[Infowarrior] - OSX Sync Followups

[Richard Forno]

Here's a sampling of comments received. Most suggested a CLI-based solution
of psync or rsync.   In addition I learned of some shiny
commercial/shareware solutions such as Synk or ChronoSync that will allow
home folder synchronization as well.

-rick


On Wed, Feb 20, 2008 at 03:20:04PM -0500, Richard Forno wrote:

> Is there an easy way to share some or all of a home folder between two
> different machines? I'm looking to get an iMac for the office but also have
> a laptop "sync'd up" and ready to go on a minute's notice if I have to go
> somewhere.

I use rsync (with an appropriate set of alphabet-soup flags, shown
below) to keep various directories on my (Unix) laptop sync'd with
my (Unix) desktop.   For one-way use, it's fine.

But I keep reading very good things about Unison:

    http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~bcpierce/unison/

when it come sto multi-way and bidirectional sync'ing.  I haven't
had the chance to try it yet, but the comments have come from a
sufficiently diverse and clueful set of people that I suspect it's
worth looking into.

The rsync incancation:

    rsync -vrlogptHDxz --progress --stats --delete-after <local-dir>
<remote-dir>

Most of the flags have to do with preserving file attributes.  The
--progress
lets me keep an eye on it, and --stats is just for curiosity.
--delete-after
tells it to not delete files on the remote side until the end, that is,
it queues up deletions and does them after transfering all the new stuff.

< -- >

Best options I have found are rsync, which is free and requires minimal
comfort with the command line, and for a paid option, I love synchronize pro
(www.qdea.com)

The rsync command is use is (make sure these commands are on one line each):
sudo /usr/bin/rsync -aREx --delete /Path/To/SourceDirectory/
/Volumes/BackupVolumeName/Path/To/TargetDirectory/

It will ask you for your password.

You can also put these in your .login file as an alias so you can just type
rickbackupdir and it will work.

This one will backup your root directory (ie everything) to a target volume.
alias rickbackupwhole="sudo /usr/bin/rsync -aREx --delete
--exclude='.Spotlight-*' --exclude '/private/var/vm/*' /
/Volumes/BackupVolumeName/"

This one will backup a directory to a target directory on another volume.
alias rickbackupdir="sudo /usr/bin/rsync -aREx --delete
/Path/To/SourceDirectory/
/Volumes/BackupVolumeName/Path/To/TargetDirectory/"

Good luck and feel free to ping me with questions if you wish.

< - >

SuperDuper, and SyncTwoFolders
<http://versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/30727>