This morning marks the completion of the first full backup I’ve done in quite a while. But not the last. For the past 3 months, I’ve been working on an automated backup system – so I no longer need to wonder if things are backed up. They are. In at least two places.
A little background:
- I only have Macs in my house. One of them…the Mini, acts as a server
- I’ve got a StrongSpace account. Not that this makes much of a difference, any accessible volume could work the same (I’m intrigued how S3 might work into the mix as well).
The backup system is tiered;
- Every couple of days, the “client” Macs, the ones that get used everyday, backup to the Mini with
rsync -aE --exclude='.*' /usr/bin/ssh /[path to source folder (see below)]/ [username]@[url of local server]:/[path to your backup directory]/I’ve got these all wrapped up in a single backup.sh file, with a line for:
~/Library/Application Support
~/Library/Mail
~/Library/Keychains
~/Library/Documents/Projects
~/Library/Documents/Palm
~/Pictures
~/Desktop
- Then, the Mini backs up the client folders to StrongSpace.
rsync -rltvz --exclude='.*' /usr/bin/ssh /[path to client backup folder]/ [username]@[url of online server]:/[path to your online backup directory]/ - I’m using SSH Keys (the
/usr/bin/sshin the strings above) to automate the login (see MagpieBrain for instructions on setting this up). - On all the machines, the backup.sh file is wrapped in an Applescript
do shell script "/Users/garrickvanburen/Documents/Projects/RSYNC/garrick_backup.sh" - The Applescript is called from an alarm in iCal, like this
What’s your backup strategy?
ELSEWHERE:
David Roessli takes a different approach.