Thanks for the article - I'm a long-term Mac and Unix user but learnt loads anyway - I'd never heard of ditto for example.
I've tried putting some of it into practice to backup my OSX system to a Sun server running ethershare, which I was doubtful about at first. However, ditto seems to be smart enough even to make that work. I did run into problems with long file names though, e.g. I tested backing up a few apps but got the following:
[localhost:~] gavin% ditto -rsrc -V bin /Volumes/Mac\ Backups\ 2-1/bin
>>> Copying bin
copying file ./.DS_Store ... 6148 bytes
copying file ./beep ... 9116 bytes
copying file ./hello ... 9116 bytes
copying file ./notepad.app/Contents/Info.plist ... /Volumes/Mac Backups 2-1/bin/notepad.app/Contents/Info.plist.__XXCOPIERXX__.1267.3: File name too long
/Volumes/Mac Backups 2-1/bin/notepad.app/Contents/Info.plist: File name too long
Any idea if ditto will ever support long(er) filenames? I also tried with rsync, after downloading rsyncX, and got similar problems:
[localhost:~] gavin% rsync -ae /usr/bin/ssh bin /Volumes/Mac\ Backups\ 2-1
fopen: No such file or directory
/bin/rm: notepad.app/Contents/Contents-dirattr.145757-rsynckbattr: No such file or directory
fopen: No such file or directory
/bin/rm: notepad.app/Contents/MacOS/MacOS-dirattr.145757-rsynckbattr: No such file or directory
mkstemp notepad.app/Contents/Resources/English.lproj/.English.lproj-dirattr.145757.001996 failed: File name too long
mkstemp notepad.app/Contents/Resources/English.lproj/.English.lproj-dirattr.145757.001996 failed: File name too long
mkstemp notepad.app/Contents/Resources/English.lproj/.English.lproj-dirattr.145757.001996 failed: File name too long
mkstemp notepad.app/Contents/Resources/English.lproj/MainMenu.nib/.MainMenu.nib-dirattr.145757.001996 failed: File name too long
mkstemp notepad.app/Contents/Resources/English.lproj/MainMenu.nib/.MainMenu.nib-dirattr.145757.001996 failed: File name too long
mkstemp notepad.app/Contents/Resources/English.lproj/MainMenu.nib/.MainMenu.nib-dirattr.145757.001996 failed: File name too long
mkstemp notepad.app/Contents/Resources/.Resources-dirattr.145757.001996 failed: File name too long
mkstemp notepad.app/Contents/Resources/.Resources-dirattr.145757.001996 failed: File name too long
mkstemp notepad.app/Contents/Resources/.Resources-dirattr.145757.001996 failed: File name too long
fopen: No such file or directory
/bin/rm: notepad.app/Contents/Resources/Scripts/Scripts-dirattr.145757-rsynckbattr: No such file or directory
mkstemp notepad.app/.notepad.app-dirattr.145757.001996 failed: File name too long
mkstemp notepad.app/.notepad.app-dirattr.145757.001996 failed: File name too long
mkstemp notepad.app/.notepad.app-dirattr.145757.001996 failed: File name too long
rsync error: partial transfer (code 23) at main.c(578)
I got the long filename problem too, eg. "copying file ./Acrobat User Data/.FBCLockFolder/.FBCSemaphoreFile ... /Volumes/Backup/Documents/Acrobat User Data/.FBCLockFolder/.FBCSemaphoreFile.__XXCOPIERXX__.327.2: File name too long"
This happened when I backed up to a Zip Disk. I dragged these files to their destination using the Finder with no problems.
This happened when I backed up to a Zip Disk. I dragged these files to their destination using the Finder with no problems.