[X-Unix] using rsync to automatically backup home directories (was RE: rsync help)

[Craig Hoffman]

This is strange...  It looks like the files are being moved.  But  
there invisible.  If I use Transmit and choose the network drive and  
select "Show Invisible Files", they appear.

For a test I dragged a file over using the Finder and it appears.   
Somehow using rsync is making them invisible.

I'm using this:
rsync -av /Volumes/Twilight/Music/ /Volumes/teakettle/Music

Any ideas?

The drive is a LaCle Ethernet Big Disk, formated XFS

_______________________
Craig Hoffman
iChat / AIM: m0untaind0g
_______________________




On Jan 24, 2008, at 10:39 AM, Eric F Crist wrote:

> Since a few people showed interest, I'll spam the list with my  
> solution for incremental backups of the mac in my life.
>
> The major problem I had was that most of the macs in my life are  
> laptops.  That means two primary things:
> 1) They go to sleep when I do. ;)
> 2) They roam off-network.
>
> Since I already have a server network setup at home (secure- 
> computing.net), I simply made use of my current backup server's hard  
> disk space, and rsync.
>
> The first step was to create an easy backup script, that was  
> clickable for a user to manually backup their files.  *side note,  
> when I say user, I mean my beloved fiance ;)*
>
> This script contained a single line:
> rsync -av --delete ~/ --exclude="Caches" --exclude="*.cdr" -- 
> exclude="*.iso" --exclude=".Trash" --exclude=".Spotlight-V100" -- 
> exclude=".Trashes" backup-server:/usr/backups/`hostname`
>
> All the user needed to do was click on the script and it would  
> backup any changes to their files.
>
> At this point, her hard drive crashed.  Easy enough, we had  
> backups.  Well, the original backups from my testing.  6 months  
> before.  Damn.
>
> So, we had the need to automate.  I tried iCal, but if the laptop  
> was asleep for 3 days, it would try to backup three times, and we  
> got an iCal alert for each day.  My solution was to use the oft- 
> unused (on Macs) cron daemon.  I added the following entry to her  
> crontab:
>
> 00	*	*	*	*	/Users/<username>/backup.command
>
> This, coupled with the backup.command file I'll paste below, results  
> in her laptop backing itself up every hour, incrementally.  This  
> works great, as she's often (2-3 times a day, on average) using her  
> laptop as the hour rolls over.  Since she mostly surfs the web and  
> checks email, the backup actually takes about 60 seconds to 2 minutes.
>
> As I have found, this script works great on my laptop as well, even  
> though my system roams with me to Starbucks, the office, and  
> elsewhere.  That being said, my backups take about 1 minute to 5  
> minutes.  The big thing when remote from the backup server is to  
> have the --exclude="Caches".  These, especially Safari, can get  
> rather large.
>
> On my system, I've coupled GeekTool (http://projects.tynsoe.org/en/geektool/ 
> ) to tail the log file from my backups, so I can keep track of them  
> throughout the day.  Without going further into GeekTool, here's the  
> script I've got for that:
> <CONSOLE> echo "System Backup Log:"; tail -n 20 /Users/ecrist/.logs/ 
> `date "+%m"`/`date "+%d-%H"`.log ; echo "\nUpdated at `date`."
>
> So, here's my minimal backup.command script:
>
> #!/bin/sh
> month=`date "+%m"`
> file=`date "+%d-%H"`
> # dont run if it's already running!
> if [ -e "/tmp/back.pid" ]
> then
> echo "Backups already running as PID `cat /tmp/back.pid`.   
> Aborting..."
> else
> echo $$ > /tmp/back.pid
> ## ALL ONE LINE BETWEEN ##
> rsync -av --delete ~/ --exclude="Caches" --exclude="*.cdr" -- 
> exclude="*.iso" --exclude=".Trash" --exclude=".Spotlight-V100" -- 
> exclude=".Trashes" backup-server:/usr/backups/`hostname` > /Users/ 
> ecrist/.logs/$month/$file.log 2>&1
> ## ALL ONE LINE BETWEEN ^^ ##
> rm /tmp/back.pid
> fi
> echo "Finished at `date`" >> /Users/ecrist/.logs/$month/$file.log
>
>
> One final note.  My backup server has a user account for everyone  
> that's going to be backing up their system.  Their backup directory  
> has 0700 permissions for security's sake.  Since we're backing up  
> laptops mostly, the `hostname` part of the rsync command works  
> fine.  This could be clarified for multiuser systems by running the  
> cron job as root on the Macs, or simply creating a new rsync command  
> such as:
>
> rsync -av --delete ~/ <excludes> backup-server:/usr/backups/ 
> `hostname`/`whoami`
>
> Just make sure in this case that their user belongs to a group that  
> has rwx access to the `hostname` directory.
>
> Glad I could contribute something!  If this is confusing or you need  
> help, please don't hesitate to ask!
> -----
> Eric F Crist
> Secure Computing Networks
>
>
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