I recently heard of QRecall, and am giving it a trial to see if it is a good replacement for part of my current backup approach.

I want to add a folder hierarchy to an archive, but I don't want to include a couple of large subfolders. I don't see a way of doing this directly. As soon as I add the top level folder, QRecall immediately starts the capture process. I realize that I could wait for the capture to finish, then delete the undesired subfolders, but I would rather not wait for hundreds of GB in these subfolders to be backed up, just to immediately delete them. Is there a better approach?

Another unrelated question - when entering administrator access in QRecall, where is the password stored, and is it in clear text?

Thanks.

Lowell,

Thanks for your interest in QRecall. Let me see if I can answer your questions.

Lowell wrote:I want to add a folder hierarchy to an archive, but I don't want to include a couple of large subfolders. I don't see a way of doing this directly. As soon as I add the top level folder, QRecall immediately starts the capture process. I realize that I could wait for the capture to finish, then delete the undesired subfolders, but I would rather not wait for hundreds of GB in these subfolders to be backed up, just to immediately delete them. Is there a better approach?

Method #1: Using the current version of QRecall, create an action to capture the top level folder. In that action, add the folders you want to exclude to the Excluded Items list. Save the action and run it whenever you want to capture that top-level folder, but not capture those specific sub-folders.

Method #2: Wait for the QRecall 2.0, which will exclude items on a per-item basis. You can either set items that you never want captured in your archive's preferences, or set the capture preferences of any item right in the Finder. Once set, these exclusions apply to all captures, no matter how they are made (interactively or by actions).

Another unrelated question - when entering administrator access in QRecall, where is the password stored, and is it in clear text?

QRecall simply asks OS X for elevated permissions; QRecall never has access to your password.

When any application asks for elevated permissions, OS X puts up the "enter your admin name and password" dialog. It then verifies your identity and, if it's correct, temporarily grants the application the permissions it was asking for. The application never sees, nor has access to, the information you entered in the security dialog.

In QRecall's case, it originally asks for elevated privileges so it can install its helper tool as root. Once installed, the helper tool implicitly runs as root (so it can capture files your user account wouldn't normally have access to, like the operating system). This is a permanent condition, so QRecall doesn't have to ask again in the future. (Note that this mechanism also changes in QRecall 2.0, which uses a privileged helper service managed by launchd, which is more secure.)

James Bucanek wrote:
Method #2: Wait for the QRecall 2.0, which will exclude items on a per-item basis. You can either set items that you never want captured in your archive's preferences, or set the capture preferences of any item right in the Finder. Once set, these exclusions apply to all captures, no matter how they are made (interactively or by actions).

Which could bring up the question on when the Beta of QRecall 2.0 is available! .

--
Jochen

James Bucanek wrote:Lowell,

Thanks for your interest in QRecall. Let me see if I can answer your questions.

Lowell wrote:I want to add a folder hierarchy to an archive, but I don't want to include a couple of large subfolders. I don't see a way of doing this directly. As soon as I add the top level folder, QRecall immediately starts the capture process. I realize that I could wait for the capture to finish, then delete the undesired subfolders, but I would rather not wait for hundreds of GB in these subfolders to be backed up, just to immediately delete them. Is there a better approach?

Method #1: Using the current version of QRecall, create an action to capture the top level folder. In that action, add the folders you want to exclude to the Excluded Items list. Save the action and run it whenever you want to capture that top-level folder, but not capture those specific sub-folders.

This is a reasonable work around. The main glitch is that some of the folders I want to exclude don't have permissions such that they are visible to the admin user from where I run the backups. I tried a couple of tests to confirm that I can temporarily add read permission to those folders, add them to the exclude list, then set the permissions back, and the backup still works.

Method #2: Wait for the QRecall 2.0, which will exclude items on a per-item basis. You can either set items that you never want captured in your archive's preferences, or set the capture preferences of any item right in the Finder. Once set, these exclusions apply to all captures, no matter how they are made (interactively or by actions).

This sounds like a better approach, and I look forward to its implementation.