synchronizing folders

[thecase]

Hi,

I want to update a couple of folders on my mac mini (I use it as a server) from a couple of folders on my laptop.

Someone setup Xcopy for me on my old PC with these switches: /c /h /e /k /y /i /d

This was great I just double clicked a batch file and it update my stuff to the pc..yeh I've moved to Mac world now but how to do same on a Mac?

I want to just update one of the folders with any new stuff I download to my laptop and just add them to folder, the other I want to keep it synced.

TIA

[HiRez]

I'm sure someone could write a script to do what you want, but ChronoSync (http://www.econtechnologies.com/pages/cs/chrono_overview.html) is an excellent GUI tool for syncing tasks. I couldn't survive without it (at work and at home) and it's well worth the $40.

[lee1210]

Rsync is the traditional unixy way to do this. It takes some reading, but it's free.

-Lee

[boast]

i also suggest rsync. open terminal and type man rsync which will show you its manual. then you edit crontab to execute commands (sudo nano /etc/crontab)

here is an example of how I have my picture folders sync daily at 8pm with my server
# The periodic and atrun jobs have moved to launchd jobs
# See /System/Library/LaunchDaemons
#
# minute hour mday month wday who command
00 20 * * * boast rsync -arut "/Users/boast/Pictures/" "/Volumes/Media/photos/"
15 20 * * * boast rsync -arut "Volumes/Media/photos/" "/Users/boast/Pictures/"

[thecase]

Thanks for all your advice! It's great to have such support from a fantastic community! :D

I've read about rsync and various other "of the shelf packages" and various articles suggest that one doesn't get a proper copy of the files with this way of doing things? Like not all attributes are copied, some of the packages like chronosync do not copy resource forks properly..blah blah. SuperDuper is the only thing that copies the files completely. I don't understand the intricacies of the BSD file systems on Mac.

So my questions are
1. Does this matter when one is mirroring/updating directories with say pdf files. I'm not trying to do a full backup per sais.
2. Is chronosync one of these packages that don't copy all file attributes, I KNOW SuperDuper is the best for this but the interface is clumsy for what I want to do.
3. I know rsync doesn't copy everything but is it enough to do what I want?

TIA

[boast]

you can download rsync v3, which fixes that whole extended-attributes thing. But I'm not sure why its needed? Fork data? I think you'll be fine with the regular back-ups.