scheduled backup over a network

[pictor]

I just got myself an external hard drive, partitioned it in 2, and would like to use to back up my imac, and my wife's mini. Backing up my machine is simplicity itself, however my wife's machine is what I am wondering about. I am currently doing a full backup as a disk image (as specified in the pdf file that came with the download), and that's working. What I am wondering is, can an incremental backup process....

a) wake up the computer if it's asleep (optional, since there are other ways to do this)
b) log in to the other mac as a specific admin user
c) mount the specific partition
d) do an incremental backup to that disk image
e) unmount the drive

It's the ability to do the authentication as part of the scheduling process that I am wondering about, and can't find reliable assurance on. It's also something I will certainly want to make sure of before buying licenses of superduper.

[dnanian]

Not exactly, no. Please see "Backing up over a network" in the User's Guide: you cannot "pull" a backup from a networked Mac, but you can push one to an image.

[raf]

Originally Posted by pictor

I just got myself an external hard drive, partitioned it in 2, and would like to use to back up my imac, and my wife's mini. Backing up my machine is simplicity itself, however my wife's machine is what I am wondering about. I am currently doing a full backup as a disk image (as specified in the pdf file that came with the download), and that's working. What I am wondering is, can an incremental backup process....

a) wake up the computer if it's asleep (optional, since there are other ways to do this)
b) log in to the other mac as a specific admin user
c) mount the specific partition
d) do an incremental backup to that disk image
e) unmount the drive

It's the ability to do the authentication as part of the scheduling process that I am wondering about, and can't find reliable assurance on. It's also something I will certainly want to make sure of before buying licenses of superduper.

Originally Posted by dnanian

Not exactly, no. Please see "Backing up over a network" in the User's Guide: you cannot "pull" a backup from a networked Mac, but you can push one to an image.

I too am in the same situation as Pictor. I am considering using and registering SuperDuper. I want to use it in to backup a number of computers on an internal LAN to a single firewire drive attached to one of the computers. At the scheduled time, each computer on the network should mount the appropriate volume, back itself up and the unmount the volume. Can this be done using SuperDuper and perhaps other tools or scripts?

I am afraid the above response by dnanian does not clarify if SuperDuper will meet my needs. I did read the user's guide and it certainly did not address most of the questions above. I would greatly appreciate a more detailed response addressing the specific questions raised in this thread.

Thanks in advance.
Martin

[dnanian]

As indicated in the User's Guide, we can't copy directly to a network volume (you cannot authorize across a network and get full rights to the far-side share, at least not without running an "agent" on the other side that does the I/O for you).

So, we'll write to a disk image on the far side. And, we'll automatically mount the network drive, mount the image, copy to the image and unmount the image when the schedule time comes.

[raf]

Originally Posted by dnanian

As indicated in the User's Guide, we can't copy directly to a network volume (you cannot authorize across a network and get full rights to the far-side share, at least not without running an "agent" on the other side that does the I/O for you).

So, we'll write to a disk image on the far side. And, we'll automatically mount the network drive, mount the image, copy to the image and unmount the image when the schedule time comes.

Sorry, I am still confused. Where is the image located?

Also, why can't the remote drive be mounted by the computer running SuperDuper? Then could it write directly to it?

Maybe a concrete example would help to define the situation (and perhaps help me get your explanations thru my thick skull):

Computers A and B are on an ethernet LAN.
Computer A has an external drive d1 attached via firewire.
Computer B is running SuperDuper.

What I would like to accomplish is:
1- Computer B wakes up at the scheduled time
2- Computer A also wakes up
3- Computer B mounts disk d1 (since Computer A is now awake)
4- Computer B backs up its data (somehow) to disk d1 over the network
5- Computer B unmounts disk d1

It sounds like SuperDuper will accomplish this, but somehow through the use of a disk image. Can you please explain how this could work given the above scenario?

Thanks again.
Martin

[dnanian]

I thought I covered this pretty completely in the User's Guide, Martin. But, the image is on the remote drive, which is mounted over the network. So, in your step 4, an image is mounted, copied to, and unmounted. d1 will not be unmounted.

While we can mount the network volume, we cannot write directly to it with full fidelity for the reasons I explain above.

[raf]

Originally Posted by dnanian

I thought I covered this pretty completely in the User's Guide, Martin. But, the image is on the remote drive, which is mounted over the network. So, in your step 4, an image is mounted, copied to, and unmounted. d1 will not be unmounted.

While we can mount the network volume, we cannot write directly to it with full fidelity for the reasons I explain above.

So, the disk image is resident on the remote drive (d1 in my example), correct?

If so, the it seems that SD will do what I require. I assume I'll need to arrange for steps 1,2,3 and 5 via other means, correct?