iPodBackup

2009.02.23

It's that easy!

What is iPodBackup?

iPodBackup is a shell script-turned-application (via Platypus) that backs up your home folder to your iPod using the open source backup utility rsync. Combine it with Do Something When to have fully automated incremental backups to your iPod, for free!

You can customize a list of items to be excluded by simply dragging-and-dropping them onto the app. By default, the Music folder, as well as certain cache folders are skipped, in order to prevent duplicating your music and because caches are a kind of stupid thing to backup.

A note for first-time users: The first backup can take quite a while, especially if you use an encrypted disk image! Subsequent backups will be much faster, as only files that have changed will be copied over.

Product	Rating	Downloads
iPodBackup			add a comment
Data provided by VersionTracker

Summary

• iPodBackup will backup your home folder, wherever it may be, either to Users/username, as a folder, or to Users/username.sparseimage, as a disk image, on your iPod. The disk image may be encrypted or unencrypted.
• iPodBackup is untested on OS X 10.2 and earlier. Version 1.0.x should work, but 1.1+ requires OS X 10.3 or higher if you want to back up to a disk image. This is due to system-level changes in handling sparse disk images. See man hdiutil in the Terminal for details.
• Your iPod should be set to be used as a hard drive. Enable this from within iTunes. This is not technically necessary, but otherwise your iPod may be automatically ejected before you can begin the backup.
• According to user reports, PC-formatted (FAT32) iPods will work given that you backup to a disk image, and your data is less than 4 GB (Apparently FAT32 has a maximum file size of 4 GB). I have not tested this directly, so proceed at your own risk.
• To automate the backup, i.e. have iPodBackup launch automatically upon mounting your iPod, use Peripheral Vision (US$6.95), iPod Launcher (US$4.95), or Do Something When (free).
• Disclaimer: Use this app at your own risk. I am not responsible for any data loss, physical injuries, or mental trauma resulting from use of this app. If you don't trust me, just test and build the thing yourself!
• Please contact me if you have any questions, comments, or concerns. Remember to remove the obvious part from my email address.
• If you like iPodBackup, please give it a good rating at MacUpdate and/or VersionTracker. If you don't like it, or if you have problems, please email me! I can't provide support via the VT or MU comments features.
• iPodBackup is distributed under the GNU General Public License.

Usage notes

• If there is no iPod mounted, no backup will take place. You can, however, trick iPodBackup into thinking that a volume is an iPod by placing a folder called iPod_Control in the top directory of the volume. If multiple iPods or disguised drives exist, you will be prompted to choose one as of version 1.5.
• You can choose what files or folders to include in or exclude from the backup by editing the file ~/Library/Preferences/iPodBackup Exceptions.txt, or, as of version 1.4, by simply drag-and-dropping the files onto iPodBackup (while it is not running).
  • Note: The rules governing the inclusions and exclusions are fairly complicated. Please see the "Exclude Patterns" section of the rsync manual for more details if you'd like to edit the rules manually.
• Preferences are stored at ~/Library/Preferences/iPodBackup Preferences.txt.
• A log of iPodBackup's actions is stored at ~/Library/Logs/iPodBackup.log. This log is overwritten every time you run iPodBackup. Be sure to delete this file if you are upgrading from 1.0.x!
• If you are experiencing a problem where files deleted from the source are not removed from the target (rsync reports "IO error encountered - skipping file deletion" in the log) then add the string ignore_errors=true to a new line in the preferences file. Note: This feature was broken in versions prior to 1.4.
• As of version 1.1, clicking the Cancel button on the progress bar window does successfully stop the sync.
• iPodBackup under OS X 10.3 and earlier uses a 3rd-party version of rsync which can sometimes malfunction. iPodBackup can detect this misbehavior and stop it for you. The problem appears to be fixed in the version of rsync bundled with OS X 10.4.

Download

Current version (1.5.4):

• Download iPodBackup.dmg (448 KB)
• Download iPodBackup.sh (23 KB, script only)

Previous versions:

• Download iPodBackup1.4.2.dmg (404 KB)
• Download iPodBackup1.4.2.sh (16 KB, script only)
• Download iPodBackup1.0.4.sh (910 B, script only)

Localizable strings file:

• Download iPodBackup strings 1.5.4 (8 KB, text)

If you'd like to contribute a localization, please download the above file and replace the English strings on lines that begin with string#=. Strings must contain surrounding double quotes, and double quotes meant to be part of the string must be escaped with \. Please leave the comment lines (beginning with #) as-is, and please keep the file's text encoding as UTF-8. iPodBackup has translations in:

• Catalan
• English
• French
• German
• Italian (incomplete)
• Japanese
• Spanish
• Swedish

Any other language you can provide would be much appreciated.

Change log

• Version 1.5.4 (2005-07-18)
  • Growl notification support
  • Better handling of disk image mounting problems
• Version 1.5.3 (2005-06-23)
  • Improved localization system
  • Better handling of full iPods and related errors
• Version 1.5.2 (2005-06-08)
  • New automated update check feature
  • Better handling of rsync "IO errors"
  • (Most) localizations up to date

Show entire history

Extras

• See a detailed guide describing how I made iPodBackup.
• Get additional information, such as how to build iPodBackup.
• I got an interesting email from John W., who suggested the following:

  I found a nice way to see iPodBackup output in an unobtrusive manner using GeekTool. I just have GeekTool run this script every 30 seconds:

  #! /bin/sh
  								
  if (ps x | grep 'iPodBackup' | grep -qv grep); then
  	tail -n 25 /Users/user/Library/Logs/iPodBackup.log
  fi

  This way I can keep an eye on iPodBackup when it is running.

  If you try this out, be sure to put your username in the appropriate spot. Thanks, John!

• In OS X 10.4 you can keep tabs on the iPodBackup log by using the tailDash widget.
• iPod photo users should exclude their iPhoto Library from the backup. Do this by drag-and-dropping the iPhoto Library folder onto iPodBackup, or by manually adding the line - /Pictures/iPhoto Library/ to the exceptions file.

Around Town

This section exists purely to stroke my own ego.

• iPodBackup is listed on MacUpdate, VersionTracker, and freshmeat.
• iPodBackup was included in a CD along with the September(?) issue of German tech magazine c't. At least that's what they told me; they never gave me my complimentary copy.
• iPodBackup appeared in the February 2005 issue of Japanese Mac magazine Mac People. Unfortunately, the version listed was an older one that did not have the Japanese localization. Oh well.
• iPodBackup also appeared in ASCII Corp's iPod Perfect Guide 2005, edited by the guys from Mac People.
• iPodBackup was supposed to be included with some issue of MacWorld, but I don't know what happened to that.

Known issues

Under OS X 10.4:

If you experience problems in OS X 10.4, revert to the old version of rsync when prompted, or add the line manual_os_version=7 to the iPodBackup preferences file.

• rsync works once, then crashes every time after the initial run. My bug report to Apple about this is being "analyzed" right now, so hopefully this will be solved eventually. It seems that it has something to do with the number of files to be analyzed on the target (it always crashes for me when there are more than 18,000 files). Try excluding some items from the backup.
• rsync re-copies metadata every time, making the backup slow. Apple marked my bug report on this issue "duplicate," so we can assume they know about it. Let's hope it's fixed in 10.4.2.
• While running, the machine is sluggish and unresponsive. This looks to be either an rsync or an OS X problem, as I did not experience it to this degree under OS X 10.3. Again, we'll have to wait for a fix from Apple. Some people have reported that turning off Spotlight can improve copy speeds.

Under OS X 10.3:

• Several users report that rsync won't delete files from the backup that don't exist anymore in the original. It looks like this problem might be due to the user deleting and/or moving files while rsync is "building file list." Try adding ignore_errors=true to the prefs file.
• Many users have reported the "exploding log" problem. This is now detected and stopped by iPodBackup. This is a bug in RsyncX's rsync, and will likely never be fixed; the recommended solution is to upgrade to OS X 10.4 so you can use Apple's built-in rsync.

Plans for the future

• Improve documentation
• Include more translations

Acknowledgments

• Thanks to Kenichi Yoshida for the amazing new icon!
• Thanks a lot to demograph68 for the original icon.
• Thanks to Antonio for suggesting that I implement backups to encrypted disk images.
• Thanks to Richie, Marc, and Jan for helping me debug version 1.1.
• Thanks to Dominik for suggesting that the exceptions be kept outside of the app itself.
• Thanks to John for suggesting the chime feature.
• Thanks to Fred for suggesting a fix for the "IO error" problem.
• Thanks to Zack for helping me wrangle with AppleScript.
• Thanks to all of the translators.
• Thanks to everyone else I forgot to mention!