rsync problem

[Nadav Har'El]

On Mon, Mar 21, 2011, Shlomo Solomon wrote about "rsync problem":
> I have a backup script using rsync. I've included part of it below. For some 
> reason, everything seems to work OK except that files don't get deleted from 
> the backup copy of /home (I've marked the problem with a comment). Since the 
> params I specify on all lines of the script are the same, I can't see any 
> reason why the /home directory would be handled differently.

If rsync finds a read error in the local directory, it *disables* the
--delete option, thinking that it might accidentally delete files that
weren't actually deleted - we just had files reading them.

So my guess is that you had a read error in /home. A very common (and
very annoying) reason for such a read error is your $HOME/.gvfs, which
often causes ridiclous errors when read. 

If this is indeed your problem, you can add the "--ignore-errors" option
to rsync to ignore errors and do the --delete in spite of them. Be aware,
though, that you are risking a massive deletion of your remote system if
you have real read errors. If you also use the --backup option, this might
not be a risk - but please do the consideration yourself.

-- 
Nadav Har'El                        |     Monday, Mar 21 2011, 16 Adar II 5771
nyh at math.technion.ac.il             |-----------------------------------------
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