[Box Backup] Box Backup 0.11rc2 on OS X 10.5

[Chris Wilson]

Hi Achim,

On Tue, 17 Mar 2009, Achim wrote:

> I am about to submit some patches to the developers that enable Cumulus 
> to be compiled on OS X.
>
> If you could think of a way to implement snapshots in Box Backup, that 
> would be fantastic. A hackish approach could be to use two different 
> bbackupd.conf: one with the "lazy" approach of monitoring files, and one 
> that uploads all files. You then switch between the two configurations 
> whenever you want to run a full sync/snapshot.

I think Box Backup is not designed to really do snapshots and it's a big 
change. I wish I had time to do it.

What would you say are the advantages of Box over Cumulus, i.e. why 
shouldn't I give up on Box and start using Cumulus instead?

>> was about three years ago that I last tested Box server on Darwin. I 
>> did get all tests passing on MacOS X more recently, which makes me 
>> think that the problem might have been fixed.
>
> So should I try to build again from SVN?

No, all the macos fixes I did were about a year ago.

> I can also send you the logs per e-mail if that helps you!

Yes please, but without a mac to work on I can't promise to fix them.

> I can think of a couple of reasons to maintain folder timestamps in 
> addition to file timestamps:
>
> * Backup should reflect the target data as closely as possible, including
> folder timestamps
> * Ability to sort folder list by age (perhaps needed by some users)
> * Applications may rely on past/future folder dates for some internal
> reason (think application-internal archiving)
> * Tar does it via the p switch (preserving permissions and timestamp of
> files and folders)
>
> Perhaps there is a middle way to add a configuration option: by default, 
> Box keeps acting the way it does, but by enabling 
> "--keep-folder-timestamps" it stores them accurately? Or is adding such 
> functionality too complicated?

I think it's technically possible, but not trivial. Files can have new 
attributes applied, including timestamps, without re-uploading them, but I 
don't think directories can at the moment.

> Again, folder timestamps and hardlinks would be a fantastic addition to 
> Box Backup.

Do you actually use either of these? I.e. do you actually care if they're 
backed up or not?

Cheers, Chris.
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