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Date: Mon, 30 Mar 2009 13:42:07 -0400
From: Theodore Tso <tytso@mit.edu>
To: Chris Mason <chris.mason@oracle.com>
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Subject: Re: Linux 2.6.29
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On Mon, Mar 30, 2009 at 08:55:51AM -0400, Chris Mason wrote:
> Sorry, I'm afraid that rsync falls into the same category as the
> kde/gnome apps here.
> 
> There are a lot of backup programs built around rsync, and every one of
> them risks losing the old copy of the file by renaming an unflushed new
> copy over it.
> 
> rsync needs the flushing about a million times more than gnome and kde,
> and it doesn't have any option to do it automatically.  It does have the
> option to create backups, which is how a percentage of people are using
> it, but I wouldn't call its current setup safe outside of ext3.

I wouldn't make it to be the default, but as an option, if the backup
script would take responsibility for restarting rsync if the server
crashes, and if the rsync process executes a global sync(2) call when
it is complete, an option to make rsync delete the target file before
doing the rename to defeat the replace-via-rename hueristic could be
justifiable.

						- Ted
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