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I have several time machine backups. I want to get all the photos out of them and upload them to Google Photos. I believe the "Backup and Sync from Google" application will do this for me, once I find (and perhaps temporarily copy) my photos.

Although I can browse my Time Machine backups in the Finder, there are, again, lots of them, and the drives being backed up changed over time. I don't see scanning through them manually being viable if there is any automatic option possible.

I'm running macOS 11.1. I can't change into the backup directory or list things from the terminal, even as root:

/V/MacBack ❯❯❯ cd Backups.backupdb/
cd: Permission denied: 'Backups.backupdb/'
/V/MacBack ❯❯❯ ls Backups.backupdb/                                                                                                  Thu 11 Mar 07:10:07 2021
ls: : Operation not permitted

When I try to see all the settings applied to the folder, I get:

/V/MacBack ❯❯❯ ls -lfde@O Backups.backupdb/
drwxr-xr-x+ 7 clinton  staff  - 238 17 Mar  2019 Backups.backupdb//
 0: group:everyone deny add_file,delete,add_subdirectory,delete_child,writeattr,writeextattr,chown

I would be happy to strip the permissions (and restore them when I'm done, if possible). Supposedly chmod -a# 0 should work, but it doesn't:

/V/MacBack ❯❯❯ sudo chmod -a# 0 Backups.backupdb/
chmod: Failed to set ACL on file 'Backups.backupdb/': Operation not permitted

This answer seems close. I also tried to give myself access this way, after confirming my user id:

/V/MacBack ❯❯❯ sudo chmod +a# "clinton allow writeattr,writeextattr,chown" Backups.backupdb/ 
usage:  chmod [-fhv] [-R [-H | -L | -P]] [-a | +a | =a  [i][# [ n]]] mode|entry file ...
    chmod [-fhv] [-R [-H | -L | -P]] [-E | -C | -N | -i | -I] file ...

Perhaps I'm barking up the wrong tree. Maybe there's a utility that does this. I can see that I could restore files, but I'd run out of space quickly (unless I could only restore photos?), and it'd take forever.

How can I find all the photos in my multitude of backups (or, even all the photos in a single TimeMachine backup?)

IconDaemon
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Clinton Blackmore
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    What do you mean by "all the photos", can't you just use the Time Machine UI to restore the most recent version of your Photo library and upload that to Google after the restore? – nohillside Mar 11 '21 at 14:26
  • By all the photos, I mean all .jpg (or possibly .jpeg) files on the drive. They aren't necessarily in photo libraries, and, even if they were, I don't know which dates to go back to to find them, between when everything was backed up, and the computer was wiped, and a new set of backups started. – Clinton Blackmore Mar 11 '21 at 15:21

1 Answers1

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Aha! Here's the answer: https://superuser.com/a/1591350/2684

On Big Sur (macOS 11), you need to go to System Preferences and enable Full Disk Access for the Terminal (or, iTerm, in this case). Then, magically, a command like:

chmod "-a#" 0 Backups.backupdb/

works just fine.

I also learned that chmod -N will removal all ACLs from a file, via https://superuser.com/a/299912/2684 .

Clinton Blackmore
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