Where it’s at… Sunday, February 10, 2008

Excuse the brevity of this post, but—as you might expect with a new update–things are kind of busy around these parts.

The update's gone well, except for some bandwidth issues we had to deal with, and some MySQL issues on my server that happened due to some issues with the way FogBUGZ handles large attachments (really, really crappily, typically crashing MySQL after eating huge amounts of memory). But, apart from continued delays for outbound mail due to volume, it's good.

But, as I said a number of posts ago, the only thing I can promise about a big update like this one is that there'll be a few problems. They're not affecting many people, but to summarize:


  • Some users are reporting that the status display stops updating in the middle of the copy. The backup does actually complete eventually, but the progress bar doesn't move, and the file counts stop.

    We're not quite sure what's going on here: it's not something we've been able to reproduce at this end. But we're looking into it. If you're experiencing this issue, drop a note to support.

  • The updater has been giving the occasional problem. This is frustrating, because we know of some problems there and have tried to "pre-emptively" handle the problem with the update notice, which indicates that you should download the update manually if you experience a problem.

    Unfortunately, that hasn't been clear to people, resulting in a huge volume of incoming mail (we're talking thousands in the past few days)... so sorry for the delays in responding.

  • 10.2/10.3 users were being offered the 2.5 update. Due to an error in the update description XML, 10.2/10.3 users were being offered the update, even though it wasn't compatible with their systems. The XML has been corrected, so that shouldn't happen any more.

  • Some users are having problems starting up from their copies. On some systems, copies start up but then programs immediately begin crashing. This is corrected by re-prebinding the copy, but given the way Leopard works this shouldn't be necessary. We're hoping this is a Leopard bug that'll be corrected in an update of OS X, but we're investigating it here, too.

  • Users with AntiVirus programs are having the occasional problem. This is kind of expected, given the way that AntiVirus programs work. In general, we suggest that you configure your AntiVirus application so that it ignores the backup volume.

    That said, if the AntiVirus program is on, an incorrect result code returned from a system call is indicating a file that vanishes between two points of execution is a folder, when it's not, and that's causing a weird "(null)" error that repeats a large number of times in the log. We're implementing a workaround for this case in our copy engine.

    Note that if you get a "permission denied" type of error and you're running AntiVirus, you should configure your AntiVirus program to not scan the backup volume, or turn off its "auto protect" feature while you're backing up.

  • Already mounted images, or images with special characters in their filename, cause an error. Due to a regression (caused by an attempt to workaround another bug), SD! fails if a sparse image we're supposed to copy to is already mounted. We also fail if the image has "special" characters (such as a quote) in it. We're working on a fix for this.

  • Networked Time Machine backups, on the same volume as local Time Machine backups, aren't preserved. If you're using the same volume for "networked" and "local" Time Machine backups, and you try to store a SuperDuper! backup directly to the same volume, we preserve the "local" backups but not the "network" ones. (That's a mouthful, sorry.)

    We're working on a fix for this as well.

  • Custom copy scripts that used "Exclude spotlight files" are failing. This script is no longer needed, so users who have included it should modify their copy scripts to remove the reference.


I think that's about it. There's nothing terribly major in there, fortunately, and we're working on getting the problems corrected as quickly as we can.

Thanks to everyone who's reported problems, and also to the vast majority of people who haven't encountered any!

SuperDuper! 2.5 Released! Tuesday, February 05, 2008

And what could make it more official than a press release and a download?

Press Release

Shirt Pocket is happy to announce that SuperDuper 2.5 is now available as a free update for all users. The new version includes full Leopard support, including the ability to store a bootable backup side-by-side with a Time Machine backup on a single volume, and the ability to copy Time Machine archives to other drives for backup purposes or to move to a larger drive without losing history.

In addition, version 2.5 improves many aspects of our 2005 and 2006 Macworld Eddy-award winning application, including improved Spotlight handling, a "Run Now" feature for scheduled copies, icon preservation for destination volumes and various performance improvements.

"What more appropriate day to release a terrific new version than SuperDuper Tuesday? We're really happy with the way version 2.5 works with Leopard", said David Nanian, owner of Shirt Pocket, in his standard stump speech. "Our new feature set is great on its own, plus it's an excellent complement to Time Machine, adding the ability to have a bootable backup alongside your Time Machine archive -- and we've done all this without any increase in complexity. With SuperDuper!, recovery from a disk crash is just a matter of rebooting from the backup!"

Of course, SuperDuper 2.5 still has all the capabilities SuperDuper! is famous for, including: the ability to easily schedule backups; additional imaging options; more control over shutdown; better AppleScript support; hundreds of UI improvements; Growl support; and a readable, complete, task-based User's Guide.

SuperDuper supports both Intel and Power PC Macs running Mac OS X 10.4 or later, and is a free update for existing users. The unregistered version will perform full backups for free. Registration costs $27.95, and includes many additional timesaving features, including Smart Update for faster backups, Scheduling, and others.

More information, as well as a download link, can be found at http://www.shirt-pocket.com/SuperDuper.

About Shirt Pocket

Shirt Pocket, based in Weston, Massachusetts, was formed in late 2000 as a Macintosh-only shareware creator and publisher. Shirt Pocket's first product, the 2004 Eddy Award winning netTunes, lets customers control iTunes on one Mac from any other Mac on the network with iTunes own intuitive user interface. launchTunes, Shirt Pocket's second product, made iTunes' playlist sharing practical by automatically launching iTunes on remote servers when needed. SuperDuper!, the 2005 and 2006 Eddy Award winning disk copying program that allows mere mortals to back up and restore their systems accurately and confidently, was released in January 2004.

Shirt Pocket was started by David Nanian, co-founder of UnderWare, Inc, and one of the original authors of the BRIEF programmer's editor and Track Record bug tracking system.

For those about to ship… Monday, February 04, 2008

...we salute our testers, and the patience of our users.

It's going to be a SuperDuper! Tuesday.

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