I don't understand your complaint.
Clearly ... despite my preemptive attempts
You go "back in time", highlight the desired file, then select
"Restore" down in the bottom corner.
The file gets restored to its exact original location.
Argh...what developer puts "Restore" in the out-of-the-way bottom right corner like that?
I had done the obvious Mac thing... I highlighted the file and right clicked.
A number of options were shown, including "Restore ..." (which *won't* let you restore back to /usr if that's
where it came from), but the one blazingly obvious option that **** well should be there isn't: "Restore".
Sigh. I'll add it to my laundry list of things that need to be fixed when I get to be CTO of Apple
So, thanks for pointing that out for me ... now, to the majority of your post ...
There's a communication problem ... I'm writing from the viewpoint of a *very* experienced
developer of backup products ... and you're answering from an end-user's viewpoint.
You say:
Finder normally hides folders like /usr.
(which I pointed out) and:
You can easily turn on the ability to see invisible files/folders with a Terminal command, or just use a menubar extra like
DesktopUtility. You can then see those files/folders and recover them.
Note for those who follow the above link and try DesktopUtility: it isn't obvious, but once you've started DesktopUtility, it won't show up as a program like, say, TextEdit or Disk Utility ... it shows up (if at all) as a small gear icon on the menu bar. Clicking the gear gets you a small menu, of which one choice is "Show Invisible Files". It seems to show up when only when certain apps have the focus ... I didn't experiment long enough to determine which/why. (E.g., active for TextEdit, not active for Safari).
Aside from the above ... there are a number of ways to make files
"invisible" on the Mac. I'm not sure which mechanisms DesktopUtility
(or "inVisibles" utility) can handle ... but it certainly isn't all of them, and doesn't handle things like /usr, as a quick test would have shown.
Note that /usr (and many similar files) are not *invisible* in the normal OS sense. They simply have some attribute that triggers a misplaced sense of over-protectiveness in Finder, and it decides to not display them.
I'm curious: what "easy" Terminal command would make /usr visible in TM?
Does any backup software do that? [accept a list of files to restore]
Heck yes! Good backup software does! For decades, tar, cpio, backup, backup, and a number of other Unix / Linux backup programs have had that ability, as well as every backup program I've seen on mainframes.
Simply put: it's such an obvious requirement for a backup system, I was shocked to not find it in TimeMachine or QRecall.
Note: pointing to something widespread, like, say, Windows Backup or TM, and saying "it doesn't have this capability" doesn't constitute a valid counter-argument. Note that I said "good backup software", not "popular backup software" or "widespread backup software"
It's dead obvious. It'll prompt you if the file exists already,
giving you options to "Keep Original", Keep Both", or "Replace".
For multiple files, just put a check in the box to "Apply to All" and call it a day.
I'd forgotten that TM's "Restore" did that ... some other Mac backup products don't.
Thanks for the reminder!
There's an exclusion list in the preferences. What else is there? What's so secret about this?
Sigh ... not even close to what I was referring to. The exclusion list in TM's preferences is used to exclude files to backup ... not to decide which files to restore.
Here's a scenario:
(Terminal)
rm *txt*
then you say "oops..."
Now, try to use TM to restore those files ... and as a bonus, let's say you have a file containing a list of the files you just deleted. With TM, The TM "search" facility searches *FAR* too much ... it has no means of saying "files with 'txt' in the current directory. No...entering txt into the search field (and clicking on "titles", not "content"), might get you thousands of files from your entire account ... not just a few dozen from your cwd.
BTW, the easiest, although non-obvious to most users, method would probably be: click on "kind" to sort by file "kind", highlight all the files except for the directories (which will be at the start or end, depending upon the number of clicks on "kind"), click on "Restore" (bottom right corner of screen). Then, when asked about restoring over existing files, check "apply to all" and select "Keep Original". Note: this approach will, unfortunately, also bring in other files you might have deleted in the current directory.
Wow...a lot harder than: tar xvf mybackup -T list_of_files
Enter the Time Machine. Select a version of the file you want to purge; right-click and select "Delete all Backups of…"
Sigh. I know whereof I speak. Try this search with google:
delete timemachine backups
Although a small percent of the hits are for the 'easy' problem you refer to, the majority deal with the fact that TimeMachine is pernicious. It goes out of its way to use obscure and/or undocumented Mac OS APIs to make many of its backup files undeleteable. Indeed, most users who try to delete a TM backup directory usually end up having to "reformat" the entire backup drive. QRecall keeps its backup data in files that mere mortals can delete. (Yeah, that means I can delete my backups ... so what, they're *mine*, and I *should* be able to delete them! If I want to screw up my backups, then let me ... that's why the (original) Darwin is important
Well of course. This is a feature of the OS. It's not open source software. Look… if Time Machine doesn't meet your needs, then I'm not going to knock you for it. Use what works for you. But most of your complaints are grossly invalid.
So, we see that (a) most of my complaints are completely valid, (b) I never implied that I thought TM or some other products wouldn't meet the needs of most users (indeed, I recommend QRecall), and ( c) I'm asking for suggestions about *other* backup software I could use. I probably should have used the phrase "backup products" to indicate my willingness to pay for good software.
BTW, here's the Finder information for /usr, as returned by getxattr () for the sole xattr it has (com.apple.FinderInfo):
com.apple.FinderInfo : usr
0000 : 0000 0000 0000 0000 4000 0000 0000 0000 ........@.......
0010 : 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 ................
Stan