Rsync mirroring interacting with compression

[James McNeill]

| Is there a more rsync-friendly compression available?

The nature of compressed files (IME) is that because they work with so many
patterns, small alterations can cause either small changes, or large
changes, unpredicably to the final zipped output.

One way to make a rsync friendly archive file is this:

tar the files into an archive
tar the archive into smaller chunks of equal size**
gzip the chunks individually
tar the zipped chunks back together

** by changing the no. of chunks you will be able to vary the usefulness of
the file. ie. smaller chunks = bigger file (worse compression) but better
rsync
and vice versa.

If bandwidth is the biggest concern, why not copy the file uncompressed and
recompress it after rsync has done it's thing. ie. will only copy changes.

HTH
-James