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.