General account of xattrs, their storage, types, tools for working with them, and common problems.
HFS+
Even a lean and simple High Sierra system has many xattrs of many types, and plenty of files still have ‘resource forks’. Plus details of some important xattrs used by Apple’s system files.
They’re almost invisible, but surprisingly widely used. xattrs come in very many different types, and contain valuable information. Here are results from analysing most of a Sierra startup volume.
For now, Time Machine can’t back up to an APFS volume. There are many problems with backing up APFS to HFS+, though. Time Machine needs to be revised.
Troubled at times, we have used Disk Utility through thick and thin. Now it has changed to support APFS, with some weird behaviour.
You may still have plenty of space on your backup volume, but if it has millions of files and hard links from years of backups, it will be very slow. Here’s how to fix that.
The High Sierra upgrade did not go well for many users. Here are some of the reasons why macOS 10.13 is currently a lemon.
A brief guide to support in High Sierra and its installer, for different types of drive, and for APFS.
Explains how Time Machine knows what to back up, why it performs deep event scans, and how that system is different from HFS+ journaling.
A simple and concise example of a page from the documentation which we, as a community, could readily produce for macOS. Fancy giving us a hand?
The Eclectic Light Company 