You'll definitely want to run your backup script using the system crontab (unless you're completely sure that everything in the directories is owned by you; indeed, I'm not even sure that that's good enough).

One big thing: don't use "~" in your crontabs: always thrown in the full path to the directory to which you're referring. In this case --with cron running as root-- you're probably backing up a directory that doesn't exist: hence the difficulty. (root's home dir is, ummm, /var/root).

By the way, CCC uses psync for its synchy bits and pieces now.

Cheers,
Paul (avoiding writing lectures: ugh, here comes first semester, like a rush...)

Psync is available with Fink. Install the 'macosx-file-pm' package (Collection of modules to manipulate files on MacOS X)

There is no function in Fink commands to allow you beforehand to check what's inside the 'macosx-file-pm' package. So, if you search for psync with 'fink' it will not find it. The only way I know to do this, is to make a 'google' search for 'psync fink' . That will bring some results.

Thanks for all the info! As you might have guessed there was a couple of minor problems. I removed all the "~" (-thanks to pmccann), but the biggest problem was that I needed to add the entire path for psync (/usr/local/bin/psync) when writing the command. I'm not sure which paths contrab uses but obviously this wasn't one of them. I am also planning to add some ideas from the script that bluehz posted (from Mike Bombich's script-thanks to both).

One note I would make is that I didn't use Carbon Copy Cloner because it states that it only works localy. Psync has the ability to back up over AFP (it saves an additional file that contains all the original permissions, some of which I assume must change when saving to another machine. When you retrieve the backup psync reads the additional saved file and returns the original permisions) I don't think ditto has this ability (maybe CCC does now but the current documention makes me think not). I hope this helps others-I definately learned a lot.

Here is some general info I picked up over ther course of my investigation. Hope its useful.

utility - preserves permissions, preserves resource fork & creator type, corrects permissions with AFP

cp - yes, no, no
CpMac - no, yes, no
ditto - yes, yes, no
rsync - yes, no, ?
RsyncX - yes, yes, ? - slower than ditto
psync - yes, yes, yes
pax - yes, no, ?
hsfpax - yes, yes, ? - many options, complicated (to me)
tar - yes, no, ? - I believe there is a MacOSX version of tar but I don't remmember the name


GUI interfaces

Carbon Copy Cloner - uses ditto
PsyncX - uses psync
Sync - not sure what it uses - yes, yes, ? - nice archiving ability

(please let me know if you see something wrong)


Thanks again to everybody!

Richard

Thanks!

Here are some other options summarized:

http://chemistry.ucsc.edu/~wgscott/x..._and_fink.html

I have been experimenting with psync lately and overall I am very happy with it. I do have one question. Some of the stuff I was synching up were VISE installers from HP. After the synch the destination system doesn't recognize them at all. It seems like the forks are stripped, or something like that. Does anyone know why this happens with these types of files?

Thanks,

saltydog4791

I tried using psync for long time and ran into various problem. Mainly issues with errors during the backup. The output was never enough to detail what was going wrong and the way I look at it - any errors druing a backup means you have an incomplete, unreliable backup. I have also seen the issue with the applications getting borked - even though psync states it is completely OS X safe. I therefore gave up on psync. Of all the stuff I have tried - psync, rsync, hfstar, hfspax, ditto - only ditto suits my needs for a errorless, reliable backup. This is unfortunate too since ditto really has no fine grain control over it - its an all or nothing prospect.

I don't know for sure how stable psync is now verses earlier versions, but in my limtied experience I've had no problems. I recently move my iTunes folders (over 9 GBs) using psync without error. Of course this was mostly mp3s but still I thought I would mention my limited experience.

Richard

Hello,

I keep my backups with psync, I recently tested it and it all looked fine. Don't get any errors either. You might want to give it a second chance.


v

I second vonleigh's suggestion because I've been using psync for nearly two years now and have had no problems with it that weren't user created. It's very solid and my only backup method on OS X. And I've tested all the other popular utilities for backup, finding the closest second to be CCC.

I can't use ditto because of its problems with locked files. hfspax is good but too easy to make a mistake with. hfstar isn't solid enough to be used reliably.

The fact that you can make incremental backups with psync to a mirror of your drive is why I think it's the easiest and most reliable method.

Till now, my experience with "psync" has been quite good. No complaints here.

RsyncX is freeware and it's definitely faster than ditto when it comes to large volumes of data where only a small part is changed between each back-up. I use it in a cronjob (root's crontab) for frequent back-ups of data that I would really, really hate to loose. Has remote and exclude features, and copies resource forks. There's also a GUI if you are so inclined. I use carbon copy cloner for system cloning prior to updates (well, that was the idea...) and has used psync to update the clone from time to time without problems.
Appears that the tool to be chosen depends on the job to be done, if you'll forgive the platitude.
I think there's room for diversity here.

My psync always completes - but it always has errors... usually cryptic...

If you're getting the same errors on the same backup scheme using psync then you need to wipe the target clean and start that backup again from scratch. In my experience, most of those errors are from orphaned sym links because of files that have been deleted by the user. Use the -v switch to have verbose output that you can look through to make certain the backup is clean. If not, then it will give you the line number of the error and you can check that out. It's not really so cryptic.