timesync

timesync aims to be a replacement for Apple's [Time Machine] (http://www.apple.com/de/macosx/apps/) and should run on all unix-like systems.

It's based on [rsync] (http://www.samba.org/ftp/rsync/rsync.html) and does backups only to remote hosts via SSH at the moment.

It creates snapshots and uses symbolic links so that you only have to transfer the changed files since the last backup. It works really fast but you still have a full backup of your fileset in every snapshot.

Updating rsync on OS X

The rsync version that's delivered with OS X is barely old and doesn''t work properly.

To update to a never version you need to download the current version and compile it by hand.

• Install Xcode (from your OS X DVD or the AppStore)
• Open a Terminal

cd ~/Downloads/
curl -O http://rsync.samba.org/ftp/rsync/src/rsync-3.0.8.tar.gz
curl -O http://rsync.samba.org/ftp/rsync/src/rsync-patches-3.0.8.tar.gz
tar -xzvf rsync-3.0.8.tar.gz
tar -xzvf rsync-patches-3.0.8.tar.gz
cd rsync-3.0.8
patch -p1 <patches/fileflags.diff
patch -p1 <patches/crtimes.diff
./prepare-source
./configure
make
sudo make install

• Your newly updated binary is located in /usr/local/bin/rsync.
• Paste this path to the config section of timesync

Changelog

2011-07-11

• Did some code cleanup
• If the target directory on the server doesn't exist, we now try to create it
• Now a folder for every client is created in the backup directory
• rsync is now running as root
• Put some documentation in the code and startet the README and changelog
• Cleaned up the variable names
• Added some error handling (must run as root, host unrechable, write logfile)

2011-07-10

• Initial release with code from [Mike Williams] (http://dogbiscuit.org/mdub/weblog/Tech/Mac/Rsync1TimeMachine0)