Since 1985, I've been suggesting email backups as a joke!

Back then, in the pre-domain-name world, email addresses were specified as a series of machine (node) names; most systems still used UUCP to transfer files (and email) via dialup connections.

If any component of the path was wrong, the email would bounce back from that point. So the idea was to package up a bunch of files, email them with a deliberately wrong node in a long path, then wait for the bounce. Send it out again, and your backups simply cycle around.

The History

My email was ...ihnp3!sun!apple!rick in those days. To send email to anyone, you had to specify the entire pathname from your site to the recipient. Typically, you could just say ... as the beginning of your email path if the first node was a well-known one on the net. ihnp3 (and, later, ihnp4) were the very busy nodes at an AT&T facility in the midwest (i.e. "Indian Hill Network Processor 3"). Most everyone knew a path to get to that node. There were a dozen or so well-known nodes, and this made it easier to print your email address on a business card.

About that time, the pathalias program appeared. Using a database of all network nodes, pathalias could construct an efficient path between any two nodes. Pathalias had to solve the old "traveling salesman problem."

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EMOJO: mojo no longer workin'

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I just use my Mac OSX hints posting for my data backup.

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Here is what I do...

In Mail, I have a filter setup that states basically, "Anthing that goes to my inbox, send a copy to my gMail account". With the automatic download of new mail, my gMail gets a copy via the filter. The advantage of this is I can see my home mail on the Web and have a backup copy on the gMail server. If I forget a piece of information from a past email, I can do a Google search throught the archive.

Very handy.

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Can you further explain in detail how you did this?
I am quite familiar with the Mail.app, but just learning Gmail.
Thanks!

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I have seen a few utilities in the past that purport Gmail backups. There is alway someone that posts and says that there is a 4MB limit on files sent to Gmail... meaning that you can back up a gig of stuff, but it all has to be separated into 4MB chunks.

Can anybody confirm this limit on upload capacity? If so, does this script take care of that by splitting and recombining large files? Or by some other method?

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I just sent a 9mb file through without any problems.

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Jayson

When Microsoft asks you, "Where do you want to go today?" tell them "Apple."

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Wow, almost a day old and nobody's mentioned GMailFS yet?!

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Exactly! I read the title and figured that it was a rehash of GMailFS and didn't even bother to read. This product takes the concept of GMail backups waaay beyond this hint.

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-d

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Wow, great hint. I love it! So here's a version of the same script but modified to allow for dropping of files. It's on the same hint as the first (http://forums.macosxhints.com/showthread.php?t=31163). Simply save the script as an application. Drop files or folders on to it and it will send them off. Remember to change the username property to your gmail username.

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Jayson

When Microsoft asks you, "Where do you want to go today?" tell them "Apple."

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Dude, you so rock!

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osxpounder

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