rsync 2.5.6 still hangs

[Andrew J. Schorr]

Steve,

I have a couple of comments:

1. In rsync 2.5.5, I found that the -vvv flag can cause repeatable
   rsync hangs.  Since I was using it to debug a real problem, it
   was very confusing and misleading.  But in the end, I determined
   that -vvv itself was often the culprit.  So I caution
   you not to trust what you see when you debug with -vvv: the
   results may have nothing to do with the real problem that caused
   you to look more closely with -vvv in the first place.
   (I'm assuming that the same -vvv problems still exist in 2.5.6,
   although I've never tested.)

2. I have a nightly cron job to sync up 2 servers, and rsync gives
   me the following error (or something similar) every night (this is
   the reason I was debugging with -vvv):

rsync: writefd_unbuffered failed to write 174 bytes: phase "unknown": Broken pipe
rsync error: error in rsync protocol data stream (code 12) at ../io.c(622)

   This is when connecting to rsync in server mode (started by inetd).
   Previously, I was running rsync over ssh and it would hang instead
   of exiting with an error.

   My solution to the problem has been to test the return code from
   rsync and simply rerun the exact same command when I get an error
   return from rsync.  Every night I find that the first attempt
   fails after a while, but the second one always works.  I have no idea
   why this happens, but this solution works for me.

Good luck,
Andy