Space Machine - an rsync helper script for easier offsite backups

[Czeko, Elmar]

Dear rsync community,

As Time Machine doesn't support offsite backups, I started developing an rsync helper script for synchronizations between Macs and network attached storage (NAS) devices. After running and refining my script for some time now, it works very well for my purposes.

Lately, I made my script, that I called Space Machine, available on my blog: http://goo.gl/KhgF4 

With Space Machine, each backup job is stored in a small configuration file which is fed to the script. It is possible to set backup intervals, split up big backup tasks into smaller folder jobs and also to create a backup history by transferring the backup into a dated folder upon each run. Upon completion, the script either sends an email or displays a growl notification on my Mac's desktop. By adding the backup jobs to cron, they run in the background according to a predefined schedule without needing any further attention from the user.

I hope this is helpful for people here. As I am not a programmer or expert in this matter, I would very much appreciate your feedback for further improvement! To make my code easily accessible, I added comments to both the script itself as well to an example backup job file.

Thank you for your time.

Elmar