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rsyncx
Authored by: pmccann on May 17, '04 09:38:36PM

This is just the sort of job that something like rsyncx will excel at. If you use the latest version of rsyncx you can easily set up a rotating set of backups (rolling through, say, the seven days of the week), with the following noteworthy feature: the common files among the rolling backups are hard links. That is, the data is only stored once, but you still have seven different "live" copies of your home directory (or your whole drive if you so desire). So it's like an incremental in terms of the storage required, but to the user it's exactly as if there were seven independent copies available.

*Very, very nice*. In addition, rsyncx (and psync or ditto for that matter) will preserve resource forks that might be crucial in some legacy apps/documents, and additional HFS+-specific file info that will be lost through the use of tar and cp.

The only downside to rsyncx is the relative paucity of the documentation: there is, however, a really nice video presentation on macosxlabs.org that shows how to use the various assistants and tools. It really deserves to be a whole lot better known than it seems to be. (Hmmm, maybe a good candidate for a hint or a "Pick of the Week"!)



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rsyncx
Authored by: roncross@cox.net on May 18, '04 02:56:25AM

The first priority in backing up files is about preserving critical information first. After that, you want to preserve file permission, ownership, and modification date. Unix script are not very good at doing this for HFS+ file system and older Mac application files.

It seems that for unix configuration, system and dot files, this script maybe the way to go. But for HFS+ file system and some older Mac application files backup.app from apple is the way to go.

Apple has been aware of this problem for a long time now and are looking for solutions to fix it.

---
rlc



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rsyncx
Authored by: pmccann on May 18, '04 11:26:48PM

Umm, I'm not sure how this relates to the parent comment (of mine): rsyncx is *perfectly* aware of all the hfs+ stuff, and permissions, and resource forks etc etc, and is orders of magnitude more flexible than the backup software apple distributes.

Paul



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rsyncx
Authored by: sjk on May 19, '04 01:04:05AM

Anyone know whether or not rsyncx preserves Finder info? AFAIK ditto is the only utility that comes with OS X that does.



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