fms11a on OS 10.6.4

shell script as below (as per Wim Decorte method of old)

user account is the system user and validates in schedule assistant

trying to run the schedule generates 'aborted by user'

#!/bin/bash

# only change the next two lines of this script to suit your installation

source="/Library/FileMaker Server/Data/Backups/Hourly/"

destination="/Users/Shared/fms_backups"

# source defines the folder you to archive. Only archive FileMaker Server backups, not the master files hosted by FMServer.

# destination is the place t the archives are sent

# ( best this be a separate volume )

# suffix is the time stamp to append to the destination

suffix="$(date +%Y%m%d%H%M%S).zip"

# create symlink files in tmp folder, to deal with spaces in file paths

sourcelink="/tmp/sumware001.ln"

ln -s "$source" $sourcelink

destinationlink="/tmp/sumware002.ln"

ln -s "$destination$suffix" $destinationlink

# copy with pkzip compression and preserve resources

ditto -c -k --rsrc $sourcelink $destinationlink

# clean up the symlinks we created earlier

rm -f $sourcelink

rm -f $destinationlink

We've had so many problems trying to run shell scripts from different versions of FMS, we've mostly given up.

We call scripts like yours from the system-level CronTab.

On one or two occasions we've been really glad of the fact that the backup is completely independent of FMS... FMS can disappear altogether, and your backup still runs.

Hope that helps.

James

Hi James

yes that helps, I found CronniX which made the cron job that much easier. Had been thinking about it...

have this working manually on OS X Server 10.6.4, as a command in CronniX

ditto -c -k -V -rsrc /Library/”FileMaker Server”/Data/Backups/Hourly /Volumes/osxsrv/Users/Shared/fms_backups/`date +%y-%m-%d`_ccc.zip

So just the cron triggering to sort out ; thought I had it :-)

The syntax handles the space in FileMaker Server, so no apparent need for the (sym?) links of the prior shell script approach

thanks

worked through cron approach (handy CronniX), seems cron is supplanted by launchd as far as Apple are concerned.

Now have a nice launchd process backing up FMS11 A backups running under OS X server. Also works on OSX.

fairly simple