Rsync and windows

[Lapo Luchini]

Oliver Krehan wrote:

>Hi there,
>
>I have a problem syncronizing a windows machine with a linux box.
>I want to backup the "My Documents" folder. Therefore I burned the data
>on a cdrom because the windows pc is only connected over a slow wan
>connection to the linux box. When I copy the data to the users home
>directory (using samba and another windows pc) and run the rsync program
>all the files are copied once more. I made some tests and changed the
>ownership and the also the file permissions for the copied data on the
>linux box but still rsync wants to transfer all the data, even if they
>look exactly the same after the transfer. If I use rsync to copy the
>data for the first time everything works fine.
>
I guess the problem is that the date on the linux box is newer... the 
following options *may* help you:

       --size-only
              Normally  rsync  will  skip  any files that are already 
the same
              length and have the same time-stamp. With the --size-only 
option
              files  will be skipped if they have the same size, 
regardless of
              timestamp. This is useful when starting to use rsync after 
using
              another  mirroring  system  which  may  not  preserve 
timestamps
              exactly.
        -I, --ignore-times          don't exclude files that match 
length and time

>On the windows machine (Win2000 SP3) I run rsync 2.5.1 protocol version
>25 in a cygwin environement.
>
I would suggest you toupdate your environment too: current rsync release 
on cygwin is 2.5.5

>reasons over a ssh tunnel.
>
also openssh was updated much.

You can of course use http://cgywin.com/setup.exe to easily update it all.

>Is there a simple way to burn windows data on a cdrom, then to the right
>directory on the linux machine and run rsync without transfering the
>whole data once again ?
>
You can always create a .tar.bz2 to better preserve date and 
permissions... but I would first try with what I said before in this 
message.

best regards,
Lapo

-- 
Lapo 'Raist' Luchini
lapo at lapo.it (PGP & X.509 keys available)
http://www.lapo.it (ICQ UIN: 529796)