[HOWTO] Backup data to a CD via the command line

[gatorparrots]

Here is how to create a 100MB drive image, backup data to it, and then burn it onto a CD (directly in the commandline, with only the built-in tools). One possible application: This could be easily modified and incorporated into a script that will backup your Entourage mail databases every week, good for up to six uses (6x100MB) depending on the size of your mail data...

hdiutil create -fs HFS+ -volname Backup -size 100m ~/Desktop/backup.dmg
hdiutil mount ~/Desktop/backup.dmg
ditto -rsrc -V ~/Desktop/datatobackup /Volumes/Backup >> /Volumes/Backup/backup.log
hdiutil unmount /Volumes/Backup
hdiutil burn ~/Desktop/backup.dmg -noverifyburn -noeject

It will prompt you for a disc, insert one and it will burn your disc:

Please insert a disc: 
Starting
Initializing
Saving temporary image
Opening session
Writing track
............................................................................
Finishing writing
............................................................................

[gatorparrots]

Here is a script to backup the Entourage mail database to a CD. I have mine as a cron task that runs every Friday before I leave work.
The CD tray opens at the set time as if to say "Feed me"!
Simply insert a CD and off it goes! Ahh, the power of Mac OS X.

Please note that this script requires fileutils to be installed. The -h in du -sh is for Human readable, meaning it will return the results in megabytes.
A pre-compiled binary can be obtained here:
http://homepage.mac.com/rgriff/file.html
or fink install fileutils works for those with using the fink pagackage manager.

#!/bin/sh
#This script will backup your Entourage mail database to a CD

username=YOURSHORTUSERNAME
date=`date +%Y.%m.%d`
size=`/usr/local/bin/du -sh "/Users/$username/Documents/Microsoft User Data" | awk ' { print $1 } '`

#Quit Entourage and give it time to write its database to disk
/usr/bin/osascript -l AppleScript -e 'tell Application "Microsoft Entourage" to quit'
/bin/sleep 4

/usr/bin/hdiutil create -fs HFS+ -volname Backup-$date -size $size /Users/$username/Desktop/backup.dmg
/usr/bin/hdiutil mount /Users/$username/Desktop/backup.dmg
/usr/sbin/disktool -r
echo $date >> /Volumes/Backup-$date/backup.log
/usr/bin/ditto -rsrc -V "/Users/$username/Documents/Microsoft User Data/Office X Identities/Main Identity/" /Volumes/Backup-$date/ >> /Volumes/Backup-$date/backup.log
/usr/bin/hdiutil unmount /Volumes/Backup-$date
/usr/bin/hdiutil burn "/Users/$username/Desktop/backup.dmg" -noverifyburn -noeject

#Clean up and relaunch Entourage
/bin/rm "/Users/$username/Desktop/backup.dmg"
/usr/sbin/disktool -r
/usr/bin/osascript -l AppleScript -e 'launch Application "Microsoft Entourage"'

This works very well for those of us with tray-loading drives, as the opening tray is probably sufficient reminder to insert a blank disc.
Those with slot-loading drives should probably add this line before the 'burn' command:
osascript -l AppleScript -e 'tell Application "Finder" to activate & speak "Please insert a blank CD-R disc."'

[clc2112]

I was able to fix some things but not familiar with the following error.

/sbin/newfs_hfs: /dev/rdisk2s2: partition is too small (minimum is 4 MB)
/usr/bin/hdiutil: detach: "disk2s1" detached successfully.
/usr/bin/hdiutil: detach: "disk2s2" detached successfully.
/usr/bin/hdiutil: detach: "disk2" detached successfully.
hdiutil: create failed - error 256

this is received after the following line in the script:

/usr/bin/hdiutil create -fs HFS+ -volname Backup-$date -size $size /Users/$username/Desktop/backup.dmg

I had to change the du command to du -sk, as "h" was an invalid option..

Thanks for any help..

[gatorparrots]

The -h in du -sh is for Human readable, meaning it will return the results in megabytes. I should have made it clear that this requires filetutils to be installed (Sorry about that!). They can be obtained here:
http://homepage.mac.com/rgriff/file.html

If you prefer to keep the default du that comes with the OS, you can easily adapt the script by changing 2 lines in the original script. I have edited my previous post to make this distinction more clear. Hope this clears things up!

[yaelony]

I have my saved emails in 'mail' not entourage, with many mailboxes. how do we back up mailboxes without using entourage? I would like to backup on idisk if possible or a usb port or whatever makes sense, to back up on a regular basis.