Backing up Mac OS X hidden files or working with FileVault

[Mike_Jackson]

Sorry for the desperate tone…  We have a competitive situation (Comvault) that comes down to specific Mac OS X support in NBU

We have pretty much ruled out direct support for FileVault (Mac Encryption) and are now hoping to address the basic question "Can NBU backup hidden files in the following Mac OSs

OS versions 

10.4 – about 80

10.5 – about 200

10.6 – about 140

[Todd_D__Woodwar · Accepted solution]

Mac OS X 10.3:

• Supported in NetBackup 6.0 to 6.5.
• Support was dropped in NetBackup 7.0

Mac OS X 10.4:

• Supported in NetBackup 6.0 to 6.5
• Support was dropped in NetBackup 7.0

Mac OS X 10.5:

• Supported in NetBackup 6.5.2 to 7.0

Mac OS X 10.6:

• Supported in NetBackup 6.5.4 to 7.0

The question of whether NetBackup on Mac OS X can backup hidden files, depends on what you mean by hidden files. There are a lot of hidden files in Mac OS X. A great majority of those files are hidden from the Finder in the GUI. However, the Mac OS X NetBackup client isn't a GUI application. It is a UNIX program that runs in the background as root and can fully access all files on the mounted storage being backed up, hidden or not.

FileVault encrypts specific user directories (as a disk image), not entire storage drives. When a user sets up FileVault and they login, their user directory is mounted as a disk image, and decrypted with a key derived from the user's login password. FileVault's aren't hidden, they're encrypted on a user-by-user basis.

A disk image appears as one file.

So the question really is, can NetBackup go into a FileVault backup individual files and restore individual files within a FileVault? This is something we could have to test, but I'm fairly confident the answer would be no. NetBackup can backup and restore the entire FileVault disk image, but cannot access or view the files within a FileVault.