
  esac

done

Fixed language bug by unsetting language (script stops without doing anything when foreign language locale is set)

New fix to allow selecting a Time Machine hard linked folder as source.

I just want to say that this really saved my data. Thank you very much.

I tried this on Ubuntu 14.10 with the following command:

sudo sh copy-from-time-machine.sh /media/marenato/Seagate\ Expansion\ Drive/ ~/Desktop/ /media/marenato/Seagate\ Expansion\ Drive/.HFS+\ Private\ Directory\ Data^M/

And this is what I got:
copy-from-time-machine.sh: 64: copy-from-time-machine.sh: Syntax error: redirection unexpected

any ideas on what might be happening? Thanks again for the script!

Thanks again for this well-modified script! The sudo ./script /media/source/subdirectory /my/local/target subdirectory targeting works briliantly and allows one to restore a particular directory, directories or set of files without having to slam your local storage with all of the 'extra' Mac TimeMachine data that you won't need post-migration of data. Great work, @magicoli

I searched but I don't have the "HFS+ Private Directory Data" anywhere on my time-machine disk. Namely, sudo find /Volume/timemach -iname 'HFS+*' returns nothing. I'm not on Linux, but I'm on OSX (10.11.1), maybe that changes the game.

It works! Thanks a lot!
This is how I made it work

$ chmod +x copy-from-time-machine.sh
$ sudo ./copy-from-time-machine.sh <target path> <source path>

It works!

just do what the commenter above said.

For example, to take out only the latest of the home folder, assuming things are mounted under media:

$ sudo ./copy-from-time-machine.sh /media/<current-username>/<time-machine-drive-name>/Backups.backupdb/<old-mac-system-name>/Latest/<old-mac-internal-hd-name>/Users/<old-mac-user-name> <target...>

Managed to get a good deal of files off the device, thank you for the script!

Thank you very much!!!!

Does not need to limit itself to Time machine, can be used to copy out from any HFS+ drive.
Some changes are needed to process also directories with leading or trailing space:

*** copy-from-time-machine.sh.orig	2017-09-16 23:21:54.456987359 +0200
--- copy-from-time-machine.sh	2017-09-16 23:33:01.449132594 +0200
***************
*** 60,67 ****
--- 60,69 ----
    fi
  fi
  
+ IFS=''
  find "$source" -mindepth 1 -maxdepth 1 -and -not -name . -and -not -name .. | while read entry; do
    dest="$target/`basename "$entry"`"
+   IFS=' '
    read hlnum type <<<$(stat -c '%h %F' "$entry")
  
    case $type in
***************
*** 84,87 ****
--- 86,90 ----
        ;;
    esac
  
+   IFS=''
  done
`

Wow, thank you! This just saved my life ahah. As my Ubuntu is in French, the original script didn't work properly