psync - 0.69.3

I have successfully (or so I thought) installed psync on my new MacBook Pro running os x 10.5.6. I run it through PsyncX, which I use to schedule backup batches. I backup to a mounted network file server. PsyncX calls psync via runpsync with the options -m -p -d -r

After several backups, I noticed that a large number of new files were not backed up. Manually running psync in verbose mode (-v3) showed me that some directories were just skipped over withouth the content being analysed, for example a directory with 200 jpegs.

The only way I found to overcome the problem was to delete the .psync.db in the source root.

Can anybody explain what has happended? I thought .psync.db would mainly be used during restore to set access rights, but apprently it also controls what happens during backup. And what is the impact of deleting .psync.db before running a backup? Will it have any negative consequences? What could I do to make backups run as they should without deleing the psync.db first?

Thanks for any help and suggestions.

The first time you try to use synchronizing CCC offers to download and install psync for you. If you had accepted that offer you wouldn't have all this bother. Use:

    psync for CCC (Panther/Tiger)

It's just luck that I spotted your post here. For questions about CCC use:

    Bombich forums, and...

look at the Stickies in "Tips" and in "Troubleshooting" and use the Search button. You would have found masses to read about psync, including the one here 'tweaked' by Jacek Stanislawski. If you still have a question post it there in "Troubleshooting".

Andreas ~ moderator, forums.bombich.com

amcgee ~ Because of your perceived 'grievance' you rate Jacek's work at one star - never mind the quality of his work - Oh boy!

Your remark about the Bombich site needs modifying - there are plenty of references there to new versions of psync, e.g.: Have your cake *and* eat it..

What have you personally done to bring about the unification you so much desire?

This is the swiss army knife of tools.

Need a nightly backup? Just add it to the crontab and you'll get a fresh clone every night.

Need to clone someone's system to a new computer? Put the new computer in target firewire mode (and make sure to set it to not ignore permissions in Get Info in the Finder!) and then psync away. You get a perfect, bootable clone on the new machine.

Love this product. (As if you couldn't tell!)

PS: I've also experienced the -r bug mentioned below, but always just put it down to AFP's weird permissioning behavior... I just -m instead of -r as this is simply a user backup and can be owned by the user that mounted the volume, it's not a problem for me.

PPS: Mounting volumes is cake using Applescript. Just add this above the psync in your crontab:

osascript -e 'tell application "Finder"' -e 'mount volume "afp://someuser:somepassword@servername.local/VolumeToMount"' -e 'end tell';

And if you want to unmount afterwards:
osascript -e 'tell application "Finder"' -e 'eject "VolumeToEject"' -e 'end tell'

I have been trouble shooting why when I am running a remote backup to an AFP share it copies everything, even items that have not changed. I tracked it down to psync not using the .psync.db file during a backup (or at least not properly). Using -v4 I can see that the target file ownership is wrong and for that it backs it up again. If I use the -m option to ignore ownership then it works as expected. The restore operation works correctly. Using -m is possible for me as ownership is not something that changes on files, but decidedly a bug.