Tweaking4All.com - applepi-baker Archives

We have just released ApplePi-Baker v2.2.0.
This version was released with macOS Catalina in mind.

The first release of macOS Catalina (10.15) came with some serious problems for applications like ApplePi-Baker and the likes (Etcher etc).
The “Full Disk Access” security setting seemed to have a bug, preventing reliable access to external disks.

After Apple released its first update (10.15.1) this bug seems to be resolved in a way.
Accessing external disks still comes with a few challenges, so when a disk is being selected, ApplePi-Baker will verify  if “Full Disk Access” works.
If not, a notification and explanation will be shown how to enable “Full Disk Access” for ApplePi-Baker.

Additionally, a small bug (leaving a temp file behind after a backup or restore in ~/tmp) has been resolved.
If partition resizing was used when restoring an image, the resized IMG will still remain, saving you the time to restore the same image again.

For downloads and comments:
Please go to the original article: ApplePi-Baker v2 – Backup & Restore SD cards, USB drives, etc. or look at the Downloads page.

ApplePi-Baker is build specifically for MacOS, to make backups or restore images (IMG).
Initially intended for Raspberry Pi users, this tool can be used for plenty other applications as well.
For example flashing LibreElec or disk for ODroid, making backups of photography SD cards, etc.
All this is done in the same format as used by the command line tool “dd”.

ApplePi-Baker supports a nice list of compression formats.
For making backups: 7Zip, tbz, tgz, tlz, txz and Zip.
For doing restores: 7Zip, bzip, gzip, ISO, Jar, lzip, rar, tar, tbz, tgz, tlz, txz,xz and Zip.

Besides supporting compression, ApplePi-Baker can also resize a Linux partition to make it fit on your target disk (depending on the amount of used data in the partition of course) or minimize your backup to what is really used on the disk.
Note: Resizing only works for regular MBR disks with a standard partition table.

After some major changes in ApplePi-Baker 2.1.x, I’ve released version 2.1.6 today which fixes some minor issues.

To list a few:

• Access Violation error when showing advanced view when there were no supported drives available
• During resize (shrink or expand partition), ApplePi-Baker couldn’t find the temporary file on occasion (thanks Loe and Wolfgang!)
• ODroid resize issue resolved (thanks Götz!)
• Improved stability for partition resize (shrink/expand)

At this moment one bug remains open, and that is when there is not enough disk space on your Mac to do a backup and/or resize.

Download the latest version of ApplePi-Baker from the original article: ApplePi-Baker v2 – Backup & Restore SD cards, USB drives, etc.

If you run into any issues, bug, or errors using ApplePi-Baker, then please report these with the original article as well.

I’m very excited to announce that ApplePi-Baker now supports shrinking and expanding of Ext2, Ext3 or Ext4 Linux partitions on a Mac!!
This is something I wasn’t able to do before and is commonly seen as a challenge on a Mac (since MacOS does not support these Linux File Systems).

This update can only shrink or expand Linux partitions on a MBR partitioned disks (very common format used for the Raspberry Pi).

Keep in mind: I’ve done quite a lot of successful tests, but by lack of beta testers, I’m still marking it as experimental.

During backup, if the option has been enabled, ApplePi-Baker will locate a Linux partition and if found shrink it to it’s minimal size, and update the IMG file and it’s partition table (the source will not be affected). This will result in a much more compact IMG file, and offers a restore to a device of a different capacity.

On Restore, this same option will expand that Linux partition to the maximum available size on the target disk.
Obviously, the target device needs to be able to accommodate at least the minimum size of the IMG file.

Since quite a bit needs to be done (find partition, check file system integrity, resize partition, etc), this will naturally slow down the backup and restore process, but it will help restoring to different sized target disks/SD-card.

Not only that, version 2.1.0 is much faster than 2.0.0 – I’ve seen speed increases up to 300% during backup.

You can find the latest version of ApplePi-Baker in the original article (please place comments there).

ApplePi-Baker has become well known amongst Raspberry Pi users, with a Mac running macOS, to backup and restore SD-cards. Users do not just use ApplePi-Baker for this purpose anymore – I have seen users use it for backup and restore of pretty much anything not Raspberry Pi related.

Late 2013, I created ApplePi-Baker for my own use – I just got tired of looking up the proper command-line statements.
This way, ApplePi-Baker became my personal frontend for command-line tools like “dd“, “diskutil“, “mount” etc.

Over time, the use of command-line tools came with some problems; thanks Apple for changing command-line tool output with every new version of macOS. Besides that, having to enter your “sudo” password each time was a pain as well, and came with the occasional problems for a small group of users, so that had to go as well.

About 2 years ago I decided to rebuild ApplePi-Baker from scratch, no longer using any of the command-line tools. This came with quite a few challenges, especially since Apple increased security for macOS, not allowing me to do certain things straight from my program (see also SMJobBless: Elevated Privileges in Lazarus Pascal). I’m not even mentioning the drama when it comes to supporting the different compression formats, signing applications, and 64-bit requirements.

Almost 2 years later, I proudly present ApplePi-Baker v2. – special thanks to Jeff and Mark for testing!

UPDATE: ApplePi-Baker now also support shrinking and expanding of Linux partitions!

ApplePi-Baker has been updated again – this time fixing a small bug for macOS Sierra users (beta 2 tested).

The disk/SD card size was not displaying. This has been fixed in 1.9.4.

Please report any issues you might run into when running MacOS Sierra, at the original ApplePi-Baker article where you can also download the latest version.

Special thanks to Barry for reporting .

ApplePi-Baker has been updated again.

This version addresses a minor issue with MacOS Sierra (beta 2) causing an index out of bound error.
Please report any issues you might run into when running MacOS Sierra, at the original ApplePi-Baker article where you can also download the latest version.

Special thanks to Manuel for testing and sending me the log file .

ApplePi-Baker has been updated again.

This version addresses a minor issue with MacOS Sierra (beta) concerning proper device detection.
Please report any issues you might run into when running MacOS Sierra, at the original ApplePi-Baker article where you can also download the latest version.

ApplePi-Baker has been updated again.

This version addresses a potential issue with restoring large SD cards (sync kernel buffers), and compression when making backups of larger SD Cards.

The mechanism to “eject” and SD card has internally been revamped as well. Additional, the option “Auto Eject after Restore” has been implemented.

To show that ApplePi-Baker is still working, a small indicator has been placed in the upper right corner of the window.
Additionally the status refreshrate has been increased.

Visit the ApplePi-Baker article to download the latest version and to leave comments.

ApplePi-Baker has been updated again.

This version addresses a bug with the detection of SD cards, and the reduction of the file size of the application (about 30% smaller than previous versions).

Visit the ApplePi-Baker article to download the latest version and to leave comments.

ApplePi-Baker, the application I developed for Mac OS X user that like to work with the Raspberry Pi, is now available in version 1.80.

This is a major update on the inner workings of ApplePi-Baker, addressing potential issues with the Sudo password.
Tests by users has shown that the new method for Sudo password verification has been very stable, and updating is therefor recommended for all users.

Just a reminder for Retina users; if the window of ApplePi-Baker looks a little fuzzy, please execute the following in TerminalL

defaults write com.tweaking4all.PiBaker AppleMagnifiedMode -bool no

As usual: Download it from the original article where you can also leave feedback.

ApplePi-Baker, the application I developed for Mac OS X user that like to work with the Raspberry Pi, is now available in version 1.7.3. This version (hopefully) addresses the “stuck after entering sudo password” problem.

Additionally, the option to make a backup of a read-only drive has been resolved as well and Retina mode can now be enabled. Hopefully this happens automatically, but in case it doesn’t, please execute the following from a Terminal window:

defaults write com.tweaking4all.PiBaker AppleMagnifiedMode -bool no

Thanks to Slash (Nuno) for his prompt help testing the new version.
As usual: Download it from the original article where you can also leave feedback.

ApplePi-Baker, the application I developed for Mac OS X user that like to work with the Raspberry Pi, is now available in version 1.7, compatible with (at least) Mac OS X 10.11 beta 3 (El Capitan).

With ApplePi-Baker, you can write an IMG file to an SD-Card, prepare an SD-Card for NOOBS use, and make a backup of an SD-Card.

This new version adds compatibility for El Capitan (Mac OS X 10.11), support for identifying SD Cards that have been inserted in READ-ONLY mode, some improved device information, and an improved Sudo password entry dialog.

Unfortunately, doing compression while reading/writing prevents me from using the authentication dialog provided by Apple, and I had to resort to SUDO usage. On all my Mac’s this did not present a problem, but you, the user, need to be part of the Admin user group for this to work. I’m unsure if this is done by default or not. If users run into issues with this, please report it in the comments (here on the ApplePi-Baker article).

For this reason v1.5.1 will remain available in the downloads – for those users that run into a problem.

See the ApplePi-Baker article or the Downloads Page for download and details.
Also: many many thanks to the people that did a generous donation to support my work, it’s highly appreciated!

Enjoy 

ApplePi-Baker, the application I developed for Mac OS X user that like to work with the Raspberry Pi, is now available in version 1.6.
With ApplePi-Baker, you can write an IMG file to an SD-Card, prepare an SD-Card for NOOBS use, and make a backup of an SD-Card.

This new version adds on the fly reading (restore) and writing (backup) of compressed IMG files.
Supported compression formats are ZIP, 7ZIP and GZIP.

Additionally, I’ve implemented an “Abort” button, so you can abort your restore or backup process when needed.

Unfortunately, doing compression while reading/writing prevents me from using the authentication dialog provided by Apple, and I had to resort to SUDO usage. On all my Mac’s this did not present a problem, but you, the user, need to be part of the Admin user group for this to work. I’m unsure if this is done by default or not. If users run into issues with this, please report it in the comments (here on the ApplePi-Baker article).

For this reason v1.5.1 will remain available in the downloads – for those users that run into a problem.

See the ApplePi-Baker article or the Downloads Page for download and details.
Also: many many thanks to the people that did a generous donation to support my work, it’s highly appreciated!

Enjoy  …

ApplePi-Baker, the application I developed for Mac OS X user that like to work with the Raspberry Pi, is now available in version 1.5.
With ApplePi-Baker, you can write an IMG file to an SD-Card, prepare an SD-Card for NOOBS use, and make a backup of an SD-Card.

This new release allows ZIP compression of the IMG file after creating a backup.

This release will now also recognize USB sticks or SD-Cards that are not formatted in a format recognized by your Mac – for example ext3 or ext4, and will be able to make a backup of that as well.

See the ApplePi-Baker article or the Downloads Page for download and details. Enjoy  …

ApplePi-Baker, the application I developed for Mac OS X user that like to work with the Raspberry Pi, is now available in version 1.4.
With ApplePi-Baker, you can write an IMG file to an SD-Card, prepare an SD-Card for NOOBS use, and make a backup of an SD-Card.

The changes involves fixing a minore bug (proper sizing of an SD-Card vs IMG file) and a minor speed improvement. If you haven’t run into any issue, then this update might not be needed for your purposes.

See the ApplePi-Baker article or the Downloads Page for download and details.