rsync variation help

Vikas Yadav vikasyadav at yahoo.com
Tue Apr 22 18:11:43 EST 2003


This message is for rsync developers who know the code very well. This is first time I am using
rsync. In short trying to solve an problem by using existing rsync code. 

rsync does treewalk and it also does checksum on "logical file block", whose size can be choosen
at will. I want to use this exisiting framework to write a utility to maintain a checksum tree of 
an dataset.

Q. What do I mean by checksum tree.
A. By that I mean to create a tree having same structure as source dataset has. But all the files 

   on destionation will contain 128 bit checksum instead of X bytes of actual block. 
   Perferbly X will be 4096 bytes. 

   Destination tree will match the source side in structure. Only thing will be different is 
   size of files and data within the files. Destination contains only the checksum of data.

   I am assuming that such a task should be easy using the existing code of rsync. Lets call this 
   new tool rsync* for a moment.

Q. You have a rsync relationship between a dataset and it checksum tree. What should 
   happen when I change source dataset and run rsync* to modify the checksum tree on 
   destination.
A. Instead of calculating md{5 or 4} checksum on destination file, rsync* will read the checksum
   store in checksum tree and send that over to source. Source should not send changed blocks to 
   destination. On received changed blocks from source, destination should update the 
    checksum tree with new checksum on corresponding blocks.

I think I have given a overview of what I want to achieve. Can someone help me on this list by
telling me 
     - If such a thing can be easily achieved with current rsync code with little effort ?
     - If yes, where should I start looking at. Where to find the code which copy write 
       blocks on destination ? Where to find the code which calculates checksum to be 
       sent to source. 

Thanx in advance for your help,
Vikas

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