[RSYNC] Mac OS X HFS+ metadata patch, take 2

[Ashley M. Kirchner]

D Andrew Reynhout wrote:

>Several months ago, I posted my first pass at a patch to transfer
>Mac OS X HFS+ metadata (resource forks and Finder metadata) to
>non-HFS+ filesystems (Linux, Solaris, etc).
>
    Here's a different take, one that's been causing me problems all 
over, and I can't figure out if it's rsync, or samba, or some other 
force causing the problems.  First, the setup:

    The bulk of the company works on Win32 machines, except our digital 
department, who are all using Macs.  Therefor, we have a few large Win2K 
servers who act as file servers on the network for anyone to use.  This 
works well; the folks on Win32 machines can see/use them and the folks 
in Digi can also see/use them.  Those guys use both OS 9 as well as OS X 
machines.

    Here's what I want to do: they purchased a new Win2K server and 
loaded it up with large drives, to be used as backups for the other 
servers around the building.  Basically what they want is a (semi) 
mirror copy of what the other servers hold, in case of a server failure, 
so they can simply re-map their share to the backup server and continue 
working while I fix the failed one (the data would be no more than 48 
hours old since backups would only run either every night or every other 
night.)

    Sounds simple enough, right?  So, here's what I thought of doing: 
take a free linux box I had sitting in a closet, and use it to act as a 
sort of backup manager.  Let's assume we have Server-A with Drive1 and 
Drive2 on it.  Now we have BackupServer with Drive1 and Drive2 on it.  
On the linux box, I do an smbmount to get Server-A:Drive1 mounted, and 
the same for BackupServer:Drive1.  Then I run rsync on those drives.  
And this is where the problems start.  I posted this message to the 
Samba-Tech list as well, so I'm just going to quote the archived version 
here:

    http://lists.samba.org/archive/samba-technical/2004-August/036630.html

    I'd like to think it's samba not being able to read those files, but 
from what I read here today, it seems maybe rsync is also having 
problems.  So I'm fishing for possible ideas here.

    Now, I will also admit, this may not be the ideal setup.  Perhaps I 
should just stick to xcopy on the backup server and let it do it's 
thing.  I don't know.  What I DO know is that we want to stay as far 
away as we can from having to buy some expensive, network backup 
software.  We've had our share of bad luck with them (they don't always 
grab everything, which has come back and bit us hard in the past.)

    If anyone has any brilliant ideas, I'm all ears.

-- 
W | I haven't lost my mind; it's backed up on tape somewhere.
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  Ashley M. Kirchner <mailto:ashley at pcraft.com>   .   303.442.6410 x130
  IT Director / SysAdmin / WebSmith             .     800.441.3873 x130
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