How to select ALL changed files?

[sbnoble]

I have my OS X system set up with Retrospect Workgroup 5 (release) to do daily backups of everything that has changed since the last full backup. But I have yet to find a selection set that actually detects all such changes.

 

 

 

The date selectors only offer creation date and modification date. These miss newly installed programs with older modification dates and don't have a hope of catching meta data changes like users or permissions. There doesn't seem to be anyway to make Retrospect key off the status date, which is updated when any aspect of the file changes.

 

 

 

The incremental (matching) backup feature is not well documented: I can't find a description of what it actually matches against. I've done some experiments and it seems to key off of the file name and modification date: it ignores changes to meta data.

 

 

 

Does anyone know how to make incremental backups that actually detect all changed files?

 

 

 

OS X 10.1.3

 

Many Macs

 

VXA-1 Firewire

 

 

[IrenaS]

To do an incremental backup, select the same source and the same destination. Retrospect matches against the following criteria:

 

 

 

Name, size, type, creator, creation date and time, modify date and time, and (pre-OS X) label.

 

 

 

If any of these change, Retrospect flags that file for backup again.

 

 

 

You don't need to use a selector! This is the default behavior for Retrospect.

 

 

 

Hope this helps,

 

 

 

Irena Solomon

 

Dantz Tech Support

[sbnoble]

Ah, that would be the problem: it's only looking at the OS 9 meta data.

 

 

 

Under OS X, there are also:

 

 

 

Owner, Group, Permissions, BSD Flags, Links, plus all the traditional finder flags (even labels).

 

 

 

Changing any of these causes st_ctimespec (see posix struct stat) or attributeModDate (see Carbon struct FSCatalogInfo) to be updated.

 

 

 

I take it that there is no way to make Retrospect detect when the attributes I described above are changed?

 

 

 

If that's the case, then I'd like to request two new features:

 

1) Matching on all properties, or better yet

 

2) Matching on the status date

 

 

 

Thanks for the fast responses, btw.

 

 

[CallMeDave]

For me, Retrospect 5.0 on OS X certainly seems to match on permissions. But it doesn't copy the file again, it only notes the changes. That's probably why it looks as if it's not doing it at all.

 

 

 

Try this:

 

 

 

- Create a directory with 6 files, each with 777 permissions.

 

- Define this directory as a source volume, and back it up to a file set.

 

- Use whatever tools you like to make changes to the permissions of 3 of these files.

 

- Do another Immediate backup.

 

 

 

- Select Immediate->Restore->Restore Entire Disk (how I wish they'd changed that language to something less ominous!)

 

- Select a folder you can blow away, and define it as a subvolume (remember that Retrospect 5.0 only maintains original permissions on these Restore Entire operations, not on Restore Files and Folders).

 

- Restore to this folder .

 

- Use your favorite tools to see if the correct permissions are there (three at 777, three at something else).

 

 

 

If so, then Retrospect has correctly matched on whatever i-node changes you made.

[IrenaS]

It is by design that Retrospect does not match against Owner, Group, Permissions, BSD Flags, or Links under Mac OS X. This is because this information is saved in the snapshot tree in the Retrospect catalog. When any of these criteria change, the file contents has not changed and hence there is no need to back up the file again.

 

 

 

When you restore, these files they will get the correct Owner, Group, Permissions, BSD Flags, and Links from the snapshot. (Note that we restore the permission only when you do replace corresponding files or restore entire disk, not when restore files and folders or restoring just files.)

 

 

[sbnoble]

Eureka!

 

 

 

You are exactly right. It hadn't looked like it was backing up the files and I hadn't tried a Restore Entire Disk since that sounded like something I really didn't want to do. But it seems to be working fine.

 

 

 

Thanks!

 

 

[Guest]

In reply to:

---

 

 

It is by design that Retrospect does not match against Owner, Group, permissions, BSD Flags, or Links under Mac OS X. This is because this information is saved in the snapshot tree in the Retrospect catalog.

 

---

 

 

 

What implications does this have if the catalog becomes lost?

 

 

 

In days past, rebuilding the catalog was enough to do a restore. Is this no longer true if you want to do a complete restore and preserve ownership and permissions? Or am I reading too much into what you've written?

 

 

 

 

[IrenaS]

Snapshots are stored on the media as well as in the catalog; if you rebuilt the catalog you would be retreiving the snapshots as well, and all permission information that existed in the catalog originally would also exist in the rebuilt catalog.