Hi all,

Let me begin by confessing that when it comes to composing/reading scripts I am a novice at best. Hence my plea for help on this board. Here is the situation...I am presently using RsyncX to backup my Mac HD to an external 250 GB Iomega HD. It is working great and from what I gather rsync is the way to go for a reliable backup. The graphical interface of RsyncX has also successfully steered me away from confronting the fact that I can't compose scripts. However, backup every night before I leave the lab is getting monotonous to say the least. I would prefer to develop a script that would enable me to backup my entire Mac HD to the external drive every night at 11 pm. I know that this is more than attainable, but as I confessed earlier I haven't the slightest clue when it comes to scripts. If anyone could provide a model script along with explanations of each element included, I would greatly appreciate it! Thanks in advance for your time and understanding.

eds1146

What you need to do [high-level overview]

1. Set up ssh so that the user under which you run the backup command can log into the remote server without a password
2. Work out what rsync command will "do" your backup
3. Create a file starting with "#!/bin/sh" and then on the next line your backup command, and set the premissions so that it is executable (chmod 755 filename)
4. Add a crontab entry to run the script at the specified time