How can I determine the date and time of the latest Time Machine backup from the command line, so I can e.g. display it in an AppleScript dialog or via Growl's growlnotify?
asked Nov 13, 2011 at 8:43
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2 Answers
Time Machine state information is stored in /private/var/db/.TimeMachine.Results.plist. Use defaults to read the BACKUP_COMPLETED_DATE value:
$ defaults read /private/var/db/.TimeMachine.Results BACKUP_COMPLETED_DATE
2011-11-13 08:28:07 +0000
It's in UTC, but you can easily convert it to your local time zone.
To display it using growlnotify, run something like the following:
/usr/local/bin/growlnotify -m "$( date -jf "%F %T %z" "$( defaults read /private/var/db/.TimeMachine.Results BACKUP_COMPLETED_DATE )" +"%d.%m.%Y %H:%M" )" "Latest Time Machine Backup"
answered Nov 13, 2011 at 8:43
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Any idea how to create a hook so that this is displayed when a backup finishes?– slhckNov 13, 2011 at 11:15
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@slhck Sure, use
launchdand theWatchPathsdirective to start a small shell script that compares the current with the previous (stored somewhere) output ofdefaults, and only callsgrowlnotifyif it changed. Due to OS X's atomic saves, the file is recreated each time it's written: Verify usingstat /private/var/db/.TimeMachine.Results.plist, all ofctime,atimemtimeandbtimeare the same.– Daniel Beck ♦Nov 13, 2011 at 11:39 -
I tested this: It works when watching
/private/var/db/(the directory).– Daniel Beck ♦Nov 13, 2011 at 18:17
Another option (requires the backup volume to be mounted): date -jf "%Y-%m-%d-%H%M%S" "$(tmutil latestbackup | sed 's|.*/||')" +"%F %T"
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Didn't know about
tmutil-- and using that I can start the backup any time. Thanks for the answer! The connection requirement is pretty inconvenient unfortunately for the purpose of this question.– Daniel Beck ♦Nov 14, 2011 at 4:48