rsync / cygwin hanging problem

Jim Salter jsalter at jrssystems.net
Thu Nov 20 10:20:16 EST 2003


> over ssh on windows.  Rsync apparently works OK as a daemon
> on whendoze and when accessing an rsync daemon.

Actually I'm using Rsync as a client under cygwin / win2K to access rsync in
daemon mode on a FreeBSD 5.1 server.  The process hangs for no apparent
reason, and even when not utterly "hung" sits around consuming almost zero
CPU resources, only to suddenly and inexplicably lurch back into action and
start actually doing things again and eat 25-70% of system resources again
minutes later.

It may be worth noting that this behavior only shows up when updating an
existing mirror - if using rsync as a fancy networked version of cp, it
behaves as expected.

It is also worth noting that I just replaced the stock 2.5.6 under Cygwin
with the recommended replacement from the BackupPC project, with no apparent
difference whatsoever.

And finally, SSH under Cygwin seems to work fine; as aforementioned I've
experimented with using Unison and it operates quickly, smoothly and
reliably using Cygwin/SSH as a transport... unfortunately it also does an
incredibly bad job of being a one-size-fits-all automated mirroring tool,
since by design it bombs entirely out of synch jobs and does absolutely
nothing with ANY of the job if it encounters anything it doesn't like on any
single file.

> When will this problem be resolved?  That may prove to be a
> question of perspective.  Some might say it already is.  It
> would be nice if rsync were reliable on that other, legacy
> OS (Windos) so ...

If you're trying to convince me that Windows sucks, you're preaching to the
clergy.  But I still have to support an awful lot of people who use it for
disturbingly important things, so... ::helpless shrug::

WAY off-topic: Let's just hope that the EU doesn't back down from forcing
them to deinstall Media Player from European versions of Windows.  If they
stick to their guns, MS will either have to open themselves up to retrograde
American lawsuits (if they can strip out WMP, why couldn't they strip out
IE?) or back out of Europe entirely and give the OS world an ENORMOUS
un-microsoft-fettered market to grow in.  Either way, big win for the rest
of us.

Jim Salter
JRS Systems




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