Saving us from ourselves - keep BU unmounted

[MacMedix]

I like SuperDuper for making a backup clone to external Firewire disk. I'm pleased to be able to save a "Daily Backup" and run it on schedule (with CronniX).

But I'm very concerned that many of the very same people that I can't trust to insert CDRs, DVDRs, or Tapes during a scheduled back up also may do "The Wrong Thing" with an extra mounted copy of their HD always available to them. I can just see them doing a "Find" looking "Everywhere" for a document, and then editing the one on the clone, which will then be overwritten during the next scheduled backup. Not a happy thing. Who knows what other silly things they might do if their backup is always right there & open?

So since I probably can't lock the clone volume for writing without causing some problem for the backup, I'd settle for making the Fw hd dismount after the clone operation, and trying to keep it unmounted until the SD program runs again. The current version of SD can run a script after the clone, but not before. So this may be an impossible order unless it could also also run a script before the clone operation. Oh, and in a major or minor crises, of course then the user will need full unrestricted access to the clone on the fw disk.

So, would it be possible for the next version of SD! to be able to mount volumes as needed, and dismount them when finished? Ideally, those same volumes could be marked as "don't mount at startup", or maybe better; mounted at startup but if not booted from, immediately dismounted. A script run at login could do that.

Please help save us from ourselves!

Thanks,
Dave Nathanson
Mac Medix

[dnanian]

Dave:

The scheduled backup scripts have a way for you to change them, and add commands before and after backups: using that, you can mount/unmount volumes at will.

You can also use the "On successful completion" script to unmount, should you wish to.

At present, though, v2.0 won't have a formal UI for mounting/unmounting volumes: in our experience, this isn't something that people make mistakes with (although, of course, they could)... but, should it prove problematic in a significant way, we'll take steps to address it for all users.

[sjk]

I'd appreciate the convenience of certain "backup relevant" disk/volume management commands being available directly in SD! instead of having to run them from a script.

[dnanian]

I do understand that it would be convenient, but I have to weigh that utility against the necessary UI -- and inherent complication -- that will bring.

Which isn't to say it's not worthy: just that it's not worthy *yet*.

[MacMedix]

Hi,
I understand your drive to keep the UI clean, simple & uncluttered. Thats good, and I applaud you for sticking to your guns on this.

Could you provide a set of scripts showing how to mount & dismount disk volumes correctly? (And perhaps email a report when completed, plus other handy functions I'm not thinking of at the moment?) You could comment out all script steps, and tell us what to uncomment and how to edit it for our particular situation. I imagine we would at least need to insert the names of our disk volumes.

Only the advanced users would ever look at these scripts, but it would be a really big help to some of us!

Thanks!
Dave Nathanson
Mac Medix

[dnanian]

Dave --

At present, I just don't have the time to commit to writing scripts for you -- sorry (really).

You can see the mount/unmount stuff elsewhere on the forums (they're definitely there), though... perhaps someone else can pop some things on the thread that'll help you, too. I certainly welcome the discussion -- I know there are a lot of people out there who have the knowledge to contribute here...

[edoates]

Here is my full backup script. At the top, it opens the SuperDuper ".sds" file which will start SuperDuper and cause it to load those setting and mount the destination disks if not already mounted.. I saved those setting manually after setting up the backup options I wanted (the correct source and destination disks, the backup options (smart, etc.), and a post backup script to disable spotlight).

Then Superduper is told to quit, and I've added to the script to eject the backup disk and then to compact it (it is a sparse image).

I've created scripts for each of my backups and schedule them to run with Cronnix.

The script:

tell application "Finder"
activate
open document file "Backup Music.sds" of folder "Saved Settings" of folder "SuperDuper!" of folder "Application Support" of folder "Library" of folder "edoates" of folder "Users" of startup disk
end tell
tell application "SuperDuper!"
try
--Wait until SuperDuper! is idle before loading and running the desired session
repeat while status is not idle
--Sleep # seconds is the best way to "wait" without using the CPU
tell application "System Events" to do shell script "sleep 5"
end repeat
if status is idle then
--Specify the saved settings as either an absolute path or just the name
run using settings "Backup Music" without user interaction
end if
--Wait until the session is done
repeat while status is running
--Sleep # seconds is the best way to "wait" without using the CPU
tell application "System Events" to do shell script "sleep 5"
end repeat
on error errMsg
display dialog errMsg & " See section 12 of the User's Guide for help with this script."
end try
--Once done, tell SuperDuper! to quit
quit
end tell
-- Tell Finder to eject the backup set
tell application "Finder"
activate
eject disk "Music Backups"
end tell
activate
display dialog "Awaiting dismount of Music Backups" buttons {"OK"} giving up after 5 default button 1
-- compact the sparse image to prevent unregulated growth
do shell script "hdiutil compact " & "\"/Volumes/Eds Office Backups/Music Backups.sparseimage\""
activate
display dialog "Music Backup Complete" buttons {"OK"} giving up after 30 default button 1

-- end of script

Hope this is useful

[MacMedix]

Hi EdOates,
Thanks for sharing that script! :-) It looks pretty good & I'm going to try it. If I'm backing up to an external FW disk (not an image file) is the command the same to eject the disk? Can you tell me what the command is to mount the disk if it's not mounted?

I've seen that SD! can mount an image file when needed automatically, but how to mount an external drive? I don't think the Finder knows how to do that. Maybe DiskUtil is the right tool for that? I'm just don't know the correct command or syntax. I Googled around and found a helpful reference for mounting disk volumes at the command line.
http://www.ss64.com/osx/mount.html
But it seems to require that I refer to the external drive in the style of /dev/disk* . That seems like something that might change from day to day, especially if the ext FW drive(s) are dismounted?

Or it is just easier (even if many times slower) to back up to a sparse disk image if I want to dismount/close it at the end of the back up session? That way SD can auto-mount it when needed next time.
Thanks,
Dave

[edoates]

Sorry for the delay (haven't been back here for a while).

Also sorry that I cannot answer your question: I don't know how to mount a dismounted physical volume from a script, though it must be possible.

Ed