Strange behavior with FileVault

[jrychter]

I'm regularly having problems backing up my hard drive which contains my FileVault home directory. The problems are irregular and difficult to reproduce or describe properly, and people have been convincing me I'm seeing things when I reported that the sparseimage file was copied TWICE.

But how would you explain this:

[15:46] tnuctip:/Users/jwr>l /Users/.jwr/
total 23817436
-rw------- 1 jwr jwr 24389050368 Oct 12 15:46 jwr.sparseimage
[15:46] tnuctip:/Users/jwr>l /Volumes/mac-backup\ 120GB/Users/.jwr/
total 43925376
-rw-r--r-- 1 root jwr 44979585024 Oct 12 15:46 jwr.sparseimage
[15:46] tnuctip:/Users/jwr>

The first is the source sparseimage, the second is the backup that is being updated. The second file keeps growing as the backup makes progress.

Just to make it more clear:

[15:49] tnuctip:/Users/jwr>du -sk /Users/.jwr/
23817436 /Users/.jwr/
[15:49] tnuctip:/Users/jwr>du -sk /Volumes/mac-backup\ 120GB/Users/.jwr/
45670400 /Volumes/mac-backup 120GB/Users/.jwr/
[15:49] tnuctip:/Users/jwr>

what gives?

--J.

[dnanian]

Are you logged into the FileVault account you're copying?

[jrychter]

Yes, I am. Trying to keep activity low, but I am.

[dnanian]

OK -- as documented in the User's Guide, you really can't do that reliably...

[jrychter]

Oh. Well, this means I won't be backing up that often -- switching to another user is a major undertaking. As I understand it, I need to fully log out, not just quick-switch to another user.

If backing up on-the-fly from my main user account is not supposed to work, perhaps a warning is in order? I'm afraid no one reads user manuals these days...

[dnanian]

If someone isn't going to take the time to read a User's Guide, even when they encounter a problem (when it's easy to search on, say, FileVault), I'm not sure a warning will help much...

Anyway, note that you can back up your FileVault information *separately* by selecting its volume in the source pop-up and using "Backup - all files". Direct that copy to its own volume...