68 days ago
Turns out Time Machine is not just for accidentally deleted files — it works great for restoring a Mac from bare metal, too. Even over the network.
James Duncan Davidson’s instructions for using the OSX Leopard install DVD to boot and restore from a Time Machine backup work great if you back up to a USB or FireWire drive.
But I use Time Machine over the network, so my backup set wasn’t available. Nedospasov had the secret for mounting the network backup share first.
Here’s the whole process…
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73 days ago
The folks at JungleDisk released version 2.0 Monday. This is a major — and welcome — upgrade.
- Redone graphical interface with lots more options for what to back up and when
- Smoother handling of multiple buckets
- Standard bucket and folder naming, so you can use your JungleDisk S3 data with other software like S3Fox
- This requires converting your existing buckets to JD 2 format — which means that every machine accessing your JungleDisk must run version 2
Of course the Linux command line tools are still there for all of you rsync fans.
We’ll be updating our command-line configurations in the coming days. In the meantime, you can download the update from JungleDisk. It’s free for registered users.
99 days ago
So the Mac OS X 10.5.3 update broke Time Machine for me.
The update did fix Time Machine backups over the network for many people, but not for me. Lots of folks have tried various things to fix the problem (like standing on their head, reformatting, fingering prayer beads). Here’s what fixed Time Machine over AFP for me.
I had a setup that was backing up perfectly on 10.5.2.
After the 10.5.3 update, Time Machine said “The backup volume could not be mounted” — again and again. Console’s system log showed backupd errors 18 and sometimes 19.
The problem, believe it or not, was permissions and my .mac credentials. Here’s how to fix it.
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142 days ago
We’ve updated our earlier howto JungleDisk for Linux Server Backups without X11 for the latest version of JungleDisk, 1.50.
- The new version is more reliable for transferring lots of files, and rsync works better.
- Rsync’s —archive flag now works as expected (though you still need —inplace).
- jungledisk now uses Fuse directly rather than davfs, so prerequisites are different
- The command-line jungledisk program now mounts by itself
- The configuration file gets a bunch of new options
So check out our updated instructions for configuring JungleDisk 1.50 from the command line.
Still clinging to the past? The you can read our original instructions for JungleDisk versions 1.30 to 1.40.
211 days ago
Leopard does not (yet?) backup to a disk attached to an Airport base station, to lots of people’s concern. But OS X version 10.5.1 will backup over the network — to another Mac. It works just fine over wired or wifi networks, so it works for MacBooks.
Initial setup is easy, but there are two non-obvious tricks to getting this to work.
Update 31 May 2008: Since Leopard 10.5.3, Time Machine no longer requires any of this — it mounts backup shares when needed, so you don’t have to do anything. Once you get Time Machine working again, that is. If you’re having troubles since the 10.5.3 update, read A Fix for Time Machine on OSX 10.5.3 over AFP for .mac Users, a how-to that will get you going again.
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215 days ago
Photographer James Duncan Davidson takes a look at The Economics of Online Backup — and finds that time and cost work against online storage for his terabyte of data.
Worth a read. The comments mention some of the solutions we’ve tried here at el Studio — Mozy and JungleDisk/S3 — and also some that we haven’t, like CrashPlan.
With any online backup plan, the crucial issue may not be how many GB of stuff you’ve got overall, but rather how frequently that data changes.
Perhaps it’s fine if it takes a week to upload your stuff to, say, Mozy. But if, like Davidson, you find yourself producing 3 days worth of uploads every afternoon — then online backup probably isn’t the best choice.
390 days ago
JungleDisk is another great entrant in the online backup business. Unlike Mozy, our favorite for Macs and PCs, JungleDisk also runs on Linux. And, since version 1.30a, it ships a command-line version.
Which means you can give your Linux servers reliable online backup — stored on Amazon’s S3.
These instructions cover version 1.50 — which has a different config file and a number of settings than previous versions. If you’re still using an older version, see the instructions for version 1.30 or 1.40 that we published a while back.
Meanwhile, let’s get down to business with version 1.50. Our server install has three parts:
- JungleDisk command line program, which makes S3 look like a WebDav server
- Fuse, which makes WebDav look like a regular Linux filesystem
- rsync, the standard Linux power copy program
You’ve got rsync, and the other two aren’t much harder to install.
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419 days ago
We’ve been testing online backup software here at el-Studio for a while now. Remarkable how the slipping of the little rubber band inside our tape drive — the one that connects the motor with the thingy that spins the tape — brings online backups to mind.
Plus there’s the appeal of saying “We backup to the cloud, man.”
Anyway, our favorite online backup software/service is Mozy.
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438 days ago
JungleDisk is another great entrant in the online backup business. Unlike Mozy, our favorite for Macs and PCs, JungleDisk also runs on Linux. And, since version 1.30a, it ships a command-line version.
Which means you can give your Linux servers reliable online backup — stored on Amazon’s S3.
Here’s more about how JungleDisk works.
Meanwhile, let’s get down to business. Our server install has three parts:
- JungleDisk command line program, which makes S3 look like a WebDav server
- DavFS, which makes WebDav look like a regular Linux filesystem
- rsync, the standard Linux power copy program
You’ve got rsync, and the other two aren’t much harder to install. So here goes, for Ubuntu (6.10 or later) without XWindows installed.
» Read more
