rsync via ssh

[IVANYI Ivan]

Hi,

We have 2 problems with rsync over ssh that we
haven't been able to replicate all the time.


Basically, we have a developement server running
Solaris 2.5.1 and another running Solaris 2.6, the
development tree is shared via nfs. When minor
changes are made they are distibuted to various
mirror sites via a perl script which does some
checks (path, etc) and runs 'rsync -e ssh ....'
The script distributes the changed files to about
7 other machines.

All the sites have rsync 2.4.6, the development
servers use ssh 2.4.0


The first problem is sometimes rsyncing to an IRIX
6.5 machine the script seems to block (we debugged
the script so it doesn't seem to be the perl,
besides as I said basically it just runs rsync in
a loop). The files are transferred but after the
transfer rsync (or ssh) just seem to sit there
doing nothing and you have to ctrl-C so that the
script will continue. SSH on this machine has been
upgraded several times, rsync recompiled, binaries
downloaded... in order to see if that would fix
it. Funnily enough on another IRIX machine with
almost exactly the same setup has no problem. (I'm
sure you'll say find the differences!)

The second problem is to a linux machine (Redhat
7.1 with openssh 2.5.2p2). After transfer
sometimes text files end up 'not quite the same'
at the other end. 1 or 2 characters might be
different for example. rsyncing again will usually
fix this. For html and flat file databases
obviously this is a bit of a problem.


We haven't been able to determine under what
circumstances these problems occur, but I hope
someone might have some idea...


thanks

-- 
Ivan Ivanyi

Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics
    1, rue Michel Servet
    CH-1211 Genève 4
    Switzerland

    Tel: (+41 22) 702 58 33
    Fax: (+41 22) 702 58 58
    E-mail: Ivan.Ivanyi at isb-sib.ch