How I automated my Photos library backup with osXPhotos

[Juggler00]

I wanted to share how I have now (finally) implemented, tested and verified my weekly backup of my iPhoto library. First to note is that my Mac is set to download all photos. I am also relying on the fact that APFS, on a copy, creates a clone of the file. This means the following operations consume very little additional space, even though it appears I'm creating a full backup of my Photos library on disc. Thanks to @RhetTbull for this tip! (#1711)

Some quick notes:

• my Mac is set to download all photos from my iPhoto library
• I have a Linux server that I'm "rsync"ing to. This server does all my fancy off-site backups

First, I created a bash script to do the osxphotos backup, rsync the new files to my server, then notify healthchecks.io that it has completed (this way I get notified if it fails).

osx_photos_backup.sh

#!/bin/bash
/Users/USERNAME/.local/bin/osxphotos export /Users/USERNAME/Pictures/backup --update --export-by-date --skip-edited --library /Users/USERNAME/Pictures/Photos\ Library.photoslibrary --sidecar XMP --sidecar-drop-ext
/usr/bin/rsync -az /Users/USERNAME/Pictures/backup/ MYSERVER:/LOCALPATH/photos_backup/
/usr/bin/curl -m 10 --retry 5 https://hc-ping.com/XXXX

Next, to automate this, I created a launchd .plist file that tells my Mac when to run the above script (in this case, Fridays at 6:00am).

com.USERNAME.photoBAckupAndArchive.plist

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
    <dict>
        <key>Label</key>
        <string>com.USERNAME.photoBackupAndArchive</string>
        <key>Program</key>
        <string>/Users/USERNAME/Library/Scripts/osx_photos_backup.sh</string>   
        <key>StartCalendarInterval</key>
        <dict>
            <key>Weekday</key>
            <integer>5</integer>
            <key>Hour</key>
            <integer>6</integer>
            <key>Minute</key>
            <integer>0</integer>
        </dict>
    </dict>
</plist>

Now, I just need to activate the above...

 ~ % mkdir ~/Library/LaunchAgents/
 ~ % mkdir ~/Library/Scripts/
 ~ % chmod +x osx_photos_backup.sh
 ~ % cp ca.USERNAME.photoBackupAndArchive.plist ~/Library/LaunchAgents/
 ~ % cp osx_photos_backup.sh ~/Library/Scripts/
 ~ % launchctl load ~/Library/LaunchAgents/com.USERNAME.photoBackupAndArchive.plist

Hopefully others will find this helpful. Note that if you want to make any changes to either your script or .plist, make sure you unload the plist first (i.e. launchctl unload NAMEOFPLIST.plist), make the change, then reload as per above.