timeout error in rsync-2.5.5

[Alberto Accomazzi]

Dear all,

I've been trying to track down a problem with timeouts when pulling data from
an rsync daemon and I have now run out of any useful ideas.
The problem manifests itself when I try to transfer a large directory tree
on a slow client machine.  What happens then is that the client rsync process
successfully receives the list of files from the server, then begins checking
the local directory tree, taking its sweet time.  Since I know that the process
is quite slow, I invoke rsync with a timeout of 5 hours to avoid dropping the
connection.  Howerver, after a little over 1 hour (usually 66 minutes or so), 
the server process simply gives up.

I have verified the problem under rsync versions 2.3.2, and 2.4.6 and up 
(including 2.5.5), testing a few different combinations of client/server
versions (althoug the client is always a linux box and the server always
a solaris box).  It looks to me as if something kicks the server out of
the select() call at line 202 of io.c (read_timeout) despite the timeout
being correctly set to 18000 seconds.  Can anybody think of what the 
problem may be?  See all the details below.

Thanks,

-- Alberto



CLIENT:

[ads at ads-pc ~]$ rsync --version
rsync  version 2.5.5  protocol version 26
Copyright (C) 1996-2002 by Andrew Tridgell and others
<http://rsync.samba.org/>
Capabilities: 64-bit files, socketpairs, hard links, symlinks, batchfiles, 
              IPv6, 64-bit system inums, 64-bit internal inums

rsync comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY.  This is free software, and you
are welcome to redistribute it under certain conditions.  See the GNU
General Public Licence for details.

[ads at ads-pc ~]$ rsync -ptv --compress --suffix .old --timeout 18000 -r --delete rsync://adsfore.harvard.edu:1873/text-4097/. /mnt/fwhd0/abstracts/phy/text/
receiving file list ... done
rsync: read error: Connection reset by peer
rsync error: error in rsync protocol data stream (code 12) at io.c(162)
rsync: connection unexpectedly closed (17798963 bytes read so far)
rsync error: error in rsync protocol data stream (code 12) at io.c(150)


SERVER:

adsfore-15: /proj/ads/soft/utils/src/rsync-2.5.5/rsync --version
rsync  version 2.5.5  protocol version 26
Copyright (C) 1996-2002 by Andrew Tridgell and others
<http://rsync.samba.org/>
Capabilities: 64-bit files, socketpairs, hard links, symlinks, batchfiles, 
              no IPv6, 64-bit system inums, 64-bit internal inums

rsync comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY.  This is free software, and you
are welcome to redistribute it under certain conditions.  See the GNU
General Public Licence for details.

from the log file:

2002/04/16 08:52:48 [18996] rsyncd version 2.5.5 starting, listening on port 1873
2002/04/16 09:39:01 [988] rsync on text-4097/. from ads-pc (131.142.43.117)
2002/04/16 10:51:36 [988] rsync: read error: Connection timed out
2002/04/16 10:51:36 [988] rsync error: error in rsync protocol data stream (code 12) at io.c(162)

from a truss:

adsfore-14: truss -d -p 988
Base time stamp:  1018964639.2848  [ Tue Apr 16 09:43:59 EDT 2002 ]
poll(0xFFBE4E90, 1, 18000000)   (sleeping...)
4057.4093       poll(0xFFBE4E90, 1, 18000000)                   = 1
4057.4098       read(3, 0xFFBE5500, 4)                          Err#145 ETIMEDOUT
4057.4103       time()                                          = 1018968696
4057.4106       getpid()                                        = 988 [18996]
4057.4229       write(4, " 2 0 0 2 / 0 4 / 1 6   1".., 66)      = 66
4057.4345       sigaction(SIGUSR1, 0xFFBE4D20, 0xFFBE4DA0)      = 0
4057.4347       sigaction(SIGUSR2, 0xFFBE4D20, 0xFFBE4DA0)      = 0
4057.4349       time()                                          = 1018968696
4057.4350       getpid()                                        = 988 [18996]
4057.4352       write(4, " 2 0 0 2 / 0 4 / 1 6   1".., 98)      = 98
4057.4357       llseek(0, 0, SEEK_CUR)                          = 0
4057.4359       _exit(12)


****************************************************************************
Alberto Accomazzi                          mailto:aaccomazzi at cfa.harvard.edu
NASA Astrophysics Data System                      http://adsabs.harvard.edu
Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics        http://cfawww.harvard.edu
60 Garden Street, MS 83, Cambridge, MA 02138 USA   
****************************************************************************