This reference covers fsck_apfs, diskutil information, diskutil apfs, conversion of HFS+ to APFS, mount_apfs, and newfs_apfs.
diskutil
What’s in APFS, and what are its tools? How to interpret the version number, and what do we know has changed with different versions? How compatible are they?
Repairing permissions has a long history in Mac OS X. The permissions concerned have changed over the years, and it’s no longer what it once was.
Here’s an APFS (Encrypted) volume that isn’t encrypted, and an unencrypted volume with FileVault active. Something must be wrong.
Should you run First Aid on every volume, then each container? And why can it return status 65? How can you work around that?
Once, you could run diskutil to ‘fix’ broken permissions in your Home folder, then it was replaced by repairHomePermissions in Recovery. Apple no longer documents this, but it’s still there. Should you use it?
Apple could have chosen to make APFS open source or to document it fully, to help third parties develop maintenance tools. It chose not to, but Disk Utility still doesn’t work as it should.
APFS backup disks offer different possibilities for adding volumes for your own use, alongside the backup volume. How do you decide what’s best?
In macOS 12.4, it’s impossible to run First Aid on any container or APFS volume on a disk with a Time Machine APFS backup volume, except in Recovery.
We used to repair permissions of the system until SIP. After a short break, we often repaired them again, this time on preference files. Why did Apple cancel that? Should we still try it for fixing problems?