Sync desktop Mac environment to laptop

Posted by Andrew Vit on Super User See other posts from Super User or by Andrew Vit
Published on 2010-10-22T11:02:12Z Indexed on 2012/04/16 5:35 UTC
Read the original article Hit count: 530

Filed under:

osx

|

sync

|

configuration

|

rsync

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)?

© Super User or respective owner

Related posts about osx

OSX/Wine - Associating file extension (.php) with a Windows program on OSX

as seen on Super User - Search for 'Super User'
Greetings, I am running PSPad (a Windows programming editor) on OSX/Snow Leopard using Wine 1.1.35 I want to associate various file extensions (.php, .js, .html) with PSPad.exe OSX Finder does not allow this association -- I can only associate file types with $.app items in Applications. How do… >>> More
osx web service spawns icon in taskbar - osx - while drawing image

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
I have a web endpoint that displays an image of a string... When the following code is run (in tomcat) it spawns a java icon in the taskbar on OSX. Not sure if it is a problem, or whats going on. Looking for some sort of explination @RequestMapping("/text/{text}") public void textImage(HttpServletResponse… >>> More
Cannot disable spotlight indexing on volume

as seen on Super User - Search for 'Super User'
I have a FAT32 partition on my HDD. When using OSX, it is mounted to /Volumes/MEDIA. After a recent upgrade to Mavericks, spotlight is having trouble indexing it, eating up almost all of my system resources, and I cannot get the indexing to stop: [jay-mba-osx ~]% sudo mdutil -v -a -i off /: Indexing… >>> More
OSX - User home directories shared via NFS

as seen on Super User - Search for 'Super User'
Hi, I've run into some problems with how I've got user home directories set up on our system here. Our server is an XServe, using Open Directory to manage the user accounts. The majority of our workstations are OSX, but there are a few running Linux (Centos 5.3), and, as time goes on, we expect… >>> More
Can't connect to local IP address on OSX

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
I'm trying to connect to a webserver that's running on my mac OSX 1.6. I'm able to connect to it locally using http://127.0.0.1:8888/myapp but when I attempt to connect to it using my machine's local IP address (http://192.168.1.15:8888/myapp IP shown below) from the same machine (or another on the… >>> More

Related posts about sync

Coherence - How to develop a custom push replication publisher

as seen on Oracle Blogs - Search for 'Oracle Blogs'
CoherencePushReplicationDB.zipIn the example bellow I'm describing a way of developing a custom push replication publisher that publishes data to a database via JDBC. This example can be easily changed to publish data to other receivers (JMS,...) by performing changes to step 2 and small changes to… >>> More
12c??? - Active Data Guard Far Sync

as seen on Oracle Blogs - Search for 'Oracle Blogs'
?? ================ Active Data Guard Far Sync?Oracle 12c????(???Far Sync Standby),Far Sync?????????????(Primary Database)?????????Far Sync??,??(Primary Database) ??(synchronous)??redo?Far Sync??,??Far Sync????redo??(asynchronous)???????(Standby Database)???????????????????????Far Sync?… >>> More
Using "offline files sync" to sync with a local resource [closed]

as seen on Super User - Search for 'Super User'
Possible Duplicate: Which is the best application to Sync two folders? I have been trying get my machine (XP-Pro SP3) to sync files to a local USB drive in the same way as I can with mapped network drives. I particularly want to the sync to happen automatically when the USB is connected - in… >>> More
Can't sync iphone when sync podcasts selected

as seen on Super User - Search for 'Super User'
I've gone through the following steps: Loaded up iTunes 10 on a Windows7 machine Went to iTunes store and subscribed to a podcast Selected sync podcasts Clicked sync However, it always hangs on step 1 of 3 - it just gives a status of 'Backing up' and never progresses past that. I've waited over… >>> More
Sync database with filter using SyncOrchestrator with Sync Framework 2.0

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
Hi, I want to synchronize two SQL databases. But since one of the databases only requires a subset of the data I am looking for a filter option. Is there a possibility to add a Filter to the SyncOrchestrator or do I have to add the filter to the SyncProvider? According to this: http://social.microsoft… >>> More