Maintain a bootable clone of Mac OS X volume

rsync_backup

#!/bin/sh

PROG=$0
RSYNC="/usr/bin/rsync"
SRC="/"
DST="/Volumes/Backup/"

# rsync options
# -v increase verbosity
# -a turns on archive mode (recursive copy + retain attributes)
# -x don't cross device boundaries (ignore mounted volumes)
# -E preserve executability
# -S handle spare files efficiently
# --delete delete deletes any files that have been deleted locally
# --exclude-from reference a list of files to exclude

if [ ! -r "$SRC" ]; then
 /usr/bin/logger -t $PROG "Source $SRC not readable - Cannot start the sync process"
 exit;
fi

if [ ! -w "$DST" ]; then
 /usr/bin/logger -t $PROG "Destination $DST not writeable - Cannot start the sync process"
 exit;
fi

/usr/bin/logger -t $PROG "Start rsync"

sudo $RSYNC -vaxE -S --delete --exclude-from=$HOME/rsync_excludes.txt "$SRC" "$DST"

/usr/bin/logger -t $PROG "End rsync"

# make the backup bootable
sudo bless -folder "$DST"/System/Library/CoreServices

exit 0

rsync_excludes.txt

.Spotlight-*/
.Trashes
/tmp/*
/Network/*
/cores/*
/afs/*
/automount/*
/private/tmp/*
/private/var/run/*
/private/var/spool/postfix/*
/private/var/vm/*
/Previous Systems.localized
/Volumes/*
*/.Trash

A more comprehensive list of files to exclude is available on the CCC website, which I included in my fork. This also explains why this backup does not boot (as noted on your website)

Only just seen your comment (I wish GitHub emailed you about comments on gists). Thanks for this. Looks like you have some good improvements that I'll look to roll into my script, now in this dotfiles repo