[rsync retransferring every file]

[Matt McCutchen]

On Fri, 2007-11-09 at 11:11 -0400, Jon wrote:
> We can see from the literal data and the matched data from each
> session that the first session transferred a large amount of data (as
> expected for the initial rsync) and the second session transferred
> nothing but overhead (again, as to be expected when the second rsync
> is run so quickly that no files have changed). What I can't figure out
> is why the stats still list 293 files as being transferred in both
> cases.

> rsync -rv --stats root at server:/backup/* /home/backups

By default, rsync trusts a destination file to have data identical to
the source file (and thus skips transferring the source file) if the two
files have the same sizes and mtime.  You need to pass -t to make rsync
set the mtimes of the destination files to match those of the source
files; otherwise, it will retransfer everything on subsequent runs.

Matt