Scheduled verify actions not launched

Hi James,
QRecall has been my backup workhorse for month now and I'm still satisfied. Very flexible and reliable (saved me already a few times from my own mistakes).

I have a few questions.

Maybe I miss something very obvious, but somehow my verify actions don?t do what I want them to do.
For each of my archives I have created a verify action based on an interval that fits the archive's capture frequency. For example, my short time archive that captures certain folders every hour has its verify action set to every 7 days starting from Jun 16th 2012 1:00 (the date I defined it, I guess). Now the status window shows a yellow LED complaining that it had not been verified for 13 weeks. The archive file is available all the time. Why does the scheduled action not run?

What would be the best way to schedule a verify after each capture? (This would be useful for my off-site backups to make sure the are healthy before I bring them out of the house).

Any news when the command-line tool (or any other means to trigger an action by script) might come up? (That's really the only thing I miss at the moment)

Johannes

Johannes wrote:Maybe I miss something very obvious, but somehow my verify actions don?t do what I want them to do.
For each of my archives I have created a verify action based on an interval that fits the archive's capture frequency. For example, my short time archive that captures certain folders every hour has its verify action set to every 7 days starting from Jun 16th 2012 1:00 (the date I defined it, I guess). Now the status window shows a yellow LED complaining that it had not been verified for 13 weeks. The archive file is available all the time. Why does the scheduled action not run?

I can't tell you why your verify action isn't running. You should check for schedule conditions that might prevent it from running. If you don't find anything obvious, send a diagnostic report. There may be a clue in the log file.

An interval schedule has an "anchor" date and time. The date/time is arbitrary, but all run times are then calculated starting from that date/time. So if you choose to run an action every three hours, and choose an anchor date of 1/1/2000 5:35, actions will run at 2:35, 5:35, 8:35, 11:35 and so on.

If you want to run something once a week, I suggest choosing a daily schedule and uncheck every day except one (say, Sunday). Daily schedules are much more intuitive and they adjust for local time (change in time zone, daylight savings time, etc.).

What would be the best way to schedule a verify after each capture? (This would be useful for my off-site backups to make sure the are healthy before I bring them out of the house).

Give it the same schedule as your capture action, but schedule it to run one minute later. As soon as the capture is finished, QRecall will start a verify.

Any news when the command-line tool (or any other means to trigger an action by script) might come up? (That's really the only thing I miss at the moment)

Good news and bad news. The good news is that the rewrite of QRecall that uses Apple's approved APIs is now working, and has passed all capture/restore regression tests. The bad news is that the new version won't be forward compatible with previous versions of QRecall. So once you've captured something with the new version, you can no longer use the old version to access your archives. This means that the new version must be rock solid before I would even consider releasing it as a beta, and we're just not there yet. But stay tuned. I hope to get a new beta cycle started within the next couple of months.

Thanks for your quick response (your support is another reason why I use QRecall).

Magically one of the overdue verify actions jumped into action this morning. Maybe it noticed that I called home

I'll keep an eye on it ...

So once you've captured something with the new version, you can no longer use the old version to access your archives.

Can both versions be used at the same time (not on the same archive of course)? That would be crucial for testing. Nobody would risk a longtime archive for a beta test.

Johannes

Johannes wrote:Can both versions be used at the same time (not on the same archive of course)?

Only one version of QRecall can be installed at a time.

That would be crucial for testing.

For testing, I maintain a separate set of archives, actions, and preferences which allows me to switch back and forth between the two versions.

Nobody would risk a longtime archive for a beta test.

Exactly. A great amount of testing has gone into making sure the new version correctly uses the data in existing archives, but not having a regression path is flirting with disaster.