Running Time Mechine Backup from Recovery HD My MacBook seems to be getting kernel panics when booting up. I've decided to create a backup, reinstall OS X, and restore from the backup. But I can't create a Time Machine backup because I unable to boot into the main partition.

My question is: how do I run Time Machine from the Recovery HD, you can only restore. I've also tried tmutil, but the terminal does not want to run anything from the other partition.
The Recovery HD doesn't have the ability to make a backup other than using Disk Utility or the terminal app to copy files.

If you have a spare HD available or don't want to risk reinstalling the OS (which isn't designed to delete any user files - but could if there is directory damage) I would say go buy a USB external drive and reformat it as GUID/Mac and use Disk Utility to "restore" the boot drive to the external drive. Then you can run the OS installer from Recovery or erase and install.


Reinstall Mac OS X Mountain Lion before selling a Mac
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204904