Hi Richard, all,

I'm curious as to what you are using as a regular backup solution for your servers, and how often you use it?

Thanks,
David

Sorry for the late reply.

I don't realy have a proper backup solution as such. Time machine will be a welcome addition to the OS X abilities.

What I do is very crude, I every now and then make a backup.

If I change something drastic on the machine I create an image on a backup harddisk.

The backups I make are as follows:
I make a tar file of the following directories on the server and burn them on DVD
/Library/Apache2/htdocs (all websites)
/usr/local/virtual/ (all mailboxes)
/etc (configuration)
and do a mysqldump on all databases

I still need to write a script that does that automatically but time is a thing that passes very fast and before you know it, it's gone...

Thanks for the reply.

I'm interested in having an automatic (that is, scheduled), bootable, late-night incremental backup which doesn't require a login. Isn't everyone? ;)

What I've come up with is Mike Bombich's Carbon Copy Cloner: http://www.bombich.com/software/ccc.html. I tried it out a few years ago, but at the time I was having trouble using it with a FireWire drive. No problems now.

CCC uses psync and a few other tricks, I believe. It is donationware (uncrippled shareware), free for students like myself.

There are a couple of hints necessary for scheduling to work with my system (10.4.7): after making a schedule, one needs to run

sudo perl -p -i -e 's/\000//g' /etc/ccc.*

to take care of a "null character" problem. See: http://forums.bombich.com/viewtopic.php?t=6255.

Furthermore, in order to keep my firewire drive mounted when I'm not logged in, issue the following command:

sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/autodiskmount AutomountDisksWithoutUserLogin -bool true

See http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20031103155828117 for more details.

Excellent tip David.

Just wondering about the setup, any idea what the perl command does ?

Is the backup incremental or does it just overwrite the current image. I would like an incremental or a safecopy of the last image. Because what do you do if the backup fails for some reason when backing up. You won't have a copy anymore because the original is overwriting the previous backup !

The tip on keeping firewire disk mounted is good as well. Hadn't thought of that one yet.

I found this quote on http://search.cpan.org/dist/MacOSX-File/bin/psync:

psync does an update copy. It compares source directory and target directory at first, then erases items that are nonexistent on source directory if specified and finally copies everything on source directory. Items with the same modification date and (data fork) size remain untouched, saving time on operation.

There is, however, a note above this:

As of Mac OS X v10.4 (Tiger) rsync(1) does support resorce fork with -E option. You should also consider using it.

Given our interest in self-compiling, etc., it might be worth looking into this more basic option. I'll probably check it out myself in the next week or so.

Edit: as to your question on the perl command, I'm not sure, but Bombich says it is a solution to the problem described in the link. ;)

A little update: I've been reading a bit more about the various backup solutions ([1] and [2] are very informative), and it looks like the solution with the least problems currently is the program SuperDuper! [3]. It isn't free, but it just so happens I already own a license ;). Apparently one can schedule non-login backups by enabling the root account and setting them up from there. I'll test it out and let you know how it goes.

My previous posts concerning CCC, psync, rsync, etc. are pretty dramatically changed by the (rather interesting) reading in [1] and [2]. Check it out.


[1] http://blog.plasticsfuture.org/2006/03/05/the-state-of-backup-and-cloning-tools-under-mac-os-x/
[2] http://blog.plasticsfuture.org/2006/04/23/mac-backup-software-harmful/
[3] http://www.shirt-pocket.com/SuperDuper/SuperDuperDescription.html

It's all in place, and very satisfying. Until we find out more about "Time Machine", this is my backup solution. It makes a complete & accurate backup of my startup disk, bootable (everything runs quite well from this---the mail server, etc.), scheduled to run with no account logged in, synchronizing only the new files to save time. Downside for some is the cost of SuperDuper!, around $30 US, but if you read the articles above you may be like me and find it to be quite well worth it, and Shirt-Pocket has been extremely responsive to my questions.

3 things to do:

1) Enable the root account. [If you're interested enough in working with Richard's set-up, the warnings about this step for everyday users should be clear.] Easiest way is to open Netinfo Manager in /Applications/Utilities/, under the Security menu first Authenticate, then Enable Root User.

2) In Terminal, enter

sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/autodiskmount AutomountDisksWithoutUserLogin -bool true

in order to keep the external HD mounted when no one is logged in.

3) Log in as root, and schedule the SuperDuper! backup of your choice. There is plenty of documentation in the program itself, read it carefully.

4) Log out. I guess that's 4 things. ;)

David, thanks for the write-up of your solution. I recently read the above documents and was surprised by the findings. Although I'm not sure what harms done if you loose some metadata. It's all about the content of the files and the ability to restore to a previous setup.

I clone disks using CCC and have no problem booting from them and being able to use it properly without any problem. I'm not sure about the seriousness of the issues mentioned.

Just letting you all know that I've changed backup solutions:
http://switch.richard5.net/2006/12/21/my-new-backup-solution-using-amazon-s3/