OS X + OS 9 Backup Issues

[Sonic Purity]

Thanks Dave and everyone for contributing. I’ve done a lot of testing and reading about this on and off over the past few weeks. Below are my findings.

Originally Posted by dnanian

Well, as far as I know, OS9 file comments are in the Desktop DB (vs. .DS_Store under OSX). If you have modified the copy script to copy that, and it's unmodified (as I'm sure it would be), I don't know why the comments wouldn't be visible under OS9, since the involved files (once you changed the copy script) would be copied... especially if you've named the volumes the same. We certainly copy all the resource fork info, the files, the other metadata elements, etc.

Reading and testing indicates that there are things that the File Manager does when files are moved that cannot be replicated by just copying over Desktop DB (and DF). I did that with SD!, CarbonCopyCloner 3.x, and manually, and in all cases the Get Info comments were not visible. They were right there in the Desktop DB file, yet no longer linked to their corresponding files in a way that the OS 9 Finder would display them. Even letting OS 9 rebuild those desktop files in the new location didn’t help: comments still in Desktop DB, yet not visible in the OS 9 Finder.

Regarding why the Desktop DB isn't copied, as I recall (again, this is some time ago, and in a search of our internal database I can't find the exact info), the system wouldn't always start up properly under OS9 when the Desktop DB wasn't rebuilt, and not copying it was the recommended 'fix' (as opposed to forcing users to do it manually).

Thanks for checking. I did not find any particular issues when the desktop files were copied over, yet as i was tightly focused on the Get Info comments, i could easily have missed some things.

We haven't changed the way this stuff is copied for some time, so I don't think an earlier version of SuperDuper! will help, although you're welcome to try with v2.1.4, which you can download from the sidebar on the SuperDuper! page. But—and I hate to be discouraging here—given the fact that OS9 isn't available any more, and there are no current Macs that can even run it... and that we were always an OSX program and not a MacOS program, I can't say we've ever focused on OS9 support except as an extension of ensuring we're copying files properly.

It gets even worse: even the OS X 10.4.11 Finder itself, doing normal Finder copying, does Not preserve OS 9 Get Info comments.

The only way the comments are preserved:

• OS 9 Finder copying
• (from memory) OS 9 backup utilities (Retrospect 5 is one that does)

There do exist File Manager calls for working with the Get Info comments, and i guess the Vintage OS backup utilities must have been using some parts of the File Manager to keep the Desktop file structures working on the backup and restorations from backup, yet as i am not a programmer i don’t know much more than this.

The other interesting tidbit is that at least through Leopard there continued/continues to exist in OS X some Classic code related to the Desktop DB:

/System/Library/CoreServices/SKPlugins/DesktopDB.service

I could not find any information on this service other than a lot of WWW posts about people with Intel Macs wondering why it exists. I found nothing on Apple’s Developer site… yet again, i’m not a developer, so i may not have known where all to look. I did look inside this DesktopDB.service file with BBEdit, and did see the same File Manager calls for working with comments and other aspects of Desktop DB as discussed in the older Apple documentation for the File Manager. It appears that this file and others in that folder, all Classic code, exist to support older Carbon-based software. Whether or not this file could be used by a skilled programmer to cure the missing Get Info comments issue i do not know.

Basically, i’m giving up. I was looking into this for a friend/client who is only in 2009-2010 making the move from OS 9 to OS X (on a G3 Pismo, 10.4.11… works pretty well). He says he doesn’t have that many Get Info comments, so this issue won’t kill him (and i’ve suggested he use CommentConverter so at least the comments will get copied over to be visible in OS X’s Finder Get Info and preserved by SD! during backups). It would kill me, yet i maintain a wholly separate OS 9 Mac (several, actually) for avoiding just this sort of issue.

Thanks again, Dave, for looking into this. I totally understand that this was never a priority for SD!, and there is little reason for it to become so at this late date. Still, if anyone reading this figures something out, those of us who live on in a dual Vintage and X Mac OS world will greatly appreciate any fixes/workarounds! The only workaround i know is having OS 9 content on a separate volume and backing up that volume with OS 9 backup software that preserves the comments. All well and good, yet not for people like my friend/client who need access to one copy of files in both 9 and X as they learn X and gradually move over (remember those days?).

))Sonic((