rsync vs. rcp

[Craig Barratt]

> RSYNC DOES NOT WORK WITH 1GB+ FILES... unless you have a sufficiently
> large block size. See the following;
> 
> http://www.mail-archive.com/rsync@lists.samba.org/msg05219.html

Let's be careful here.  Rsync *does* work on 1GB+ files.  What you
probably meant to say was that rsync's first pass might fail on
files that have 1GB+ of changes.  But the second pass (which uses
the full MD4 block checksum) will work correctly.

So a more correct statement is that Rsync might work *slowly* on
files with 1GB+ of changes because two passes are required.

BTW, rsync already has an adaptive block size unless you set it
on the command-line.  The block size is roughly

    min(16384, max(700, file_size/10000))

ie: file_size/10000, but no less than 700 and no more than 16384.

Craig