Backing up to Dropbox

David Buchan

I have an 8.5gb encrypted vault that I would like to regularly back up to Dropbox and am after suggestions from anyone else that has done this efficiently. I don't plan to open the vault on any other machine. Rather, it is to server as an offsite component of my backup strategy.



So far I have Hazel monitoring a Knox backup directory. When a backup appears, I rename the file to strip the date and time from the name and then move it to my Dropbox folder. Hazel doesn't act on the file until it has been there an hour so that it doesn't try to move something still being written to.



If Knox backup wasn't in the habit of appending a timestamp to a backup (and I do understand why it does), then I could backup directly to Dropbox.



This solution works but I was wondering if anyone has done something similar, or has any other ideas.



Thanks,



David

khad

Welcome to the forums, David!



It sounds like you have a good system in place. I'm not sure I would recommend anything different if that system works for you. [url="http://help.agilebits.com/Knox/sync_vaults.html"]"Backing up the backups" is exactly what we recommend[/url] since attempting to backup an open vault can lead to problems. You could even set Knox to "Only store he newest backup" for that vault (to conserve space) and set the backup location to your Dropbox folder if you had any desire to eliminate Hazel from the setup.



Please let me know if there is anything else I can help with.



Cheers,

David Buchan

[quote name='khad' timestamp='1312865145' post='37935']

You could even set Knox to "Only store he newest backup" for that vault (to conserve space) and set the backup location to your Dropbox folder if you had any desire to eliminate Hazel from the setup.



[/quote]



Thanks Khad, but that solution still appends the date and time stamp doesn't it? Hazel has to stay.

khad

Yes, all Knox backups have a date and time in the filename. Hazel is a great application. If it ain't broke… <img src='http://forum.agilebits.com/public/style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/skype_smile.png' class='bbc_emoticon' alt=':-)' />

PBenz

Khad, the option to "Only store the newest backup" doesn't seem to be working for me. I noticed this the other day when Dropbox sent me an email warning me that I was almost out of space. This appears to have started after installing Lion. I'm running version 2.1.7 (157) of Knox.



(Hope this post doesn't classify as hijacking a thread. It seemed to make more sense to reply here than starting a new one).

Tacitus99

Not really wishing to hijack this thread, but would it be possible to have an additional preference for backups to, 'backup automatically on ejecting vault'?

khad

Welcome to the forums, PBenz. I will try to reproduce that, but so far I have not been able to. If you remove all the backups and "start fresh" do you still see the same behavior?



Tacitus99, I will mention that to the developers. I can see reasons for not including it (if the vaults are opened and closed frequently), but it is something to consider.

Tacitus99

[quote name='khad' timestamp='1313803695' post='40908']

Tacitus99, I will mention that to the developers. I can see reasons for not including it (if the vaults are opened and closed frequently), but it is something to consider.

[/quote] I can see your point regarding opening and closing vaults frequently which might create a large number of backups, but that can be covered in the 'only save the last X backups pref'.



Thank you for putting it to the developers though. <img src='http://forum.agilebits.com/public/style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/smile.png' class='bbc_emoticon' alt=':)' />

khad

Not just the number of backups but the resources involved to backup the vault (especially if the vault is, say, a terabyte in size). <img src='http://forum.agilebits.com/public/style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/skype_wink.png' class='bbc_emoticon' alt=';-)' />



It is a possibility, but I can't make any promises.

PBenz

Wow there has been activity on this thread! I never got an email notification - turns out I didn't have my preferences set correctly (boy are there a lot of preferences).



Anyway - Khad, I just tried deleting all of the Knox backups in my Dropbox folder and starting fresh. When I tried to run a manual backup for the second time, it seemed to work correctly. So I set a timer for 15 minutes and tried it again, but this time it created a 2nd backup. I noticed that when I deleted the backups that Finder prompted me for my password. Not sure if that's related or not. I'll continue to look into this as time permits. Thanks for the reply and I'll post back if I find anything.

khad

Thanks for following up, PBenz. (I know the forum notification options leave something to be desired.) I'm glad you returned to update the thread, though.



I have been continuing to test this but still can't reproduce it on my machine. Does the problem persist if you use a folder outside of Dropbox for backups? Perhaps there is another machine syncing with Dropbox...?

PBenz

Khad, you're running 10.7.1, correct? I just tried creating a new folder on my desktop, and pointed the Knox backup at it. Made a backup, waited 15 minutes, then made another backup, and it did not delete the 1st file. I checked the console and there is an error that may or may not be relevant:



8/27/11 9:00:45.210 AM Knox: ERROR in -[NSFileManager(NSFileManagerKnoxAdditions) overrideLaunchServicesforBundlePath:]! _LSGetStrongBindingForRef returned error -10814 for path '/Users/paulb/Desktop/Knox Backup Test/Mozart Backup Vault 2011-08-27 09.00.sparsebundle'.

MartyS

PBenz, I was able to reproduce your conditions, and I too am not seeing older backups for the same vault being removed after a successful Knox backup. I'll look into it further, and make the developers aware of the findings. Hopefully it's something that we can address soon, or something that just needs a setting tweaked to get working again.

PBenz

Glad to hear that, Marty. Please let me know if I can be of further assistance.

MikeT

Thanks for letting us know about this issue. We'll continue to investigate this and we'll try to update this thread when we fix this or you'll see this mentioned in the change log.

PBenz

Since the release notes for 2.1.9 only said "Miscellaneous bug fixes and improvements" and nothing was mentioned here, I just want to confirm that this issue is still present. At least for me.

PBenz

Just thought I'd check back here to see if there has been any progress on this. I'm running 2.1.11 now and this issue is still present. I guess this bug must be pretty low priority. <img src='http://forum.agilebits.com/public/style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/skype_sadsmile.png' class='bbc_emoticon' alt=':-(' />

ashleyk

[quote name='PBenz' timestamp='1322051653' post='54286']

Just thought I'd check back here to see if there has been any progress on this. I'm running 2.1.11 now and this issue is still present. I guess this bug must be pretty low priority. <img src='http://forum.agilebits.com/public/style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/skype_sadsmile.png' class='bbc_emoticon' alt=':-(' />

[/quote]



I can't escape the feeling that Knox as a whole is considered a low priority. There just doesn't seem to be much movement either on the forums or with innovation of the software itself unless they are hiding some massive breakthrough that is about to be released.

MartyS

@PBenz, the issue is still in the current releases of Knox, so your mind hasn't been playing tricks on you. I have asked the developers to take a second look. For now, if the extra space being used is a serious impact you'll need to monitor the Knox backup location to remove older backup copies manually.



@ashleyk, Knox is a product that is built upon quite stable OS X facilities that most customers never get around to figuring out, and thus, never using. As such, there doesn't tend to be a lot of different things we can do unless additional OS X support exists. We do have some ideas percolating, but as we don't like to tell our customers to expect something and then for whatever reason not be able to "deliver", we cannot say what we have planned ahead of its time. I'm sure you understand. <img src='http://forum.agilebits.com/public/style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/skype_cool.png' class='bbc_emoticon' alt=':cool:' />

PBenz

Thanks for the update, Marty. I backup to Dropbox where my space is limited, so manually deleting the extra Knox backups has become a rather annoying part of my morning routine for the last three months. Hope it's an easy fix for the devs. I'd be happy to beta test or run a debug build if you need assistance.

MikeT

Hi PBenz,



This should be fixed now with 2.1.13 update for automatic backups. We're still investigating the issue with the manual backups where it doesn't delete the backups yet. Hopefully, it will not be too long.



I'm sorry that it is taking us this long to fix it, it's a strange collection of bugs.

PBenz

Hi Mike - yeah I noticed it was fixed when I updated to 2.1.13 the other day! Thank you! My morning routine is now much less annoying. <img src='http://forum.agilebits.com/public/style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/skype_smile.png' class='bbc_emoticon' alt=':-)' />

MikeT

HI PBenz,



Thanks for the update, I'm glad it's working better now. We'll continue to fix the remaining issue with the manual backups.



If there's anything else we can do, please let us know.



Thanks again.