Backup for Macintosh Computers

How to set up a Macintosh computer to be backed up to a department server

  • Ask Dale to create an account and backup space on the server
  • Mount the backup share smb://biostat064a.dhcp.mc.vanderbilt.edu/vunetid_backup where "vunetid" is your VUNetID
    • Finder...Go menu...Connect to Server
    • Enter server address smb://biostat064a.dhcp.mc.vanderbilt.edu/vunetid_backup and click Connect
    • Enter username as "vanderbilt\vunetid" and use your epassword
    • Set remember password if you don't want to enter the password each time you log on
    • Set share to be connected automatically when logging on
      • Open System Preferences and click on "Users & Groups"
      • Click on Login items tab (right side, near top)
      • Click on + sign to add a new item to open automatically
      • Highlight the mounted backup space and click the Add button
  • Make a directory to hold the backup script
$ mkdir ~/bin
  • Copy the backup script backup-userhome to ~/bin
  • Edit backup-userhome script and replace "vunetid" with your VUNetID
  • Copy the exclude file rsync-exclude.txt to ~
  • Set up a cron job to run the backup script on a schedule
$ crontab -l
$ crontab -e

e.g.

00 20 * * * /Users/vunetid/bin/backup-userhome >> /Users/vunetid/bin/backup-userhome.log 2>&1

This command will cause the backup script to be run at 8:00 PM each day. A log file called "backup-userhome.log" is written to the ~/bin directory.

By default, the computer will not wake up for a cron job if it is asleep. The solution to this is to schedule a wake up just before the cron job is to run.
  • System Preferences
  • Energy Saver
  • Click the Schedule button
  • Select Start or Wake and set the days and time appropriately.

Topic attachments
I Attachment Action Size Date WhoSorted ascending Comment
backup-userhomeEXT backup-userhome manage 3.6 K 12 Nov 2014 - 16:10 DalePlummer  
rsync-exclude.txttxt rsync-exclude.txt manage 0.1 K 12 Nov 2014 - 16:09 DalePlummer  
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Topic revision: r4 - 11 Dec 2014, DalePlummer
 

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