Stalled Network backup
 

My name is Ron and I have a problem...

Up until now I've been using SD! with great success to backup our two computers (Mac Mini, Macbook) via a hard connection. But I've become lazy and want to backup over our network rather than schlep the MacBook over to the Firewire drive and physically connect it.

The Mini is tethered to an external Firewire drive and the two computers are linked via Airport Express and Personal File Sharing. I want to backup the MacBook via the airport network. So, I've followed the instructions carefully and have managed to get SD! on the MacBook to mount the appropriate Backup drive partition and the subsequently the Sparse Disk Image to mount. However, the process has stalled at that point. SD! claims to be "Copying files from "MacBook" to "backup image" using Smart Update. In fact it has been 52 minutes now and not a single file has been evaluated or copied. What am I doing wrong?

Just to give more info. The MacBook has two user accounts: one runs using FileVault and the other is an admin account with admin privileges. I have logged out from the account with the FileVault and am running SD! from the admin account.

Ron

It's likely copying the FileVault volume, which is quite large and will take a long time...

Dave, you were right (as always).
The backup, while slow, did work. It took just over 80 minutes.
Now, all I have to do is figure out how to set this up to work without touching the machine. The source computer would have to log out of one account, log into the Admin account and start the backup. Any ideas how to accomplish this automatically?

Ron

I don't think you'll be able to do that automatically, Ron.

Hmmm... It seems something like that would be scriptable (logout, then login as another user). I'll do some investigating.

I don't think so, Ron: a log out would suspend the execution environment, and thus there's nothing that could do the next part...

Of course! (slaps forehead with heel of palm)