Wednesday, October 29, 2008

MxBackup

I wrote my first iPhone application!

My 22-month old daughter loves to play with my iPhone. In particular, she likes MxTube, a YouTube downloader app, available if you Jailbreak your iPhone. After a while, she tends to delete my downloaded videos because her click and swipe coordination need some work.

So, I've written an app that backs up my videos and restores them whenever I need to. Ignore the "Background Enabled" message- that pops up when I try to take a screenshot because of another app I have installed.



31 comments:

nudel said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
nudel said...

a great little utility! :)

u mention that the scripts can be modified to FTP the files to a network server. that sounds perfect as i could then watch them on my PC or XBOX.

can u give an example of how to modify to do this? e.g. to a NAT server on the same network

Jeremy said...

nudel,

If you look inside the unix file system on your phone, you should find /Applications/MxBackup.app/Backup.sh

This is the shell script that performs the backup when you click "Backup". To ftp each file to an anonymous file server, you could do something like:



#!/bin/bash

BACKUP=/var/mobile/backup/MxTube
MXTUBE=/private/var/mobile/Media/MxTube
VIDEOLIST=/private/var/mobile/Library/MxTube/VideoLibrary.plist

# check that the directory exists for backup
if [ ! -d "$BACKUP" ]; then
mkdir -p "$BACKUP"
if [ $? -eq 0 ]; then
echo "Created new directory for backup."
else
echo "Unable to create new directory for backup."
exit 1
fi
fi

# backup the listing file
cp $VIDEOLIST ${BACKUP}/VideoLibrary.plist
if [ $? -ne 0 ]; then
echo "Unable to backup VideoLibrary.plist"
exit 1
fi

echo "Backed up Video Library List."

for file in `ls $MXTUBE`; do
if [ ! -e ${BACKUP}/$file ]; then
cp ${MXTUBE}/$file ${BACKUP}
echo "Backed up $file."
fi

# backup every file to ftp server
ftp yourserverip<<EOF
user anonymous anonymous@mydomain.org
bin
put $file
quit
EOF

done

echo "Backup complete."

nudel said...

thanks i'll try it.

btw, i have tried a number of times the normal backup operation (without modification) but there is no /var/mobile/backup/MxTube folder created & therefore no backed up files even tho the app finishes & shows the green text indicating all files have been backed-up - see screen-shot here: http://img301.imageshack.us/img301/1309/20090302001.png

i've looked for 'backup' folder in other locations but nothing.

also tried adding the /backup/MxTube structure to /var/mobile but still no files are backed-up.

here is the unmodified backup.sh script that is installed:

#!/bin/bash

# backup the listing file
cp /private/var/mobile/Library/MxTube/VideoLibrary.plist /var/mobile/backup/MxTube
echo "Backed up Video Library List."

for file in `ls /private/var/mobile/Media/MxTube`; do
if [ ! -e /var/mobile/backup/MxTube/$file ]; then
cp /private/var/mobile/Media/MxTube/$file /var/mobile/backup/MxTube
echo "Backed up $file."
fi
done

Jeremy said...

Yeah, I sent in an update to Backup.sh and Restore.sh shortly after releasing the original version. It should appear in Cydia today, I imagine.

The latest version of Backup.sh auto-creates that directory if it doesn't exist. It's basically the script you see from my post, minus the "ftp" logic. The Restore.sh is also changed a little:

#!/bin/bash

BACKUP=/var/mobile/backup/MxTube
MXTUBE=/private/var/mobile/Media/MxTube
VIDEOLIST=/private/var/mobile/Library/MxTube/VideoLibrary.plist

# copy each file that's not found
for file in `ls $BACKUP`; do
if [ ! -e ${MXTUBE}/$file ]; then
cp ${BACKUP}/$file ${MXTUBE}
echo "Restored $file."
fi
done

# restore video list
if [ -e ${BACKUP}/VideoLibrary.plist ]; then
cp ${BACKUP}/VideoLibrary.plist ${VIDEOLIST}
echo "Restored Video Library list."
fi

nudel said...

thanks a bunch - that works! :)

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MxTube-Lover said...

Since folders in MxTube changed, can you please update MxBackup?

Old:
/private/var/mobile/Library/mxtube/VideoLibrary.plist

New: /private/var/mobile/Library/Preferences/VideoLibrary.plist

The Thumbnails (.thm) are now in "Preferences" folder, too!

This folder must be corrected in the two script files:
/Applications/MxBackup.app/Backup.sh and Restore.sh

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