Flaky execution of scheduled backups? No Sat. AM in "Daily"?

[DrDan in MA]

Hi Dave, thanks again for your prompt and helpful responses.

"We rely on the system's wake and scheduling features to do their things. If those don't work reliably, it's hard for us to work reliably, and harder still to "work around" the problem, since we didn't "write" that part."

I hear you on that.

As far as logs go, there's no plan for an integrated log "folder", no. But we're always looking for ways to improve things, and I have various ideas in this area.

Well thanks for letting me vent I've often found that developers have already thought of better ways to address issues than just plain end-users; glad you're already processing ideas for improvements in this area...

But, anyway. If the drive wasn't mounted, your backup would fail. Why the second one failed is something I can't explain, but if SD! wasn't "waiting to run" when you woke, it means it probably didn't wake at all, or went to sleep very, very quickly after waking.

Waitamminnit, I do remember times when I've awoken the system in the morning, and there was SD! all bright-eyed and bushytailed, already beginning its work. I didn't understand why that might have been... so what you're telling me is that those times represent occasions when OSX didn't even ever wake from sleep. If this repeats, I guess I'll bug the folx at AppleCare.

If you're comfortable doing so, you can try to change your crontab to run the event at 3:30:30 by changing the "0" at the start of the line to a "30". Then, set your wake event to 3:30, and see if that works...

OK, I don't mind doing this if it'll help, but your description doesn't help me enough, please add some specificity... I find that can't change the final 0 of 3:30 into 0:30 within the usual SD! edit screen, so I'm assuming (???) that if I get into the TERMINAL app and look for "CronTabs" I can edit one. If it's not too much hassle, could you pls point me to doc of just how I do this? ... and how changing the time that the SD! run will start from an integer to a fraction of a minute will help things out, if in fact it's the OS's problem for not having woken up at all? In other words, I don't understand where this is going or how I can help do this suggested test.

[dnanian]

I don't think the AppleCare guys are going to be of much help, Dan.

If you had a situation where, when you woke your computer SD! was there waiting, it did indeed start to do its thing, but the system decided it would be best to put it to sleep again. Which is frustrating. Tweaking the crontab will likely help.

Snag a copy of CronniX to edit the crontab, actually. It should let you change the "seconds" to 30 seconds past the minute, rather than the minute itself...

[DrDan in MA]

OK, I just snagged & installed CronnIX and used it to mod the crontab that I'd previously set for 0330 to start the SD! run. Now, if I did it all OK, SD! will launch at 03:30:30. I also changed my sys wakeup event to 0330 as you suggested. Now I see the method to your fix -- tighten up the interval between sys wakeup and SD! startup.

Hopefully when I awake Sat. morning, I'll find a backup completed & waiting. I know that Sat. AM is not "showing up" in the display of SD!'s intentions (it still sez that the next backup will be SUN 0330) but we both know that it'll try on SAT morning.

I wondered whether having "changed the crontab behind SD!'s back" would cause SD to complain or display what was afoot, but no problems displayed themselves when I looked at SD!'s scheduled backup screen...

Film at 0700ish...

[dnanian]

Sounds good. Let's see what happens!

[DrDan in MA]

Well this is strange data. Last night, the Mini's scheduled backup didn't happen, witness that when I awoke it from its sleep around 0700, there SD! was, all rarin' to go. I cancelled that run, but soon just started it again by hand. (Incidentally, imho it would be useful, if it isn't done yet, for there to be logs created from SD! copies that are initiated by hand... (??? Is this there already and I've just missed it???)

Now comes the the really strange data. I was up late last night to watch what happened at 0330 (I'd scheduled a sys wakeup for 0330 and used CronniX to change the crontab for an SD! run from 03:30:00 to 03:30:30. I'd been working on other stuff but put the AL-PbG4 to sleep manually at 03:27.

Promptly at 03:30:00 the system awoke from its brief slumber, with the external LaCie drive mounted. I use iPulse to monitor the sys and time, and watched 03:30:30 come and go with no launch of SD!.

As far as SD! is concerned it "believes" it has a scheduled copy set for 0330, witness its text in the SCHEDULE window, under What's going to happen? -- Daily at 3:30AM, "Backup-all files will be used to copy Al-PbG4 to LaCie80Gb. Smart update will...

However,

CronniX reports that the CronTab of DrDan is
Minute [] 30:30
Hour [] 3
Day of month [x] *
Month [x] *
Day of week[*] (All)

and that the cmd to be executed is
open file:///Users/DrDan/Library/Application\%20Support/SuperDuper\%21/Scheduled\%20Copies/Smart\%20Update\%20LaCie80Gb\%20from\%20AL-PbG4.sdsp/Copy\%20Job.app
with the "Prepend "/usr/bin/open" box not checked.

So I watched the seconds tick by... and to my surprise, promptly at 03:31:00 SD! was launched, and the successful run of SD! began at 03:31:15 and went until 3:49:29.

Perhaps the crontab at 3:30:30 kept the PbG4 from resuming its sleep, but SD! wasn't capable of starting except on a minute boundary, hence its start was rounded up?

One tiny piece of external evidence for that hypothesis is that despite the internal display of this event as being scheduled to start at 0330, the log of this run has the filename 2006-03-25 03/31/15 -0500 (when it actually started) and was last modified at 03:59 (when it ended). The title bar of this log reads
Smart Update LaCie80Gb from AL-PbG4.sdsp - Sat, Mar 25, 2006 at 3:31AM

Is anything here of any value?

[dnanian]

Well, that's strange. You have to recognize that we don't do the launch -- cron does. If it didn't launch us at 30:30, it must be because cron is only running at minute boundaries, unfortunately. Rats.

One more thing to suggest. Snag a copy of NMS Sleep Assist from Version Tracker. Set up a "sleep hold" for SuperDuper... maybe that'll prevent things from sleeping on us... worth a try.

[DrDan in MA]

OK I've got NMS Sleep Assist 2.3Beta3 installed, but (and I hate to ask) I need some more hints as to what to set. Are you suggesting, say, that I forget CronniX (since there seems to be no granularity less than a minute for crontabs), set a normal energy-saver sys wakeup at 03:29, and then that I somehow (guidance needed here?) tell NMS Sleep Assistant to hold off sleeping for awhile (say a min or three) and schedule an SD! run for 03:30? I see where I can put custom holds on a per-app basis. Assuming SD! is in the right place (/Applications) what do I put where?

And am I the only one with flaky SD run startitude? If so I guess my M.O. as "Worst-Case-Dan" is still alive.