Why does hdiutil fail on symlinks when creaing an image of a Time Machine backup?

Solution 1:

I ran into this same issue trying the same thing on Mojave. It appears that ACLs on symlinks just aren't supported when working within the confines of disk images. I did come up with this workaround though:

1. Create a blank sparse image that's big enough to hold the backup.

2. ditto the backup directory into the mounted sparse image. It will make the same complaint about operation not supported on those symlinks but it will still copy it and will treat that error as just a warning and continue.

3. When complete, unmount the sparse image and use Disk Utility to convert it into a compressed one.