Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!bbn!oberon!cit-vax!ucla-cs!flowers From: flowers@CS.UCLA.EDU Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac Subject: keeping multiple machine environments in synch Message-ID: <12086@shemp.CS.UCLA.EDU> Date: 8 May 88 02:12:50 GMT Sender: news@CS.UCLA.EDU Reply-To: flowers@CS.UCLA.EDU () Organization: UCLA Computer Science Department Lines: 32 It is getting really difficult trying to keep a few different machines in synch in terms of each having the same installed software and copies of the same working documents (home & office machines). Does anyone have any good suggestions or know of a program that will help with this? There are a few things that make this non-trivial: - Find Since ... (e.g. with DiskTop) doesn't work, since newly copied files keep their original write dates (which could be quite a ways into the past). So you have to keep a directory snapshot in some manner to be able to detect what has changed. - I thought incremental backups would be a way to do this, but with DiskFit at least I can't make it restore a save set without first deleting and reinitializing the target disk. Also, you want to incrementally grab every change that was made, not since the last backup, but since the last time you propogated changes to other machines, so you need to be able to specify this. - Also, with different machines, some individualization is necessary. For example, choosen printers are different, baud rates differ, folders differ. In the future other differences may be based on different amounts of core memory, disk space, appletalk connections, activities done only at one place and not the other. Thus, some way is needed of making individual changes and NOT having those propogate to other machines as they are updated. Does anyone have any suggestions for technique or sofware packages to aid with this? Right now I just try to be careful and systematic, but that fails at times. thanks, Margot Flowers Flowers@CS.UCLA.EDU ...!{ucbvax|ihnp4}!ucla-cs!flowers