Carbon Copy Cloner has a version of rsync that has been designed to preserve the key information.[/quote]

Actually, I believe the version of rsync that ships with MacOS 10.4 is resfork compatible. There’s also rsyncX, which is, if I remember right, free, unlike CarbonCopyCloner.

Carbon Copy Cloner has a version of rsync that has been designed to preserve the key information.

It’s not for the faint of heart, but anybody that has read this far down is probably able to handle it. :) Enjoy!

I first created a WebDAV directory named “backups” on one of my (Dreamhost) domains. I can easily connect to that directory, which now behaves as a virtual disc, from the Finder. Once the disc is mounted I can configure Apple’s Backup app to do the rest; works like a charm. I guess other backup applications also could be used to do this.

Which makes me think it could also be possible to get some of the build in .mac features working, since that also uses the WebDAV protocol.

If you use Duplicity to store your data on a remote server, are you able to access the data remotely, via a web front-end that decrypts the data for you?

Thanks,

DSL

The giving nature of internet peoples never ceases to amaze me. I’ll drop Adam an email. I wonder if Jesus were a geek would he be A Debian User?

If I get this up and running I’ll post the how to myself. It really would be the perfect set-up for all mac users.

Sorta-Deep Theology, Will Ferrell, Tina Fey, C.S. Lewis, Mute Math, Church Politics, Art Criticism (talk to June), Summer Movies, Why We Hate CCM, Exposed Oily Man-Junk, NPR, Hot Christian Sex, Parenting (a result of Hot Christian Sex), Weight Loss, Weight Gain, Depression, Fighting Out of Depression, Dallas Willard, New Jobs, Bono Worship, Justin Timberlake Worship, Good Coffee, or why Knocked Up is the best movie of the summer…

….are totally still cool.

Just an FYI.

Hope that helps…

You’re script looks absolutely perfect for my needs. Unfortunately for me I’m a designer and only 1/3 of a geek (I understand your script but I’m not equipped to get it up and running on my system). Is there any chance you (or any of you other kind souls) might consider doing a tutorial on:

1. Installing Dublicity
2. Getting A Dubian User’s script up and running (include explanations/examples of what a passphrase is, what GPG keys are, how to format the backup.list etc.)
3. How to set it up as a cron with Anacron.

Would be forever grateful – even willing to donate $ to the cause!

Thanks!

$ sudo port install duplicity

;-)

Ok, ok, using MacPorts was a cheap way to get around the hard work, but there are plenty of good references for how to setup/install MacPorts so if you reference one of those, you could get duplicity set up and installed easily on a mac. I’m off to go play with it on my DH account and see how well it works for backup. Thanks for the pointer to duplicity, DebianUser, the security angle never really made me all that happy, though I suppose I could also use macfuse, sshfs, and a mounted encrypted image on top of that to achieve the same effect with more work.

True, but then I’d be stuck trying to port Logic and Pro Tools over to Debian. Open Source isn’t quite ready for primetime yet.

It’s too bad that rdiff-backup and duplicity aren’t available easily on OS X. They’re both just Python apps; I don’t see why GCC should be involved, unless Python doesn’t come with OS X. Are you sure they aren’t in Fink or something like that?

Anyway, this problem would be moot if you used Debian… ;)

Stored in the clear, sent? Not so much. Rsync uses ssh and that is encrypted. If someone hacks into your Dreamhost account or someone from dreamhost decides to check out your stuff, that is another story. However, I doubt they have time to poke around your data. They are too busy crashing their servers. :-) I’ll have to look into your solution though. It sounds more secure, and in my opinion, more secure is definitely better. You solution may beyond the scope of this blog entry, but for people who aren’t afraid of GCC, it could be a nice tool.

Cheers,
Tom

I don’t know about you, but I think any tutorial that includes the phrase “now simply invoke GCC and compile the source code into your usr/bin/ folder with the following switches” has ceased to be an entry level tutorial.

To be honest, I think this whole conversation is a little pedestrian for those of us who know about all the crons and stuff.

Corey, Grammy? Who’s with me?

The problem with that is your data is sent and stored in the clear. If you don’t mind Dreamhost–and whoever can read your network traffic–being able to read all your personal backup data, that’s fine. (Not that they’d care, but it’s the principle.) So the solution to that is Duplicity, which uses rdiff-backup, which uses rsync. Duplicity compresses and encrypts your data before transmitting it, so the data never leaves your computer in the clear. It remains encrypted on the server, so no one without your GPG key–or your passphrase if you choose symmetric encryption–can read your data.

I’ve been using Duplicity to backup to my Dreamhost account for over a year. It works wonderfully. I made a small shell script to back up a list of directories, in order, so the most important data gets backed up first. I rate-limited the SSH connection and niced down the process, so it can run in the background without affecting my connection or my local responsiveness. You can find the script here:

http://alphapapa.net/debian/generic-backup-with-duplicity-to-dreamhost.sh

By the way, it’d probably be better to use cron (or anacron or fcron) to schedule your backups. Anacron would be good, because then you don’t have to have the computer on at a certain time every day for the backups to run.

That’s correct – just run the steps in the Dreamhost article from each mac you’re using. The .ssh/authorized_keys file on your server will simply add each new key into the file, and each of them will be able to login without using a password. I have 3 macs in different places all keyed to login to the same user account without password.

[quote]2) Like another commenter, above, terminal barfs when I try to run the rsync command. I get “rsync: mkdir “/home/USER/mbp.bak/Documents” failed: No such file or directory”. I used Dreamhost’s webftp to manually add a directory and file /Documents/mbp.bak and run rsync again. No luck. Same barfing. (USER in caps, means I know that would be my user ID for this account).[/quote]

Be sure to include the trailing slash mbp.bak/Documents/ when you reference both the SOURCE and DESTINATION in your rsync command.

Also, it sounds like you might be trying to create the directory on your local computer. Did you insert an extra space somewhere in the DESTINATION address?

I’ll look more into this later – I’m just on my way out the door.

I have been looking for this EXACT type of solution, so thanks for being so thorough in your post. I have four Macs (and a PC) I have been looking to backup in the cloud.

So I got the dreamhost account. Here are a few questions:

1) I suspect I need a separate RSA private key for all four Macs. If so, how does that affect the Passwordless login steps?

2) Like another commenter, above, terminal barfs when I try to run the rsync command. I get “rsync: mkdir “/home/USER/mbp.bak/Documents” failed: No such file or directory”. I used Dreamhost’s webftp to manually add a directory and file /Documents/mbp.bak and run rsync again. No luck. Same barfing. (USER in caps, means I know that would be my user ID for this account).

3) I also get these errors:
rsync error: error in file IO (code 11) at main.c(420)
rsync: connection unexpectedly closed (8 bytes received so far) [sender]
rsync error: error in rsync protocol data stream (code 12) at /SourceCache/rsync/rsync-24.1/rsync/io.c(359)

Thoughts?

1. Create a new User Agent
2. Label it what you like (“com.myname.dhbackup”)
3. In the ProgramArguments box, enter "rsync -avz --delete-after ~/Documents/ USER@SERVER:~/laptop.bak/Documents/" (Inserting your details, of course). Where there is a space in the command, add a new parameter (Line one is rsync, line two is -avz, etc.)
4. Give it a nice ServiceDescription
5. Set a WatchPath to your Documents folder (Under the “Paths” menu”)

Any time you modify your Documents folder now, it will be rsync-ed to your server. If you don’t have an internet connection at the time, it will wait until you have one. Sine I can’t guarantee my own connection (Roaming between work/school/home on wireless) I have it run on startup and once ever 10 minutes or so to keep my backups current.

Hope that helps! This is a great how-to as it is, launchd makes it a little more powerful.