Sync desktop Mac environment to laptop
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Andrew Vit
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Published on 2010-10-22T11:02:12Z
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2011/01/08
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I spend the majority of my time working at my desktop Mac, which I have configured for my web development environment. My spouse has a MacBook for casual use, and I occasionally steal it back when I need to work off-site, or when travelling. The question is how to best synchronize the two so I can switch between them more readily.
I've solved a few obvious things by using online services:
- Email is hosted on IMAP.
- Working files are in Dropbox.
- Source code is managed in git.
However, the following are things I always miss when jumping on the laptop:
- Installed Applications (current versions)
- Installed libraries & utilities (/usr/local)
- Apache VirtualHosts & other configurations (/etc)
- Disk image files for VMs
My current method is to connect the MacBook via Firewire target mode and rsync
the /Users/me home directory, and then cherry-pick the other items I need from Applications
, /etc
and /usr/local
. The problem with this method is that it can be very time consuming due to things like my virtual machine image files, cached emails, etc.
How can I make this faster & easier? Can you recommend a solution for configuration management (so I can repeatably install & configure the same software on both), or synchronization (so I can bring the MacBook up to date nightly, over our home network)?
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