Accordance and online backup services

[Ken Han]

Hi. I've noticed the following problem with two online backup services: Sugarsync and Carbonite.

 

When my user note is backed up online and later downloaded back to my computer, the user notes is no longer associated with Accordance. It will open in TextEdit with a lot of gibberish. Assigning the file to open with Accordance from get info window does not work as the file refuses to open. I've largely for this reason stopped using the user note, and instead take my notes in a separate file either in Pages or Mellel because their files are not corrupted after a backup-download cycle. Can someone at Accordance take a look please?

 

Thanks.

[Rick Bennett]

See this thread. It looks like this will be looked at for a future rev.

[Outis]

As Dr. Kang noted, what is happening is that when you sync your stuff to the remote server your metadata (a fancy name for files in the same directory or package which tell your computer which applications should open this file) is getting stripped in transit. It was handy in OS 9 days. But, with os X, with many other programs this is handled by extensions (the stuff after the "." at the end of file names).

 

So, when you sync this stuff over the internet it strips this data, making your usernotes unrecognizable after you download them again.

 

The solution is either to make sure that the server you are syncing to is formatted as HFS+ extended (mac format) instead of a PC or a Unix/Linux format. (hehe, fat chance!).

 

So then, the only real solution is to archive (zip up or make a disk image of the folders you need to backup) your treasured files and then upload them to a server.

 

My solution was to make a shell script which copied the archives securely a couple times a week to a remote server. Since they are made in disk images, when I download them, they still have the resource forks and I can make use of them (or share them with others).

 

Here is the shell script I make use of:

 

#!/bin/bash

newtime=`date +%m-%d-%y_%I%M%p`
cd ~
ditto -rsrcFork -V ~/documents/"Accordance Files" ~/YEP/accordance
hdiutil create -srcfolder ~/YEP ~/Accordance_$newtime.dmg
scp ~/Accordance_$newtime.dmg YOURACCOUNTNAMEHERE@SERVER-IP-ADDRESS-HERE:~/accordance > ~/Desktop/Accordance_$newtime.txt
rm -drvf ~/YEP
rm -rf ~/Accordance_$newtime.dmg

 

 

This solved the issue for me. I hope it might help you some.