I will be the first to admit that I am really just learning how to tap into the power of my shell environment and to be honest, I've spent way to many hours reading man pages and figuring out how to do some really neat things that help my automate my workflow and system administration. Mostly these are just basic tasks like my Simple MySQL Backup and Deleting Invisible Resource Files scripts. But in all seriousness, when you get right down to using a UNIX-based operating system, you cannot escape using the shell environment. This is a good thing, its your friend, and getting your feet wet sooner than later is a good idea.

If you have ever accessed your website using a network protocol such as the Apple Filing Protocol (AFP), Samba (SMB), Web-based Distributed Authoring and Versioning (WebDAV), or Network File System (NFS) using your Mac – I am sure you have run into this problem before – dreaded invisible resource fork files. These are the files that begin with a ._ and they are normally not seen from within the finder. My understanding is that these files are not even created on your local Mac hard drive since the HFS+ file system is smart enough to keep your data and resource forks together in one single file. But even if you are accessing your website from one Mac HFS+ volume to another Mac HFS+ volume, these files will still be created by programs like DreamWeaver and TextMate because the various protocols to access that remote share and/or the file systems themselves will need to split them to cope. So ultimately when ever you use these other types of file systems or network protocols, you will eventually be creating lost of invisible resource fork files.

Lately, I've been loving all things that can be solved by using RsyncX. It's my de facto backup utility and I just keep finding more and more tasks for it as each day goes by. It has become the hammer for all my system's needs. So when it came time for me to implement a nice little backup routine for the MySQL databases hosted here at ActionMoniker.com, it was the first tool I considered. My requirements were simple, I needed a SQL script of selected databases in logically named folders for each DB with time-stamps in the file name. Then step and repeat on a regular basis.