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  • Time Machine isn't an image backup, using it to restore a system requires (re-)installation of macOS first. Assuming you want to mimic that behavior as well: Do you know which directories/directory trees you need to backup? Commented Jan 1, 2018 at 20:17
  • Usually, you just need to store /home, /etc and /var (excluding /var/run). Contents in /usr can be easily reinstalled with your package manager. Anything that's a tmpfs or similar doesn't need to get anyway, you don't need /dev, /sys, /tmp or /proc. Commented Jan 1, 2018 at 20:52
  • @patrix, @zeta - thanks. I once re-created my entire MacOS partition from a TM backup, but that was by first booting the Mac from its recovery partition, which undoubtedly did a lot of things I was unaware of, including a minimal OS reinstall. Ideally, a Linux solution would be that simple. I've followed a number of recommendations for tweaking performance, so I really don't know the extent to which I've modified the system, but having a definitive list (ie. /home, /etc, and so on) is better than nothing. Commented Jan 1, 2018 at 21:13