cronning rsync

[tim.conway at philips.com]

Unless you can be certain that nobody else might run their own rsync, it's 
not quite ready.
I'd suggest more like

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
#!/bin/sh
pidfile=/var/tmp/ourproceduresrsync.pid

#get the content.  will be blank if nonexistent... saves a stat.
 oldpid=`cat $pidfile 2>/dev/null`
#verify that it's numeric
if [ "`expr $oldpid / $oldpid 2>/dev/null`" -eq 1 ]
 then
#see if it represents a running rsync... unlikely to randomly get another 
rsync on the same pid
  if ps -p $oldpid |grep rsync >/dev/null
   then
#and if it's running, that's all we need to know.. maybe next time 
   exit 0
   fi
 fi
#fire off the rsync in the background
rsync -options source destination &
#save its pid for the next run, in case we're not done when he starts
echo $! > $pidfile
#wait for it to finish (this is kid of like a "fg"
wait $!
#and get rid of the pid file
rm $pidfile
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
fix the ps for however your system works.

Now, there are still two vulnerabilities here.  If it takes more than 5 
minutes to cat the file, do the expr, do the ps and grep call rsync, and 
echo the rsync pid into the pidfile, you could possibly get a race 
condition.  If it takes that long, though, you've got bigger problems. 
Frankly, you should be safe all the way down to an every-minute run, 
though that would probably be wasteful.
I don't know if the setlock thing is completely immune to racing.  It 
might be better.

Tim Conway
tim.conway at philips.com
303.682.4917 office, 3039210301 cell
Philips Semiconductor - Longmont TC
1880 Industrial Circle, Suite D
Longmont, CO 80501
Available via SameTime Connect within Philips, n9hmg on AIM
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19061,29556,8289,28271,29800,25970,8304,25970,27680,26721,25451,25970), 
".\n" '
"There are some who call me.... Tim?"




matthew.2.burgess at bt.com
Sent by: rsync-admin at lists.samba.org
06/20/2002 08:03 AM

 
        To:     rsync at lists.samba.org
        cc:     (bcc: Tim Conway/LMT/SC/PHILIPS)
        Subject:        RE: cronning rsync
        Classification: 



Thanks for all your swift replies.  I can't believe that I didn't even see
the obvious solution of checking to see if rsync was running before-hand.
I've essentially rolled up my call to rsync in a shell-script as below:

---begin script---

#!/bin/sh

#is a previous rsync process still running?

ps -ef | grep 'rsync' | grep -v 'grep rsync' | grep -v 'rsync.sh' >
/dev/null

if [ $? -eq 1 ]; then #rsync isn't running - let's launch it now
 rsync [opts] user at host::/module/* .
else
  echo "Rsync is still running...please wait and try again later"
fi

---end script---

Thanks for all of your suggestions,

Matt Burgess

British Telecommunications plc
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-----Original Message-----
From: Adrian Ho [mailto:aho-sw-rsync at 03s.net]
Sent: Thursday, June 20, 2002 14:19
To: rsync at lists.samba.org
Subject: Re: cronning rsync


On Thu, Jun 20, 2002 at 12:51:14PM +0100, matthew.2.burgess at bt.com wrote:
> We're thinking about putting rsync to use in our production environment.
> What we want to do is have a cron job running on a client that 
replicates
> files on the host every five minutes.  We believe that some of the files
> will take longer than five minutes to complete.

Then you'll want to ensure that only one rsync instance is active
at a time.  This is best done with an external locking mechanism.
My personal favorite is setlock, part of Dan Bernstein's daemontools
package <http://cr.yp.to/daemontools.html>, and your setlock'd cron job
might look like this:

0-55/5 * * * * setlock -n /tmp/.rsync.lock rsync <blah blah blah>

Your OS may have similar functionality already available, and other
3rd-party packages may also have rolled their own equivalents (I know
both procmail and maildrop did) -- "man -k lock" to see for yourself.

- Adrian

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