Time Machine Reservoir Sampler

Time Warp is a tool for modifying Time Machine's backup behavior using weighted reservoir sampling. Please see this blog post for an explain of the project prior to setup and use.

• OS X 10.7+

• Verify that the desired Time Machine Drive is mounted:

  If you don't know how to do this, see here.

• After cloning the repo, ensure Time Warp is in your path and executable:

  $ chmod 755 timewarp.py

• Modify the default config file (safe-warp.json) to point at the desired Time Machine volume.

  Here's an example of what the configuration file should look like:

{
    "mode": "safe",
    "volume": "/Volumes/Time Machine/Backups.backupdb/computer_name/",
    "threshold": 1024, 
    "log": "timewarp.log"
}

• Run Time Warp in safe-mode using the modified config file from step 2:

  $ ./timewarp.py safe-warp.json

• Verify Time Warp is working by examining the log file, timewarp.log. This file contains the backup snapshot(s) that would have been deleted if the mode was set to live.

• Change the mode value to "live".

  DO NOT CHANGE THE THRESHOLD VALUE UNLESS YOU FULLY UNDERSTAND THE CONSEQUENCES. Setting the mode to live and changing the threshold value to a large size could potentially delete every backup on a Time Machine hard drive.

• Move the provided plist file, org.drbunsen.timewarp.plist to the LaunchAgents folder and change the owner:

  $ mv org.drbunsen.timewarp.plist /Library/LaunchAgents/
$ sudo chown root /Library/LaunchAgents/org.drbunsen.timewarp.plist
$ sudo launchctl load /Library/LaunchAgents/org.drbunsen.timewarp.plist