My Time Machine Server doesn't need to be serving all day, so I wrote this script to start/stop the relevant services (netatalk, avahi-daemon) and mount/umount the volume. Cron calls this script twice a day: once at 6:00 AM to shut off the services (so my laptop isn't in the middle of a backup when I leave for work) and again at 5:00 (so when I …

tmvolume.rb

#!/usr/bin/env ruby
# tmvolume.rb
# by Rob Dumas <rob@bitsandbooks.com>
# Starts and stops the Time Machine volume. Intended to be called from cron.

action = ARGV[0]
mountpoint = "/mnt/timecapsule"
servicefolder = "/etc/init.d/"
servicenames = [ "netatalk", "avahi-daemon" ]

commands = Array.new(3, "sudo ")

case action
when "start"
  commands[0] += "mount " + mountpoint + "; sleep 30"
  servicenames.each_with_index { |s,i| commands[i+1] += servicefolder + s + " start"}
  commands.each { |c| system(c) }
when "stop"
  commands[0] += "umount " + mountpoint + "; sleep 30"
  servicenames.each_with_index { |s,i| commands[i+1] += servicefolder + s + " stop"}
  commands.reverse!
  commands.each { |c| system(c) }
else
  STDOUT.puts <<-EOF

  ERROR: Bad argument (or no argument) passed to script.

  Usage:
    tmvolume.rb start
    tmvolume.rb stop
  EOF
end