Well, I have a backup in place for the primary workstation (an extra
500GB HD that backs up my RAID-0 volume on a daily basis). I was
originally considering rsync as I use it for several other tasks (ie,
backing up a linux server to my office and so forth) but I want this
synch to occur more automatically (perhaps just having the right
scripts and setting it up so that I cannot forget to synch would be
sufficient) since I take my laptop with me to jobs and must take all
of my contact and schedule information with me (iCal, Address Book,
Mail, etc.).
I wish there was a streamlined synch'ing solution (perhaps .mac would
be better for me?) so that I would not have to worry when I came back
to my office as I do not want to have to worry about quitting all of
my apps that are actively using the data being sync'd back.
Hmm...
With regards to the mobile home it is suppose to be a new feature of
Tiger so I am curious about that.
-George
On Jun 14, 2005, at 9:34 AM, Bart Silverstrim wrote:
On Jun 14, 2005, at 9:09 AM, email@hidden wrote:
Hi, I'm just starting out with my first OS X Server setup. I have
DNS, etc. configured and Open Directory seems to be working and so
forth, but I'm not certain as to how to implement Mobile Homes
properly for what I want to accomplish and hoped that I could get
some sound advice or links to tutorials that would explain this, or
perhaps even some specific or general instructions as to how to
proceed.
First off, I want to use Mobile Homes as sort of a backup for a
couple of users. The configs consist of laptop disconnected use.
Instead of a roaming home, it sounds to me more like what you'd want
is a consistent backup of data. I do something like this, although
people on the list will probably say I'm not doing this properly or
am making it harder than it really is...
I currently use the laptop (powerbook g4) most of the time, and at
home I have a G5 with 2 250 gig drives. I organize the files I want
into a couple specific directory trees, 99% of which are under ~/
files then branch out from there into a logical structure that makes
sense to me :-) When I go home and turn on the laptop, I run a
script that uses rsync to sync up the data under ~/files to the first
hard disk of the G5.
The G5 has some data under ~/files/local-sync (while the laptop syncs
to the G5's ~/files/mobile_sync). It is mostly stuff like imported
video, some archived CD images of things like Linux ISOs, etc.
After doing a sync from the laptop to the G5's ~/files/mobile_sync, I
run another script on the G5 that syncs it's ~/files directory to
the /Volumes/Data_drive/<backup directory> folder.
So, I have 3 copies of data from the laptop and 2 copies of the G5's
data on itself. This only covers problems with the hard disk...if
the computer blows up, I lose the data no matter what, and this isn't
a substitute for a formal "backup" in that I can't regress to
anything more than the version from the last sync. But *for me* this
solution works well enough. It doesn't back up the system state so I
can't do a full bare-metal recovery, but for what I use the computer
for I don't think it hurts to wipe the drive and start clean to get
any cruft out of it, even if it does take some time to reach the
point where I was previously (Fink, for example, takes awhile to get
things reinstalled if I wipe the computer). On the plus side when I
do a full system wipe-and-reinstall (did once on the laptop to go
from 10.2 to 10.3) it took about an hour or two to transfer all my ~/
files structure to the laptop, then I just went through my archive of
freeware applications I keep on the drive to reinstall things like
"macJanitor" and I'm good to go again with fresh installs of
applications.
Secondly, I've got a production workstation with which I work that
has a tremendous amount of data on it for video editing and so
forth. I don't really want to have an entire mobile home for this
particular machine, but I would like to synchronize a few folders
such as: Library, Documents, Sites and the users home files (only
those found in ~). I have a laptop to which I want to synchronize
so that the laptop always has an up-to-date copy of these
particular folders. Since these folders and home are not located
on the Server I am not certain how this would work, unless I
somehow told the server that my home folder for that user was
located on this workstation.
Any advise or instructions would be much appreciated!
My first thought would be using an OS X version of rsync or unison to
set up some kind of synching strategy, but there are caveats...
A) rsync is a large load on the processor if you have it synching a
huge directory
B) rsync can have issues with metadata not copying properly. For
applications I usually keep archived .img files and .iso files so
that metadata doesn't matter (I primarily got into this mindset when
my primary server I was synching to was a Linux system, so I did this
out of concerns from cross-platform compatibility). There are
versions of rsync that are supposed to respect all the metadata/fork
nubbins, but I didn't fiddle with it.
C) If you're backing up information that isn't "yours" (multiple
users), you'll need to consider a strategy that allows for
permissions to be properly copied or have a script in place for users
to run periodically on their own so it'll run in their own context.
The sync strategy I am using is not great for everyone, it takes some
work to maintain. But it fits into my workflow since I don't mind
typing "./localsync.sh" periodically when I'm ready to sync things
up. Perhaps this type of strategy could be something you can look
into as the basis of your own synching strategy...
The "mobile home" strategy I'm aware of for UNIX is actually remotely
mounting your home directory from a server, and personally I'm not
familiar with a way to automatically sync a home directory so you're
running with an auto-sync-home-directory akin to Windows' DFS (is
that the service?) that will allow the laptop to be independent but
automatically synced when possible. Personally, I don't usually
trust those schemes to automatically keep things up to date...
I'm sure others on the list will have more info for you and a better
strategy though. This is just a note on what I do to keep my stuff
synced up in multiple locations.
