This hint will put your Entourage 2004 database on a sparse bundle, which Time Machine knows how to use for a true incremental backup. I am using this for Entourage, but it will probably work OK with Paralells' or VMware's virtual machines, too -- I just don't know about the speed issue.
Sorry, much of this is kind of advanced, but if you don't understand what you are doing here, you are probably better off not using this method. If something goes wrong after an update, you will have a hard time figuring out what happened, and getting to your email. This is not a hint for those with only a basic knowledge of the system...
Basically this is how I made a Sparse Bundle mount to an odd mount point on system boot. I am going to use my Entourage installation as an example, and I'm not going to explain every step in the ultimate low-level of detail, so watch what you are doing.
$ cd ~/Documents/Microsoft\ User\ Data/
$ du -hs Office\ 2004\ Identities
2.5G Main Identity/
My Entourage folder is 2.5GB, and when I create my Sparse Bundle, I want it to have enough room to grow. So I used Disk Utility to make an image:
$ lsof | grep "Microsoft User Data"
You may see your own applications in the list, but that is not a big deal. Rename your Office 2004 Identities folder:
$ cd ~/Documents/Microsoft\ User\ Data/
$ mv Office\ 2004\ Identities Office\ 2004\ Identities.BACKUP
$ mkdir Office\ 2004\ Identities
$ ls -dl Office\ 2004\ Identities*
Be sure that the file owner, group, and permissions are the same. $ cd
$ mkdir -p unix/scripts
$ cd unix/scripts
$ touch mountentourage
$ chmod 750 mountentourage
$ nano mountentourage
This should be the contents of the mountentourage file:
#!/bin/sh
/usr/bin/hdiutil attach "/Users/USER/Entourage.sparsebundle" \
-mountpoint "/Users/USER/Documents/Microsoft User Data/Office 2004 Identities" \
-owners on -notremovable -nobrowse $ ./mountentourage
/dev/disk2 Apple_partition_scheme
/dev/disk2s1 Apple_partition_map
/dev/disk2s2 Apple_HFS
/Users/USER/Documents/Microsoft User Data/Office 2004 Identities
And df should now show your mapping:
$ df
Filesystem 512-blocks Used Available Capacity Mounted on
/dev/disk1s9 320144448 150973320 168659128 48% /
devfs 233 233 0 100% /dev
fdesc 2 2 0 100% /dev
/dev/disk0s3 624880224 290918680 333961544 47% /Volumes/Backup
map -hosts 0 0 0 100% /net
map auto_home 0 0 0 100% /home
/dev/disk2s2 20971520 72480 20899040 1% /Users/USER/Documents/Microsoft User Data/Office 2004 Identities $ hdiutil detach disk2
$ df
// The drive should no longer be mounted
$ cd /Library/LaunchDaemons
$ sudo nano user.USER.mountentourage.plist
This should be the contents of the user.USER.mountentourage.plist file:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple Computer//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
<key>Label</key>
<string>user.USER.mountentourage</string>
<key>ProgramArguments</key>
<array>
<string>/Users/USER/unix/scripts/mountentourage</string>
</array>
<key>RunAtLoad</key>
<true/>
</dict>
</plist> $ ls -l
-rw-r--r-- 1 root wheel 398 Jun 4 16:11 user.USER.mountentourage.plist
$ sudo launchctl load user.USER.mountentourage.plist
$ df
If all went well, you will now see your entourage directory mounted. Verify that after a system restart, df shows you your mount. $ cd ~/Documents/Microsoft\ User\ Data/Office\ 2004\ Identities
$ touch testfile
$ ls
testfile
$ cd ..
$ df | grep Microsoft
$ hdiutil detach disk2
$ cd Office\ 2004\ Identities
$ ls
// The file testfile should not be here
$ cd ..
$ sudo launchctl unload /Library/LaunchDaemons/user.USER.mountentourage.plist
// (because it was loaded at startup)
$ sudo launchctl load /Library/LaunchDaemons/user.USER.mountentourage.plist
$ df
$ cd Office\ 2004\ Identities
$ ls
testfile
$ rm testfile
$ cd ..
$ cp -prv Office\ 2004\ Identities.BACKUP/* Office\ 2004\ Identities/ $ mv Office\ 2004\ Identities.BACKUP /Volumes/Backup/Mac OS X Hints
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