• Remote Backup Strategy

    From JF Mezei@jfmezei.spamnot@vaxination.ca to comp.sys.mac.system on Tuesday, July 13, 2021 01:59:35
    From Newsgroup: comp.sys.mac.system

    Server: Snow Leopard, XServe system disk: 160GB.

    mac: 2013 Trash Can, High Sierra. room for 3 move M.2 SSDs in external cabinet.

    Due to regulatory capture of CRTC in Canada, I have no Internet in terms
    of using remote cloud services. (upload speed below 1mbps).


    The collapse in Miami has reminded me that for any type of emergency, I
    need to bring my disk drives with me because they'll never allow me back
    in building.

    I know that making a DMG from a running system disk is problematic and
    requires a lot of fixing up after the fact to be able to open it (even
    though the creation of .DMG appeared to work).

    Since I have time machine on the Xserve, I can just pickup "Latest"
    from it whenever I make manual backups to the Mac.

    Generally, my connection betwene Mac and Xserve is via AFP. (Snow
    Leopard has very old SMB and I tried it once and got corrupted files).

    I am leaning on utiling disk utility to create a .DMG on the Mac's SSD.
    Single file that won't clutter my Mac's file syste, file indexing,
    spotlight etc.

    and a .DMG of HFS+ system can be stored on APFS without problem.

    Sicne a time machine has a gazillion file hard links, is it correct to
    state the .DMG will not have any issues and will just backup the
    "Latest" directory structure with each file in it backed with its
    contents? (aka: not just an empty file with link to original without
    original contents backed up).

    --- Synchronet 3.18b-Win32 NewsLink 1.113
  • From nospam@nospam@nospam.invalid to comp.sys.mac.system on Tuesday, July 13, 2021 09:41:12
    From Newsgroup: comp.sys.mac.system

    In article <cZ9HI.5338$uj5.3947@fx03.iad>, JF Mezei <jfmezei.spamnot@vaxination.ca> wrote:

    The collapse in Miami has reminded me that for any type of emergency, I
    need to bring my disk drives with me because they'll never allow me back
    in building.

    use the cloud.

    I know that making a DMG from a running system disk is problematic and requires a lot of fixing up after the fact to be able to open it (even
    though the creation of .DMG appeared to work).

    it isn't.
    --- Synchronet 3.18b-Win32 NewsLink 1.113
  • From Wolffan@akwolffan@zoho.com to comp.sys.mac.system on Tuesday, July 13, 2021 10:02:09
    From Newsgroup: comp.sys.mac.system

    On 2021 Jul 13, JF Mezei wrote
    (in article <cZ9HI.5338$uj5.3947@fx03.iad>):

    Server: Snow Leopard, XServe system disk: 160GB.

    mac: 2013 Trash Can, High Sierra. room for 3 move M.2 SSDs in external cabinet.

    Due to regulatory capture of CRTC in Canada, I have no Internet in terms
    of using remote cloud services. (upload speed below 1mbps).

    The collapse in Miami has reminded me that for any type of emergency, I
    need to bring my disk drives with me because they'll never allow me back
    in building.

    in the event of the building collapsing you’ll have bigger problems.

    However...

    1 attach external drive via USB3 or Thunderbolt to the 2013, mount network volumes, clone over using standard backup software of your choice, remove external drive, put it is off-site storage, get another external drive,
    repeat untill all network and local volumes backed up. Using Time Machine is not necessarily the best way. For one thing, it’s slow.


    I know that making a DMG from a running system disk is problematic and requires a lot of fixing up after the fact to be able to open it (even
    though the creation of .DMG appeared to work).

    Since I have time machine on the Xserve, I can just pickup "Latest"
    from it whenever I make manual backups to the Mac.

    Generally, my connection betwene Mac and Xserve is via AFP. (Snow
    Leopard has very old SMB and I tried it once and got corrupted files).

    I am leaning on utiling disk utility to create a .DMG on the Mac's SSD. Single file that won't clutter my Mac's file syste, file indexing,
    spotlight etc.

    and a .DMG of HFS+ system can be stored on APFS without problem.

    Sicne a time machine has a gazillion file hard links, is it correct to
    state the .DMG will not have any issues and will just backup the
    "Latest" directory structure with each file in it backed with its
    contents? (aka: not just an empty file with link to original without
    original contents backed up).


    --- Synchronet 3.18b-Win32 NewsLink 1.113
  • From Dr Eberhard Lisse@nospam@lisse.NA to comp.sys.mac.system on Tuesday, July 13, 2021 17:34:02
    From Newsgroup: comp.sys.mac.system

    JF,

    I would not mess too much with the innards of TimeMachine. If you set
    it up right it'll work fine.


    I have on both my practice iMac and the trashcan at the house a WiFi
    Time Machine each, and a 4-TB USB hard drive each. On the trashcan for
    test purposes even a second USB drive.

    Speedtest shows:

    Hosted by Telecom Namibia (Windhoek) [0.32 km]: 74.348 ms
    Download: 12.42 Mbit/s
    Upload: 7.35 Mbit/s

    I use Unison file synchronizer to sync my home directory (and a few
    others) between the trashcan (as a "hub") the practice iMac, my two
    laptops and a Mini & an iMac outside of the country.

    Once the first backup is done Unison figures out what to do (changes) by itself, you can use the GUI to keep an eye on things but it is so
    reliable that I hardly ever use it in favor of the CLI which I kick off
    by way of some bash scripts/macros.

    Then some more bash scripts to backup the practice system (running on my secretary's Windows 10) using FirebirdSQL's tools and besides parking
    those on the internal HD (where Time Machine gets them) also putting
    them onto an external HD and SCPing them to my trashcan plus onto an old
    XServe (80 Gig, 10.5.8, up 461 days) in the local Telco's data center.

    These scripts are wired into the launchd (via Lingon X) and so run at
    night. The backups are restored into a virgin practice system once in a
    while by IT Support to confirm restorability (which is an important
    point).

    When I had a serious hard disk crash in the practice a while back it
    took an afternoon to get to the same state, just needed to update OSX to
    latest and Time Machine worked its magic via the Install/Migration
    Assistant. No drama whatsoever.

    When the Windoze hard disk crashed, IT Support replaced it, reinstalled
    W10 from scratch, we loaded the backups, tweaked a little here and there
    and added the day's worth of patients from the paper files. No drama whatsoever.


    When I get a new laptop, I also install from its predecessor's Time
    Machine, but once in a while I do it manually from scratch (from my
    handbook to see whether what's in there is still current) and then use
    Unison to sort out the home directory. Valuable exercise.

    There are very small 1-4 TB external USB SSDs these days, I have one for
    the travel lap top of 1 TB USB-C and a little bigger than a match box.

    I run that as Time Machine before I travel (and take it with in a
    separate bag), never mind the WiFi one, so if you are worried get one
    like that, run TM before you leave the house and take with, but then of
    course in Canada the houses are build to spec :-)-O so I wouldn't worry
    too much.

    If the XServe dies, buy an ARM Mini :-)-O

    Get Starlink :-)-O

    el



    On 13/07/2021 07:59, JF Mezei wrote:
    Server: Snow Leopard, XServe system disk: 160GB.

    mac: 2013 Trash Can, High Sierra. room for 3 move M.2 SSDs in external cabinet.

    Due to regulatory capture of CRTC in Canada, I have no Internet in terms
    of using remote cloud services. (upload speed below 1mbps).


    The collapse in Miami has reminded me that for any type of emergency, I
    need to bring my disk drives with me because they'll never allow me back
    in building.

    I know that making a DMG from a running system disk is problematic and requires a lot of fixing up after the fact to be able to open it (even
    though the creation of .DMG appeared to work).

    Since I have time machine on the Xserve, I can just pickup "Latest"
    from it whenever I make manual backups to the Mac.

    Generally, my connection betwene Mac and Xserve is via AFP. (Snow
    Leopard has very old SMB and I tried it once and got corrupted files).

    I am leaning on utiling disk utility to create a .DMG on the Mac's SSD. Single file that won't clutter my Mac's file syste, file indexing,
    spotlight etc.

    and a .DMG of HFS+ system can be stored on APFS without problem.

    Sicne a time machine has a gazillion file hard links, is it correct to
    state the .DMG will not have any issues and will just backup the
    "Latest" directory structure with each file in it backed with its
    contents? (aka: not just an empty file with link to original without original contents backed up).


    --
    To email me replace 'nospam' with 'el'
    --- Synchronet 3.18b-Win32 NewsLink 1.113
  • From JF Mezei@jfmezei.spamnot@vaxination.ca to comp.sys.mac.system on Tuesday, July 13, 2021 16:00:59
    From Newsgroup: comp.sys.mac.system

    On 2021-07-13 10:02, Wolffan wrote:

    in the event of the building collapsing you’ll have bigger problems.

    A whole buhch of people had intact condos and were not allowed back to
    retrieve valuables because the mayor decided recovering dead bodies was
    more important and imploded the remainder of building.

    If you're in a part that collapses, you have nothing to worry about.
    But if a disaster strikes and you are still alive and standing in yoru appartment, how you evacuate matters, once you know you'll never be
    allowed back and the government will destroy your property.


    repeat untill all network and local volumes backed up. Using Time Machine is not necessarily the best way. For one thing, it’s slow.

    The problem is that the system drive is not easy to backup. Technically,
    you are support to boot from another OS instance (recovery partition
    etc) to a backup of the system drive. But Time Machine has the ability
    to do such a backup without needing to reboot the server.

    (building a DMG image of the system disk will APPEAR to work, but when
    you try to open it, it finds errors that require some work to correct
    before you can mount it - this is because files change while you do the
    DMG backup).

    Since I already have time machine running on the server, I can then use
    one of the backups done in "batch" by Time Machine and copy that to the
    Mac. This way, in an emergency, I only have 2 boxes of drives to pickup
    from same location (the Mac). (spinning drives and SSD drives).


    --- Synchronet 3.18b-Win32 NewsLink 1.113
  • From nospam@nospam@nospam.invalid to comp.sys.mac.system on Tuesday, July 13, 2021 16:13:29
    From Newsgroup: comp.sys.mac.system

    In article <%hmHI.12053$Oj5.10658@fx28.iad>, JF Mezei <jfmezei.spamnot@vaxination.ca> wrote:


    The problem is that the system drive is not easy to backup.

    yes it is. very easy, actually.

    Technically,
    you are support to boot from another OS instance (recovery partition
    etc) to a backup of the system drive. But Time Machine has the ability
    to do such a backup without needing to reboot the server.

    theoretically, booting from another volume and cloning the original
    drive is best, but it's not required.

    (building a DMG image of the system disk will APPEAR to work, but when
    you try to open it, it finds errors that require some work to correct
    before you can mount it - this is because files change while you do the
    DMG backup).

    nope.
    --- Synchronet 3.18b-Win32 NewsLink 1.113
  • From Lewis@g.kreme@kreme.dont-email.me to comp.sys.mac.system on Tuesday, July 13, 2021 20:47:29
    From Newsgroup: comp.sys.mac.system

    In message <%hmHI.12053$Oj5.10658@fx28.iad> JF Mezei <jfmezei.spamnot@vaxination.ca> wrote:
    The problem is that the system drive is not easy to backup.

    Complete and utter nonsense, as you well know.

    (building a DMG image of the system disk

    Is the dumbest thing to try, so no surprised it's what you are doing.

    A Time Machine backyp is 1) bootable and 2) restores your system as it
    was onto a new machine or a blank drive on an old machine.

    Since I already have time machine running on the server, I can then use
    one of the backups done in "batch" by Time Machine and copy that to the
    Mac.

    No, this is not how you do ANYTHING.

    This way, in an emergency, I only have 2 boxes of drives to pickup
    from same location (the Mac). (spinning drives and SSD drives).

    All you need is you Time machine disk to restore your system's boot
    drive though of course you should have off-site backup as well, though
    that will take more time to restore. If you have more storage, that
    should also be backed up off-site.

    --
    Come on. Somewhere at the edge of the bell curve is the girl for me.
    --- Synchronet 3.18b-Win32 NewsLink 1.113
  • From Wolffan@akwolffan@zoho.com to comp.sys.mac.system on Tuesday, July 13, 2021 18:58:51
    From Newsgroup: comp.sys.mac.system

    On 2021 Jul 13, JF Mezei wrote
    (in article <%hmHI.12053$Oj5.10658@fx28.iad>):

    On 2021-07-13 10:02, Wolffan wrote:

    in the event of the building collapsing you’ll have bigger problems.

    A whole buhch of people had intact condos and were not allowed back to retrieve valuables because the mayor decided recovering dead bodies was
    more important and imploded the remainder of building.

    If you're in a part that collapses, you have nothing to worry about.
    But if a disaster strikes and you are still alive and standing in yoru appartment, how you evacuate matters, once you know you'll never be
    allowed back and the government will destroy your property.

    repeat untill all network and local volumes backed up. Using Time Machine is
    not necessarily the best way. For one thing, it’s slow.

    The problem is that the system drive is not easy to backup.

    The system drive is trivially easy to back up.

    1 Time Machine; I don’t recommend using. ™ by itself, it takes too long
    to run the initial backup, but you can create a bootable copy of the system volume using ™ and very little effort.

    2 One of the cloners, such as Carbon Copy Cloner or SuperDuper!. I use CCC, and have for years. CCC has a problem, fixable, with creating boot volumes with Big Sur, but no problems with boot volumes and Catalina or earlier. My personal Macs are all on Catalina or earlier, some office Macs are Big Surs. Yes, we can generate bootable clones using CCC on Big Sur machines.

    3 One of the dedicated backup utilities, such as Acronis.
    Technically,
    you are support to boot from another OS instance (recovery partition
    etc) to a backup of the system drive. But Time Machine has the ability
    to do such a backup without needing to reboot the server.

    CCC sets up the recovery partition on pre-Big Surs without a reboot...



    (building a DMG image of the system disk will APPEAR to work, but when
    you try to open it, it finds errors that require some work to correct
    before you can mount it - this is because files change while you do the
    DMG backup).

    don’t do a DMG.


    Since I already have time machine running on the server, I can then use
    one of the backups done in "batch" by Time Machine and copy that to the
    Mac. This way, in an emergency, I only have 2 boxes of drives to pickup
    from same location (the Mac). (spinning drives and SSD drives).


    --- Synchronet 3.18b-Win32 NewsLink 1.113
  • From Alan Baker@notonyourlife@no.no.no.no to comp.sys.mac.system on Tuesday, July 13, 2021 16:01:50
    From Newsgroup: comp.sys.mac.system

    On 2021-07-13 3:58 p.m., Wolffan wrote:
    On 2021 Jul 13, JF Mezei wrote
    (in article <%hmHI.12053$Oj5.10658@fx28.iad>):

    On 2021-07-13 10:02, Wolffan wrote:

    in the event of the building collapsing you’ll have bigger problems.

    A whole buhch of people had intact condos and were not allowed back to
    retrieve valuables because the mayor decided recovering dead bodies was
    more important and imploded the remainder of building.

    If you're in a part that collapses, you have nothing to worry about.
    But if a disaster strikes and you are still alive and standing in yoru
    appartment, how you evacuate matters, once you know you'll never be
    allowed back and the government will destroy your property.

    repeat untill all network and local volumes backed up. Using Time Machine is
    not necessarily the best way. For one thing, it’s slow.

    The problem is that the system drive is not easy to backup.

    The system drive is trivially easy to back up.

    1 Time Machine; I don’t recommend using. ™ by itself, it takes too long to run the initial backup, but you can create a bootable copy of the system volume using ™ and very little effort.

    Any initial backup is going to take a fair amount of time.


    2 One of the cloners, such as Carbon Copy Cloner or SuperDuper!. I use CCC, and have for years. CCC has a problem, fixable, with creating boot volumes with Big Sur, but no problems with boot volumes and Catalina or earlier. My personal Macs are all on Catalina or earlier, some office Macs are Big Surs. Yes, we can generate bootable clones using CCC on Big Sur machines.

    3 One of the dedicated backup utilities, such as Acronis.
    Technically,
    you are support to boot from another OS instance (recovery partition
    etc) to a backup of the system drive. But Time Machine has the ability
    to do such a backup without needing to reboot the server.

    CCC sets up the recovery partition on pre-Big Surs without a reboot...



    (building a DMG image of the system disk will APPEAR to work, but when
    you try to open it, it finds errors that require some work to correct
    before you can mount it - this is because files change while you do the
    DMG backup).

    don’t do a DMG.


    Since I already have time machine running on the server, I can then use
    one of the backups done in "batch" by Time Machine and copy that to the
    Mac. This way, in an emergency, I only have 2 boxes of drives to pickup
    from same location (the Mac). (spinning drives and SSD drives).



    --- Synchronet 3.18b-Win32 NewsLink 1.113
  • From nospam@nospam@nospam.invalid to comp.sys.mac.system on Tuesday, July 13, 2021 19:15:01
    From Newsgroup: comp.sys.mac.system

    In article <0001HW.269E522B0F74871A700004CDB38F@news.supernews.com>,
    Wolffan <akwolffan@zoho.com> wrote:


    1 Time Machine; I dont recommend using. by itself, it takes too long
    to run the initial backup,

    that only needs to be done once. let it run overnight. no big deal.

    subsequent backups are fast.

    but you can create a bootable copy of the system
    volume using and very little effort.

    there's nothing to create. directly attached time machine drives have
    been bootable since lion.

    network time machine drives use a sparse bundle disk image, which are
    obviously not bootable.



    dont do a DMG.

    it's fine, especially for network backups. for directly attached, it
    doesn't make too much sense, but can be useful in some cases.
    --- Synchronet 3.18b-Win32 NewsLink 1.113
  • From JF Mezei@jfmezei.spamnot@vaxination.ca to comp.sys.mac.system on Monday, July 19, 2021 20:26:31
    From Newsgroup: comp.sys.mac.system

    Update:

    Got new SSD today.

    Disk Utility:
    Node 1 cannot create a .DMG on Node 1 from a folder residing on Node 2.

    but

    Node 2 can create a .DMG residing on Node 1 from a folder residing on
    Node 2.

    So my desktop which has the SSD cannot backup onto the SSD a folder
    residing on server.

    And Server cannot see the APFS SSD because the connection is via AFP,
    buit it is able to create éDMG on the deskup's spinning HFS+ drives.

    So I can use that as a means to backup the TimeMachine backup on my
    server onto my desktop and then copy the .DMG to the SSD from the desktop.

    I can understand needing direct access to a drive to do a full drive
    backup, but to image a folder, I would have though accessing via AFP
    would have worked. (BTW, it lets me set up the process, but fails upon
    starting about a file doesn't exist).
    --- Synchronet 3.18b-Win32 NewsLink 1.113
  • From JF Mezei@jfmezei.spamnot@vaxination.ca to comp.sys.mac.system on Tuesday, July 20, 2021 02:59:15
    From Newsgroup: comp.sys.mac.system

    Update:

    Snow Leopard Disk Utility has been unable to "image of folder" to a
    .DMG on another node via AFP AND to a local drive.

    Suspect that the tricks used by Time Machine to create the folder of its backups (where one copy of file exists multiple times) may overwhelm
    Disk Utility.

    So I calculated the size (73GB) of the system disk backup in Time
    Machine, and created a blank .DMG and now using finder to do the local
    copy (after which I will copy the .éDMG over to my desktop's new drive).

    --- Synchronet 3.18b-Win32 NewsLink 1.113
  • From JF Mezei@jfmezei.spamnot@vaxination.ca to comp.sys.mac.system on Tuesday, July 20, 2021 20:31:31
    From Newsgroup: comp.sys.mac.system

    Another update:

    When trying to create a .DMG on remote node when the source folder was a
    Time Machine backup would fail after a few minutes during which the
    created .DMG remain at 1 MB.

    Today, I was able to backup a 20GB filder on node 1 using Disk Util on
    node 1 with .DMG created on node 2 and it worked. Initial allocation
    was 20MB and it then grew to 7GB. (original was 20GB but used
    "compressed" when creating the .DMG).
    --- Synchronet 3.18b-Win32 NewsLink 1.113