First, here’s a recap of the problem. It’s written in terms of VMware Fusion but should be equally valid for other VM engines such as Parallels Desktop. If you’ve already read the previous article then you might want to skip to the meat of this article.

Large backups

When you’ve been using Fusion’s virtual machine (in my case, to run Windows), you will find that Time Machine’s backup takes longer than expected — sometimes much longer.

This is because Fusion stores its virtual machines’ disks as a bunch of large files. When you run your virtual machine using Fusion (or Parallels Desktop), the contents of the VM’s virtual disk changes, and even if you haven’t made many explicit changes to files, all sorts of small changes happen to the virtual disk’s contents.

Incremental can still be too much

Time Machine performs incremental backups. That is, it copies only files that have changed since the last backup. Unfortunately those large files that Fusion uses to store the virtual disk’s contents? They’ve probably all changed, at least a little.

So, instead of your incremental being a few megabytes and taking a few tens of seconds, it’s ten gigabytes, takes ages, and rapidly fills your backup disk. (Which causes its own problems: described here.)

One solution: back up the VM in another way

One solution is to keep all your precious files in the Mac file-store, tell Time Machine to avoid backing up your virtual machine(s), and then back them up some other way. This results in the smallest backups and is useful if you don’t need sophisticated incremental backups of your virtual machines.

If this sounds like you, then I’ve shown how this can be achieved in an earlier article.

An alternative solution: use a sparse bundle

If you need proper incremental backups of your VMs, then one approach is to use a sparse bundle. This is a disk image which is stored  as a collection of small files (typically 8MB), so when Time Machine backs up the disk image, it only needs to copy the files that have changed.

This approach still isn’t perfect — when (for example) Windows does anything, it tends to scatter its writes over the disk, so incremental backups are still large, but they’re not as large as when Time Machine backs up the VM directly. Typically, your incrementals may be a few hundred megabytes with no VMs, a few gigabytes with a VM stored on a sparse bundle (for Windows. Linux may be better behaved), and a few tens of gigabytes with the same VM stored in the standard way.

Here’s how

First lets create a new disk image based on a sparse bundle and move our VM onto it. We’ll need to know how large to make the VM, so go to Documents and look in Virtual Machines. In there is one folder per virtual machine and you can find the VM’s size by clicking on the corresponding folder and hitting cmd+I:

Create the disk image

Now create the sparse bundle. The point-and-click way of doing this is to use Disk Utility, so start that up (I use spotlight to do so):

and click on New Image:

Then fill in the details. I made my sparse bundle file-system for the Windows XP VM twice as large as the space it currently occupies, to allow for future expansion — so 50GB in my case (don’t worry: it only uses as much real disk as is needed to store the actual content). Here’s all the fields you need to change:

• The Save As is the filename for the sparse bundle whereas the Volume Name is the name the disk will have when mounted — I made them the same;
• I saved my sparse bundle in Documents->Virtual Machines;
• Image Format needs to be sparse bundle disk image, as that’s the whole point of the exercise.

Now click on Create, and

a few seconds later you have a sparse bundle file-system image.

Now double-click that file (mine’s called VM disk.sparsebundle).

Mac OS will mount it…

and the new file system will appear on the desktop.

Move the VM into the new disk image

Next, drag the folder(s) corresponding to the VM(s) you’d like backed up by Time Machine onto the new disk. Hold down cmd as you drag and drop, so that you move the folders (rather than copying them):

Ensure the new disk image is mounted at login

The .sparsebundle file needs to be mounted every time you log in, so that the file-store is available. To do that, go into System Preferences->Accounts, click on your username and then on Login items. Now drag your sparsebundle file into the list of login items:

and that’s it.

Using your newly-homed VM(s)

To use your new VM(s), just double-click on the corresponding folder — perhaps put an alias to it on your desktop or in the dock. When you next use it you’ll get a message:

Just click on I moved it and you’re sorted.

Warning

As with any method of backup which relies on backing up the virtual machine’s disk image using the host operating system, your backup may not be of any use if it’s made whilst the VM is running, so I suggest you make sure that Fusion/Parallels is not running when Time Machine is backing up your data. If you don’t always manage to do so then some of your backups may not be valid.

Why?

Because if you backup the files that Fusion (or Parallels) is using for a disk image, then you’re backing up what’s on disk, but not what’s in memory, in disk buffers, etc. So when you come to restore from backup, you may find that the disk image is corrupted. In the worst case scenario you won’t be able to start up the VM’s operating system successfully at all, or restore any files contained within the VM’s file-store.

By backing up when the VM isn’t running, you ensure that all data is on disk in a safe, consistent state.

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Under Vista it’s far less obvious, but the setting is there if you know where to look for it.

First, go to Power options in the control panel. I find it easiest to do this kind of thing by bringing up the Start menu and then typing (in this case) power, and then selecting Power Options:

Next, in the Power Options window, don’t click on change plan settings as it’s somewhat buried in there nowadays. Instead, select the Require a password on wakeup link that’s lurking in the top-left of the window:

You will then be presented with a window which looks useful, but in fact the Don’t require a password option you’ve been looking for is greyed out — you can’t select it! This is because you first need to click on Change settings that are currently unavailable:

Then confirm you’re happy for the change to be made:

And finally you’re in a position to select the option:

Then click on Save changes and you’re done. (I know, it shouldn’t be that hard, but c’est la vie with Vista at times.)

It’s worth repeating that you should only set this option if you’re happy that someone with no knowledge of your login details can walk up to your suspended Vista session, wake it up, and start doing stuff as you.

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Coming from the Windows to Mac OS, I missed being able to interact with dialog boxes etc. without having to use the mouse. There are times, especially with the MacBook, where clicking on an option is fiddly and error prone (in bed with a cup of tea for example ) and it would be much better if I could use the keyboard…

Here’s an example: here I am quitting from Safari. As is often the case, the dialog has reminded me that I don’t actually want to quit as I have multiple tabs, so I want to cancel the operation. Pressing return will close Safari, but how do I select Cancel? (Yes, I know you can press esc to cancel a dialog, but bear with me — the following solution works for all dialog selections and menus, not just Cancel).

The solution

The answer is to select All controls in Full keyboard access in Settings->Keyboard & Mouse->Keyboard Shortcuts:

Or, much easier , type ctrl+F7.

Now when that dialog pops up it looks different. Notice that Cancel is surrounded by a blue glow — that’s the dialog option that currently has keyboard focus, and pressing the space bar will select it.

Now you can navigate the dialog box using the keyboard: tab and shift-tab change the currently selected option, space selects that option, and return will always select the solid-blue default option.

So in this example, space will cancel the dialog and return will do the default action (close Safari in this case).

So you can now navigate dialog boxes on a MacBook, in bed, armed with a cup of tea — and I hear tell this even works with coffee, at a pinch

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Are you using the excellent VMware Fusion and backing up your Mac with Time Machine? If so, you may notice a problem.

Large backups

When you’ve been using Fusion‘s virtual machine (in my case, to run Windows), you will find that Time Machine‘s next backup takes longer than expected — sometimes much longer.

This is because Fusion stores its virtual machines’ disks as a bunch of large files. When you run your virtual machine using Fusion, the contents of the VM’s virtual disk changes, and even if you haven’t made many explicit changes to files, all sorts of small changes happen to the virtual disk’s contents.

Incremental can still be too much

Time Machine performs incremental backups. That is, it copies only files that have changed since the last backup. Unfortunately those large files that Fusion uses to store the virtual disk’s contents? They’ve probably all changed, at least a little.

So, instead of your incremental being a few megabytes and taking a few tens of seconds, it’s ten gigabytes, takes ages, and rapidly fills your backup disk. (Which causes its own problems: described here.)

An alternative fix

If you need incremental backups of your VMs, or your VMs are running an operating system that doesn’t have support for accessing theMac OS file-store (Linux, for example), then you’ll likely find this approach is the best for you.

If your VM(s) are running Windows (so you can access the Mac OS file-store from within the VM) and you don’t need a sophisticated incremental backup of your VMs then read on, as the following approach produces by far the most efficient backups.

This fix

The fix described here is to ensure the files you edit in Fusion‘s virtual world are in the Mac’s natural file-store (so they continue to be backed up by Time Machine), stop using Time Machine to back up your virtual machines, and then back up your virtual machines in a different way. I’ll cover each of these steps in turn below.

Put your files somewhere safe

Instead of putting your Windows (or whatever) files in the Windows file-store, place them in the Mac’s file-store (which is available to Windows as the Z: drive by default). This means that your precious files have a proper, incremental backup using Time Machine, and you can restore earlier versions should the need arise.

Stop Time Machine backing up your VMs

Open Time Machine Preferences…, click on Options… and then the small + to add a Folder to the Do not back up list:

Then navigate to Documents below your home directory and there you will find a folder called Virtual Machines — add that and Time Machine will no longer backup your Fusion VMs.

And backup your VMs in a different way

If, like me, your virtual machine is a secondary system, then you probably have no need of an incremental, sophisticated backup. What’s important is the files you edit are protected, and they are now protected by Time Machine as part of the Mac’s natural file-store.

So, simply drag your Documents/Virtual Machines folder onto the backup drive every week or so, and you’re sorted.

Warning

As with any method of backup which relies on backing up the virtual machine’s disk image using the host operating system, your backup may not be of any use if it’s made whilst the VM is running, so I suggest you make sure that Fusion/Parallels is not running when you copy the data.

Why?

Because if you copy the files that Fusion (or Parallels) is using for a disk image, then you’re backing up what’s on disk, but not what’s in memory, in disk buffers, etc. So when you come to restore from backup, you may find that the disk image is corrupted. In the worst case scenario you won’t be able to start up the VM’s operating system successfully at all, or restore any files contained within the VM’s file-store.

By backing up when the VM isn’t running, you ensure that all data is on disk in a safe, consistent state.

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As of the the 8th June 2009, Safari 4 is out of beta, and wordpress‘s insert-link dialogue works! So this article is now superfluous — good stuff.

I’ll leave the article here to help clarify what WebKit is and how to use it, but if you’re looking to get wordpress‘s insert-hyperlink dialogue working with Safari 4beta then all you need do is download the full release version of Safari 4 from Apple’s site.

And now for the original article…

If you’re a Mac and wordpress user, and you’ve tried out Safari 4 Public Beta, then you will have noticed that you can’t add hyperlinks in wordpress‘ visual editor (Geek Guides has documented the problem nicely here).

Now there’s a fix — the latest WebKit on top of Safari 4 Public Beta works fine, with no problems in wordpress‘ visual editor. Here’s the proof (you may need to take my word for it: this _is_ Safari 4):

Note that the Insert/edit link dialogue box isn’t greyed out — result!

To achieve this, first install Safari 4beta from Apple’s site and reboot. Then install the latest WebKit nightly build for Mac OS.

Now you have two versions of Safari. One calls itself Safari and that’s as downloaded from Apple, the other calls itself WebKit and is the browser from Apple, but with the latest WebKit plugged into it. Here they are in my dock — the brassy compass is the WebKit version of Safari.

Now all that’s left to do is to enter Safari‘s Preferences and set the default browser to be WebKit:

and you’re sorted. Of course, if you don’t want to do the above then it’s still good news: if the latest WebKit sorts the problem, then Safari 4 should, in time, pick up the fix. Good stuff.

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However, you may not want a backup every hour — the backup disk is a limited resource. If you’re regularly changing large files then Time Machine is regularly writing large amounts of data to the backup disk, and if that’s the case then you won’t have backups going back very far into the past.

So there will be lots of revisions of files that have changed recently, but nothing much from, say, a couple of months ago.

So how do you change the interval?

The standard Time Machine options don’t allow you to change the backup interval (the time between backups), but the preferences are there to be changed if you know how.

From the command line

If you don’t want to install any extra software then you can change Time Machine‘s backup interval from a shell prompt. Start up a Terminal window and then type:

sudo defaults write /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.backupd-auto StartInterval -int 18000

The 18000 above is the required backup interval in seconds — five hours in this example. And note that the above command is all on one line.

Point-and-click

There are several full Mac OS applications out there that allow you to manipulate Time Machine‘s hidden preferences. The two most popular are Time Machine Scheduler and Time Machine Editor. I haven’t used either (being someone who leans toward using the command line), but they look like they’ll do the job. However…

My recommendation was, but is no more:

I did suggest using the Secrets prefPane to change Time Machine‘s backup interval (see below), but unfortunately that turned out to be bad advice. You can set the interval using the Secrets prefPane but it doesn’t stick. Quit the System Preferences application and start it up again and you’ll find the interval has gone back to the default of 3600 seconds.

So it seems Secrets prefPane doesn’t work for this after all! I’ll leave the rest of this article in place and perhaps someone will tell me when the problem’s fixed?

In the mean time, please use one of the options suggested above.

Here’s the rest of the original article, which at the moment doesn’t work:

I suggest you use the Secrets Prefpane from blacktree. Just download it from the link near the top of the web page, unzip it and then install it by double-clicking on the resulting file (Secrets.prefPane).

Now, when you start up System Preferences you’ll find a new preferences pane:

The Secrets preferences pane allows you to set the hidden Time Machine backup interval:

but — and this is why I recommend the Secrets prefPane – it also allows you to change all sorts of other hidden preferences in Mac OS:

which is great fun — and who knows, may even prove useful

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• cmd+shift+3 to dump the whole screen
• cmd+shift+4 to select an area of the screen (then press space for a whole window).

However, there are times when the above won’t do. Typically, it’s when you’re already pressing keys to get the image you need — the key chord cmd+shift+4 isn’t going to work if you’re already holding down alt for example.

That’s where grab comes in — it’s what Mac users used before cmd+shift+3/4 came along, it’s still there, and it can dump the screen after a ten second delay.

So, start up grab. I use Spotlight to do that, so I type cmd+space grab:

Then, to do the delayed screen dump, select Timed Screen from grab‘s Capture menu:

You then have ten seconds to set up the screen as needed, and grab does the rest.

Then select File->Save As… to save the resulting tiff file, and you’re done.

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That was case for me — as adding hyperlinks in wordpress caused the browser tab to hang (documented by Geek Guides here). However, if you’re thinking about returning to Safari 3.2.1 because you can’t input hyperlinks in wordpress‘ visual editor then think again — you may not need to — as there is now a work-around.

You still need to downgrade?

What doesn’t work

What doesn’t work is downloading Safari 3 and installing that — the installer complains that you already have a newer version on the hard drive and so won’t continue.

What works

Is to re-run the Safari 4beta installer (fetch it from apple.com if you don’t still have it) and run the uninstall from there.

One reboot later and you’re back running Safari 3.2.1.

Safari image by timmargh.

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First, the hard way

When you wish to open a file using a particular application, it’s simple. Just right-click on the file (ctrl+click) and select Open With.

However, if you’d like that file to always open with the selected application then things are less elegant: right click, Open With, Other…, select the application and tick Always Open With. Fiddly.

The easy way

Fortunately there is an easier way.

Right click on the file as before, but this time depress the alt key. Hey-presto, the Open With option changes into Always Open With.

How’s that for handy?

Changing the default application for all files of a kind

The above method sets the default application for this file only. If you’d like to change the default application for all files of a type (a kind in Mac OS speak) then here’s how to do it.

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Coming to Mac OS X from Windows (XP and Vista), I missed being able to lock my session using a simple key-chord. I work in a shared office so it’s sensible to lock the session every time I walk away — something I do regularly.

In Windows, you simply press Windows-L and that’s it — time to go. Mac OS X Leopard doesn’t provide anything as succinct as standard, but there are ways.

Firstly, there are a couple of solutions that are accepted as standard ways of doing this — but unfortunately both have problems. I’ll cover these methods first in case they work for you, and then I’ll cover a solution that really is as quick and easy to use as the Windows’ lock screen key chord.

Partial solution number one: use a hot corner

A hot corner allows you to drop into the screen saver by moving the cursor to a chosen corner of the screen. To do this, first go to System Preferences->Desktop & Screen Saver and click on Hot Corners… Then select Start Screen Saver for one of the corners:

Now, when you place the cursor in that corner (I chose the bottom-left), the screen saver will start.

Of course, this doesn’t help unless your system is configured to require a password when woken from the screen saver. You can set that in System Preferences->Security:

And that’s it. Now, before you walk away from your Mac, just drop the cursor into the bottom-left corner of the screen.

However, there is a problem with this method — at least for me — as I don’t want the system to prompt for a password on wakeup. I end up typing my password far too often — every time I’ve left the machine alone long enough for the screen saver to start.

What I want is the Mac to remain unlocked until I explicitly lock it. So, on to solution two…

Partial solution number two: select a pull-down from the menu bar

Here’s another way of locking the machine, and this one doesn’t require that you tick Require password to wake up this computer from sleep or screen saver.

The trick is to enable fast user switching in System Preferences->Accounts->Login Options:

which will then place your user name in the menu bar at the top of the screen.

When you want to lock the session, just click on your user name:and select Login Window… and you’re done. (You can also achieve a similar result by ticking Show Status in Menu Bar in Keychain‘s preferences if you prefer.)

What’s my beef with this solution? The problem is that it’s still rather slow and fiddly — and it’s something I do regularly, so I want to just press and go, just as I did with Windows.

A full solution

To implement a full Windows-L style solution we need Dockables to provide us with an application that locks the Mac OS session, and Quicksilver to launch that application.

First, download and install Dockables from cocoaapp.com. This gives you a bunch of useful applications in a sub-folder of your Applications folder:

and the one we’re interested in is Lock Screen.

Next, download and install Blacktree’s Quicksilver and run it to configure a new Lock Screen key-chord. Quicksilver will present you with its main window — just quit that and instead move to Quicksilver’s menu bar at the top of the screen and select Triggers… from the drop-down menu.

In the Triggers window that appears, click on the + at the bottom and select HotKey.

A new window will appear. Click on the first field and start to type lock screen. Quicksilver will rapidly find the Lock Screen dockable you installed earlier. Click Save.

Nearly there

You now have a new command, but with no trigger. So click on the None in your new command,

click in the input field labelled Hot Key: and press the key combination you wish to use to lock your session from now on. (I chose alt+cmd+L because the obvious choice – cmd+L — is already used by Thunderbird — my email client.)

I suggest you don’t use the ctrl key as part of your hot key-chord. If you do then quicksilver presents this dialog every time you type the chord:

Now, having typed a key-chord (which doesn’t include ctrl), exit the Triggers window and you have yourself a new Lock Screen hot key-chord: alt+cmd+L in the example above.

And finally, tweak some settings

You need quicksilver to run at all times, so bring up Quicksilver’s preferences (available from the Quicksilver menu in the menu bar at the top of the screen):

and tick Start at login. You may also want to tidy up the dock a little — as quicksilver is running all the time I’d rather it didn’t appear in the dock and instead appeared in the menu bar:

so I untick Show icon in dock (and I also tick the option check for updates):

And that’s everything sorted. Any time you need your display locked, just type alt+cmd+L…

and walk away…

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