Ok, to clone an APFS volume make sure you are using the full disk and not a slice of the disk.
it's easy to do /dev/disk5s1
instead of /dev/disk5
Not sure if that's what happened in your case, but that is one hurdle I ran into.
Now for HFS+ volumes, you can clone the slices fine because all the data is on 1 volume.
Try to make sure the source and destination disks are the same format. Both HFS+ or Both APFS. Reformatting a disk can sometimes be problematic. I tried to show the Devices and Erase it from the top and that sometimes can still fail. Then I usually try other formats until it gets down to one portion / disk / container before I start the clone to the destination.
Another trick is to clone to a dmg if possible. If the dmg opens, it will usually clone.
If you have a lot of time on your hands, you can use verify. But once you make a disk, you have to scan it for the checksum and then leave of the -noverify flag. I don't use this because it's often faster to clone it again.
For CloneToolX, I am working on a few Schemas to start off with and I plan to add a special Data to Data Schema that will clone those Data Volumes directly making it a simple Migration from one Catalina version to another. For now I am getting the Image2Disk, Disk2Image and Disk2Disk working. The progress may just be a Text view of the terminal commands but I will later use Puppet Strings to have a live progress bar implemented. I also plan on rolling out Over the Air installs from preselected disk images like a clean install and pre-patched installs for select machines.
The ran into the Bless problem and when it happens, there is usually something missing. I have had better luck with hdiutil and asr, but I've also done about 50 back-up and restores with it. I can write the commands out pretty quickly. And at work I am migrating 20 Macs and I'm doing it all in from the Restore Partitions with the same tools.
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On the interview front, I have interviewed with 2 Sillicon Valley companies. I actually was not impressed with them. And felt some of my own work was already better than what their team of 25 Swift Engineers were producing. So I was kinda glad I failed their coding test. And what I got me was I did the test in 10 minutes. The Engineer did not ask for anything else. It was a board game and he only wanted to see a few things with mock data. I wasn't happy with the test and the results, so I took a few hours and wrote the entire logic to the board game and even did a War Games style play-by-play simulation and I did let them know I added to the source and still used their crappy Linux IDE and even fixed areas that needed Linux functions instead of Std Swift and used C code to do the conditions and I don't think they even bothered to look at the final piece.
This next interview is with a very popular Automated Testing site and my day job used them for awhile. I gave them some input about Katalon Studio that we were using for out Automated testing and we were doing Automated Browser testing through this companies' tools. And we chatted back and forth. Then recently they approached me about doing a Tutorial for them and I asked my company if they would allow it using what we did in our testing and they declined and at the time I did not have anything I wanted to test, and basically turned them down. Then a few weeks later, they contacted me about a Dev. Advocate job dealing with customers, giving TedTalks and blogging about their products and I was like man that's not what I was looking for but I said, I'll do it. And the guy was just fishing around to see if I knew anybody and I took the opportunity and said yes. So I will be talking directly to their GM about the position. I have done all kinds of Automation in my carrier. I did automation for two fortune 500 companies and pretty excited for a chance at this one. I think it is gonna be a lot of exposure. The company is world wide and in Silicon Valley. And I think it will be a great to be and I think the possibilities will be endless from there.
Before that I was doing a lot of iOS interviews and I still get about 3 contacts a day for jobs. I am putting them all on the back burner until I have my source code up on Github and have at least 3-5 apps in the App Store to compare and at the very least have Test Flight examples of each one. I am gonna shoot for working examples, but I do have one done in AppleScript Objective-C and may just have the source for the because it's one of my only objective-C apps I have laying around. Eventhing else is in Swift 1-5.
I done radio players, video games (breakout game and a side scrolling shoot em up), AR 3D Breakout Game, A Fidget Spinner, Color Picker and Wheel, A Darth Vader sound board based on his Chest plate, CloneTool and CloneToolX, StarPlayr for Mac and now StarPlayrX for iOS. StarPlayrX is also 100% accessible for blind users. A HLS Streaming Video App for Mac. POC for my day job. A Hearing Aid app that takes standard hands free headsets and helps the hearing impaired. I know Apple had a similar feature but mine is more flexible and it can also be cranked up for ease dropping and you can select which Mic to use.
? In truth, I would love to see one of them machines again. Computing has come a long, long way.
