There have been many problems reported with rsync on OSX: the unpatched
version does not preserve extended attributes, and Apple's patched
version is
buggy, and also does not allow one to backup from OSX to a non-OSX Unix.
I have been interested in a fast and reliable way to backup my files
from OSX
to a non-OSX file server. There are some patched versions of rsync
on the web
that claim to do this, but I have no idea how reliable they are.
Right now, what I do is keep my files that I wish to back up on OSX
on a UFS
partition, which exposes xattr's at ._AppleDouble files. This makes
it trivial
to backup using rsync. However, UFS is apparently being deprecated
in the near
future on OSX, so more as an experiment, I developed a few lines of C
code
that do what I want, using an HFS+ formatted partition.
The idea and the code are fairly simple, so it should bee very simple
to debug and maintain.
If you are interested in the details, see
http://www.shoup.net/apple_double/README
and if you want to download the source, go to
http://www.shoup.net/apple_double/apple_double.tar
As I said, right now, it is an experiment.
It needs more testing.
Any feedback is appreciated.
-- Victor Shoup
