Schedule a .mac backup at a precise time

Sep 06, '02 08:25:32AM

Contributed by: barrysharp

The relatively new .mac Backup program can be scheduled to run during any of the 12 two-hour windows given in the Schedule dialog window. The time that is chosen within the two hour window is random. Any time you choose to reschedule, a new random time will result. This means you have no clue as to when precisely the Backup will run. According to a response I had in an Apple .mac forum, this is designed specifically this way to spread the workload on the Apple iDisk server machine(s).

You can take control however and specify *precisely* when the Backup will execute. To do this, one has to edit the crontab entry that Backup creates. The crontab entry can be edited via use of the Terminal.app UNIX command crontab -e'. For example, to schedule the Backup to run precisely at 4am then the crontab entry would look like the following:

0 4 * * * "/Applications/Backup.app/Contents/MacOS/Backup"
-backupNow >/tmp/backuplog.0005949 2>&1
NOTE: Shown on two lines for a narrower dispay width; enter as one line.

The "/tmp/backuplog.0005949" can be anything you choose. This is the command for performing a Backup-to-iDisk. I leave it to others to discover how this same operation can be done for a Backup-to-CD (CD-R or CD-RW) or Backup-to-DVD (DVD-R).

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