I have two Mac systems that both MobileMe sync, and use Mozy. One is on a free account, the other is on unlimited service.
And, today, I had to turn off MobileMe Preference Sync. I’ve stumbled on something that isn’t is a bug, but is a limitation of how the two products work together. Actually, Apple would argue that it’s a bug since apps are supposed to handle machine-specific preferences differently.
When Mozy backs up, it loads a configuration file… which tells it what folders and file types you want to back up. This is a preference file, stored in the preferences folder. Well, when MobileMe Sync takes place, guess what happens? The newest Mozy preferences are spread to all my computers.
Oddly enough, this doesn’t affect the login process… just the designated set of what files and folders to back up. I suspect those are two separate plist files…
But, sure enough, my MozyHome Free computer wanted to back up my entire Apple Mail and iTunes Libraries (which I do want my Mozy unlimited computer to do). The first couple of times I encountered this, I thought it was Mozy not saving the preferences… now I know why.
What can Mozy do to fix this? Simple. Follow Apple’s directives for handling machine-specific settings. Specifically, they should be in a separate file, with an additional extension. For example ~/Library/Application Support/Mozy/Mozy-ComputerName/com.mozy.filestobackup.plist
Update: As shown in the comments, Mozy has been a class act in working on solving the issues. Same tech support quality I’ve seen with email support. I continue to highly recommend them, plus, you know, it’s free for the first 2 GB.
You might also like...
Christopher,
Mozy does not store its list of “files to back up” in a plist file. The list is stored in /Library/Application Support/Mozy/state.db (in the system location, not within your home folder). Your login credentials are stored in the same file. Since your computers are using different credentials, it is very unlikely that MobileMe could find a way to sync just half of the file.
The plist files in your home folder (~/Library/Application Support/Mozy) just contain the position of the application’s windows, so that we can re-open them in the same location they were last used.
We do provide a default list of Backup Sets that is the same for all users, so maybe that is what you are seeing. We will double-check the scenario you describe, however, just to make sure.
Thanks,
Dan Reese
Mac Engineering Team Lead at Mozy
It’s possible that there’s some other bug that is stopping Mozy’s settings from saving. But, I changed them three times… and they snapped back to the same file-type settings on my MacBook Pro.
Since I have your ear, any reason why Mozy’s menu status grays-out on my MacBook Pro all the time? MozyBackup cranks up to about 60% CPU utilization, and without the status bar item being responsive… I can’t tell what it’s crunching so much resources on. I suspect it might be hanging a lot. Totally separate issue there, but any ideas?
Yeah, there may be some other issue going on. Can you send me your log file? I will take a look and get back to you. dan at mozy dot com.
/Library/Logs/Mozy.log
We have seen the menu icon grayed out before. It doesn’t seem very common, but it is on our list of things to fix soon. For now, quitting and restarting Mozy Status will fix it. You can do that by going into Mozy’s preferences, deselecting the “Show status icon in menu bar” and then re-selecting it.
Thanks for letting us know about the issues you’re seeing. We definitely want to get them fixed. :)
It looks like I’ve solved the issues on both systems with an Uninstall and Reinstall. Unfortunately, the Uninstall AppleScript doesn’t give an option to preserve logs while trashing config files. Since the config files were likely a problem here, I told it to go ahead.
If the issue comes back when I re-enable MobileMe Sync, I’ll be sure to pass the logs along. Thanks for your help though.
P.S. Cool option would be to have the uninstall AppleScript offer to copy the logs to the desktop, for easy emailing.
That’s a great suggestion. I’ll forward it to our Program Manager. Thanks.
I’m glad Mozy is working for you now.