scheduled bacup does not occur

[deepfringe]

I know I am doing something stupid but...its been about a year and I am at my wifes 24 inch IMAC running 10.4.11 and I am unable to get the schedule backup to work, still...I am were I was a year ago, I have upgraded SD, bought a new license, deleted all previous SD related files, reinstalled, reregistered, I can schedule the backup to on minute from now and wait and watch and it does not happen. It is a Lacie firewire drive for which a backup on command works just fine and creates a good bootable copy. To add insult to the situation my daughters identical computer, including OS version etc., 10 ft away from this one, does backup on schedule perfectly and has so for over a year and I have set them both up in the same way. I tried swapping the drive out last year with another LACIE but it made no difference.
Any suggestions?

[dnanian]

What are the names of the drives involved?

[deepfringe]

the boot drive name on the desk top is "Betelgeuse" and the back up is from Betelgeuse to a drive whose name on the desk top is simply "Backup". In what way would the drive names be involved?

[dnanian]

There are cases where unusual characters can cause problems due to UTF encoding differences, but that doesn't seem to be the case here. I think it's likely your "cron" daemon -- the system scheduler -- isn't running...

[deepfringe]

Thank you for the suggestion. I just returned again to this problem after being out on a long business trip. I'll begin investigating "cron" daemon otherwise known as the system scheduler.

[deepfringe]

In the activity monitor cron is running.
I am not that savy to know if that means its running properly.
Is there some way to rech out and give it a jolt or two?

[dnanian]

Well, type

crontab -l

that's a lower case L, to see what the crontab looks like, and then copy/paste it in here.

[deepfringe]

In Darwin the crontab -l (using terminal application) results in:

Welcome to Darwin!
Natasha:~ carriebellaccounting$ crontab -l

























30 23 * * 1,2,3,4,5 open file:///Users/carriebellaccounting/Library/Application\%20Support/SuperDuper\%21/Scheduled\%20Copies/Smart\%20Update\%20Backup\%20from\%20Betelgeuse.sd sp/Copy\%20Job.app

And I have no idea what it means except it is interesting that superduper is in there

Ray

[dnanian]

It means that there's a single scheduled copy, set to run M-F at 11:30pm. That's what you're expecting, yes?

[deepfringe]

yes, but it neve happens

[dnanian]

Right. I wanted to make sure the entries in the crontab were correct, and it certainly seems to be.

So, you've modified this schedule to run 'a few minutes from now', right? (I ask because it's not set up that way now.)

[deepfringe]

I am sorry I can't find time to sit and focus in this due travel for my day job.
Correct that the cron list does not reflect a schedule that was for a "few minutes" from now.
Another data point, I was in the apple store (a few blocks from the office) and they said they has seen this kind of issue with various software and suggested I try running the scheduled event from another user as they had concluded that some issues were account specific. It is true when I schedule a backup from another user account this computer the backup runs as it should not problems.
So I have the option to migrate all the user files and stuff to this other account to perhaps solve the problem, this individual is unlike to have the discipline to change active desktops everyday so that the backup works.
But I would rather get to the real cause.
Do you have something more to suggest??

[dnanian]

I don't know what your account would have to do with cron, which is a 'global' system daemon... you could try removing the existing schedules, then run

crontab -r

in Terminal, then set it up again. That would certainly 'clear out' the existing cron-specific information.

I'm surprised -- since cron is a standard part of OSX itself -- that the Apple Genius didn't have any other suggestions to offer, though, if they've seen it before. They must be as confused as I am.

[deepfringe]

I did crontab -r using terminal. verified it was empty
then scheduled a backup one minute from "now"
I still did not work.
The ran crontab -l on terminal and saw this

Last login: Fri Oct 24 17:20:21 on ttyp1
Welcome to Darwin!
Natasha:~ carriebellaccounting$ crontab -r
Natasha:~ carriebellaccounting$ crontab -r
crontab: no crontab for carriebellaccountin
Natasha:~ carriebellaccounting$ crontab -l
crontab: no crontab for carriebellaccountin
Natasha:~ carriebellaccounting$ crontab -l
49 13 * * 1,2,3,4,5 open file:///Users/carriebellaccounting/Library/Application\%20Support/SuperDuper\%21/Scheduled\%20Copies/Smart\%20Update\%20Backup\%20from\%20Betelgeuse.sd sp/Copy\%20Job.app
Natasha:~ carriebellaccounting$

Unless this suggests something else I think I am going to do a clean install of 10.5 zap the pram etc. and see how things work from there. The machine is runnning 10.4 now.

The apple guys were really not all that useful, they just guessed at something.

When I was last a camputer genius myself I was running an observatory in southern Arizona on PDP-11/34s running RSX-11, now I mostly do this by the seat of my pants.

Thanks for the help.

[dnanian]

I don't think zapping the PRAM'll help, but certainly a clean install of Leopard won't hurt. Don't forget to do a full backup first, and I'd suggest migrating from it when it prompts you to 'copy from another Mac' during your very first startup.

[markalanthomas]

I'm having this same problem. Schedules were working fine on my PowerBook, but when I migrated to a new Intel iMac schedules stopped working. There's nothing non-standard about the name of my hard disk, and other cron tasks seem to work. Most peculiar.

[dnanian]

Did you try deleting and recreating your schedules? When you indicate that your 'other' cron tasks are working, are they tasks in the user's crontab?