Time Machine won't back up APFS backed by ZVOL?

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Time Machine won't back up APFS backed by ZVOL?

Postby blinkenjim » Sun Dec 15, 2019 5:44 pm

Just playing around with OpenZFS on Catalina. OpenZFS 1.9.3.1, macOS 10.15.2.

Created a zpool on a single external 1 TB disk:

sudo zpool create -m none tank2 disk12

Created a zvol on that:

sudo zfs create -V 880g tank2/foobar

Used macOS Disk Utility to format the zvol foobar with APFS unencrypted. It shows up on the desktop and works just fine, but...

Time machine is excluding this volume (in Time Machine Preferences -> Option), and I cannot un-exclude it. It's gray like TM is saying nuh-uh ain't gonna touch this. Is this a limitation of Time Machine or ZFS? Is there any workaround to enable Time Machine to back up this volume?

Also tried with an HFS+ volume... same problem.
blinkenjim
 
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Re: Time Machine won't back up APFS backed by ZVOL?

Postby Jimbo » Wed Dec 25, 2019 3:06 am

AFAIK, Time Machine doesn’t work with APFS and will work best with GUID Partition Table, HFS+, Journaled, Case-Insensitive.

I know what you are trying to do can work; I use it myself. There is probably just some thing small that is wrong.

Cheers!
James
Jimbo
 
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Re: Time Machine won't back up APFS backed by ZVOL?

Postby Jimbo » Thu Jan 02, 2020 5:08 am

... and a lot of my post above is garbage.

You’re talking about local backups? I’m using network backups to HFS+ on a ZVOL. The local backup to the same HFS+ on ZVOL actually uses a sparse bundle.

I need to go back and have another play...

Actually thinking about this, I was playing with a 1Tb drive zpool that had two different ZVOLS set up for local TM backups (testing different encryption and compression setups). That was working with GPT, HFS+ on ZVOLs.

So, yeah should work.
Jimbo
 
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Re: Time Machine won't back up APFS backed by ZVOL?

Postby Jimbo » Fri Jan 17, 2020 7:16 pm

Ok, so FWIW, Apple Support - Types of disks you can use with Time Machine on Mac

You definitely cannot use an APFS formatted disk as a Time Machine target disk - HFS+ all the way. Also note what it says about MBR.

Cheers!
Jimbo
 
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