Shell scripting

[rik17]

Hello there.
First let me say that I think SuperDuper is a very elegant piece of software, clearly there was (and is even more for 2.0) a lot of thinking put into the UI, and it shows. Great stuff, thanks! I almost never find software valuable enough to buy, but this one clearly was.

Anyway, even though I've been a Mac user since '84, I'm much more comfortable using Unix command-line scripting than the very awkward English-like Applescript. Is there any thought on making SuperDuper command-line scriptable in 2.0? I read you're redoing the scheduling, and I was thinking about being able to do something like:

/Applications/SuperDuper!.app/runSD --verbose --script=/Users/me/Documents/fullWeekly.sds

And if the .sds file could be a little more text editor friendly (no base64 encoding of volume name if possible), then we'd get the best of everything: The ability to run backups from the command line in ssh, as well as the ability to schedule from SD or cron/launchd.

My apologies if this has be rehashed many times before.

Rik.

[dnanian]

Hi, Rik. No plan to do that at present, but you *can* run AppleScripts from the command line... and you can script apps with osascript. By using those techniques you should be able to achieve your goals.

(I know you said you don't like AppleScript, but that's really more the Mac standard, so that was our priority for scripting...)

[rik17]

I had forgotten the trick of running AppleScripts from the command line.
Thanks for reminding me. It's not optimal, but it should fit the bill. :)

[dnanian]

Cool. Thanks for following up.

[rik17]

OK so this is what I did to get automated backups going:

1- Opened SD, set up the settings the way I wanted them, and saved them.

2- Copied the included sample AppleScript in the SD Disk Image and changed the name of the settings file to the one created in (1) above.

3- Saved that AppleScript as an application.

4- Created a launchd plist that I put in /Library/LaunchAgents, which will daily at 5:00 AM start SD and do my automated backup by running the application.

Until the next generation of automation, that's what I will do. Anything better than that?
Thanks.

[dnanian]

That's fine. You can also use cron/CronniX or iCal -- but launchd on Tiger works fine too.

[ntutak]

rik17 - for the non-launchd savvy among us, can you give a little more detail on how to use the AppleScript to run a daily automatic backup? Thanks!

[dnanian]

ntutak --

Have you tried the steps in Section 12 of the user's guide?

[ntutak]

Haven't tried, I am hoping to learn how to do it directly from the terminal without using the cronnix utility.

[dnanian]

Well, you can use "crontab -e" to edit the crontab, but you have to know the syntax. You can find that in the man page for cron/crontab.

You can also just schedule with iCal instead...