topic Re: Automating the backup schedule in Collaboration with other software

Automating the backup schedule

Anonymous — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 12:16:40 GMT

Having read and re-read the Archicadwiki on Teamwork backup I still need a bit of help.

Here's our setup:

We are 100% Mac
We have a RAID protected NAS file server where we traditionally store all project files.
I have BIM Server running on my Mac Pro which is Time Machine protected.

I would like to be able to automate a cold database backup (i.e. the only guaranteed backup) to the NAS. We have Retrospect which I could automate to run the backup daily to the NAS, only replacing amended files.
However, I know almost nothing about automating scripts and I'm not sure how to get the recommended scripts to run at a scheduled time, i.e. stop the BIM server, retrospect does its thing, restart the BIM server.

Any thoughts appreciated.

Re: Automating the backup schedule

Eduardo Rolon — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 21:17:57 GMT

Check SuperDuper!

http://www.shirt-pocket.com/SuperDuper/SuperDuperDescription.html

Easy to setup and schedule.

Re: Automating the backup schedule

Anonymous — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 09:52:07 GMT

We already have a backup software, Retrospect.
It is the script automation that I need.

Re: Automating the backup schedule

Eduardo Rolon — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 11:40:16 GMT

Sorry, then I cannot help you since I use Superduper not Retrospect for my backups since I never could trust it.

Re: Automating the backup schedule

Anonymous — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 21:06:02 GMT

Hello,

I recommend Cronnix, I use it for sending scheduled MySQL backup emails. Should work for BIM Server purposes too.

CronniX is a Aqua frontend to the powerful Unix tool "cron".

Cron is a Unix system service that allows scheduled execution of scripts, programs, applications - in short anything that can be started from the command line. This includes OSX applications and AppleScripts.

Shell scripts for stopping and starting the BIM Server can be found here;
http://www.archicadwiki.com/Teamwork/Backup#A_cold_database_backup

Hope this helps.

Re: Automating the backup schedule

Anonymous — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 09:37:33 GMT

Many thanks.
Do I just copy and paste the script shown on the wiki into the command section of Cronnix or do I need to make a text file with the file name shown in the wiki and then load that into Cronnix?

Re: Automating the backup schedule

Anonymous — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 17:50:53 GMT

As an update I have now managed to solve the problem

The script needs to be run as the root user.
Using Cronnix I changed the current user to 'root' by typing it in. Do NOT use the system crontab.
I pasted the script text into a text file and saved as BIMStop.sh and BIMStart.sh

In finder I made the files executable in Terminal
I then enetred in the script box of Cronnix the following:

sudo sh /route/to/BIMStop.sh

This works a treat and stops the BIM Server. 15 minutes later, after a scheduled backup has run,

sudo sh /route/to/BIMstart.sh

restarts the server.

It should be noted that I could not get the script to properly shutdown the BIM server without the root/sudo element.