Everyone backs up their data. The problem I ran into is that I have 2TB’s of data to backup, and I couldn’t find a cloud based solution that uploaded my data fast enough. So, I went to plan B. As you can tell by the title of this blog, I am going to use rsync. rsync is a software application and network protocol for Unix-like systems with ports to Windows that synchronizes files and directories from one location to another while...

Have you ever wanted to rename all your iPhone photos to the create date when they were taken, down to the second? Yeah, me too. So I wrote a little script that runs through your current directory and renames all the specified files to the format YYY-MM-DD HH.MM.SS.EXTENTION. I got the idea from my Dropbox mobile upload. Dropbox renames all your files with the same format, and I just thought it was a really good idea. WARNING: USE AT YOUR...

“In computing, tar (derived from tape archive) is both a file format (in the form of a type of archive bitstream) and the name of a program used to handle such files.” $ tar [options]f archive-name.tar.gz /directory-to-archive-or-file-name Key tar Options: c = create x = extract t = test (list) v = verbose f = file name z = gzip j = bzip2 Example: gzip a directory. $ tar cvzf filename.tar.gz /directory/path bzip2 a...

Are you sick of ssh’ing into a server and having to type in your password? Yeah, me too. Ran from your source computer: $ ssh-keygen Generating public/private rsa key pair. Enter file in which to save the key (/Users/user/.ssh/id_rsa): Enter passphrase (empty for no passphrase): Enter same passphrase again: Your identification has been saved in /Users/user/.ssh/id_rsa. Your public key has been saved in...

I thought I’d create a quick reference of useful zip and unzip commands for those of you that aren’t too familiar doing it via command line. Definition: zip is a compression and file packaging utility for Unix, VMS, MSDOS, OS/2, Windows NT, Minix, Atari and Macintosh, Amiga and Acorn RISC OS. ZIP a File: zip <zip_name> <filename> ZIP and encrypt/password protect a file: $ zip -e <zip_name>...

If you own an external Western Digital drive like myself, you may have noticed that the drive has a built-in sleep function that spins down the drive if not used in a 10 minute time period. This feature is really annoying to me. Every time I attempted to access a file on my external, Finder would hang until the drive spun back up. Here’s a quick and dirty solution. Create a script that touches a hidden file every 5 minutes. I added...