cblundell Posted January 16, 2007 Report Share Posted January 16, 2007 Hi. Is there any easy way (using a script or app) to wake a computer so that its ready for its backup ?? It seams strange to me that it isn’t included in the application... Possibly a third party solution (even an apple script) that pings the computer and wakes it up ? The other issue I’m having is user security... I cant seam to get a clear answer as to whether or not Retrospect can backup clients if they're logged off... and whether the server computer can run if their user is logged off... All help much appreciated... Cheers, Charlie. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rhwalker Posted January 16, 2007 Report Share Posted January 16, 2007 Quote: Is there any easy way (using a script or app) to wake a computer so that its ready for its backup ?? It seams strange to me that it isn’t included in the application... Possibly a third party solution (even an apple script) that pings the computer and wakes it up ? Yes there is. I had to set this up because one of our users would "helpfully" put his computer to sleep each night when he left, causing his backup to be missed. There are two ways: (1) the easy way - in the Energy Saver preference pane in System Preferences, click the Options button, then the Schedule button, set the computer to wake five minutes before its scheduled backup. (2) the harder way - send the computer the "magic packet" that causes it to wake up. Most Macs support this, some very old ones do not. Download and install the freeware WakeOnLan utility WakeOnLan Then edit your Retrospect Event Handler to invoke WakeOnLan to send the magic packet to your computers before they are backed up - There's an example in this thread in these forums: Retrospect and Magic Packets If you've just got a few clients, you could, rather than using the elaborate mechanism discussed in that thread, just have a succession of: Code: tell application "WakeOnLan" wakeup client1 wakeup client2 wakeup client3 end tell tell application "WakeOnLan" with timeout of 20 seconds quit end timeout end tell Quote: The other issue I’m having is user security... I cant seam to get a clear answer as to whether or not Retrospect can backup clients if they're logged off... yes it can. The Retrospect client application still runs in the background, listening to the special port. All of our computers are logged off when our backups occur, and it works fine. Now, there's a separate issue that some people are reporting with Intel Macs where the Retrospect client keeps turning itself off, but that's a different issue. I haven't seen a solution to that, and it's unclear what is the cause. Quote: and whether the server computer can run if their user is logged off... Not sure what you mean about "if their user is logged off" - our Xserve G5 running Mac OS X Server, which also runs the Retrospect Workgroup application to back up our LAN, never has anyone logged on except for those occasions when I have to ARD over to it (the server is headless) to futz with Retrospect - wish there was a remote management app that ran on a remote computer (like Server Admin, Server Monitor, etc.) in a client/server configuration, so that I didn't ever have to log on to the server. I've put in a few feature requests for this, but, candidly, there are some other things that I need more as improvements to Retrospect than this. Hope springs eternal.... But the answer to your question seems yes, no one has to be logged on for Retrospect to do its stuff. now, there's a separate issue whereby occasionally the file /Library/Preferences/Retrospect/retrorunfiile becomes corrupted, and Retrospect won't autolaunch for its scheduled backups. Happens to us about once a month or so. This has been a persistent problem for a couple of years, many bug reports have been filed, much griping in these forums. Either it's too hard to reproduce or it's not a priority for the Retrospect programmers to fix. Solution is to quit Retrospect, delete the retrorunfile, relaunch Retrospect, quit Retrospect. But that's unrelated to your question. Hmm.... come to think about it, it's such an annoyance that I might script a cron job to do that every day, automatically. Retrospect can launch and quit by Apple Events. Hope this helps, Russ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cblundell Posted January 25, 2007 Author Report Share Posted January 25, 2007 Hi Russ, thanks for your feedback... very helpful.... In regards to some of your questions... I meant does the computer which is acting as the server (in my case it is just one of the 5 users computers and not a dedicated server) have to have an OSX user logged in.... i'm pretty sure your answers states that irrespective of client or server, that a user dosent need to be logged into a user account, (IE the machiene can sit there with only the OSX login page) and all will still run... Thanks again for your help... I'll give it a blast Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rhwalker Posted January 25, 2007 Report Share Posted January 25, 2007 Quote: In regards to some of your questions... I meant does the computer which is acting as the server (in my case it is just one of the 5 users computers and not a dedicated server) have to have an OSX user logged in.... Answer is no. Quote: I'm pretty sure your answers states that irrespective of client or server, that a user dosent need to be logged into a user account, (IE the machiene can sit there with only the OSX login page) and all will still run... Yep. You've got it right. Retrospect goes through some antics when it launches, regardless of how it is launched, so that it runs as root (so that it has access to everything on the computer for backup). Discussion of that is beyond what you are asking. Russ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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