File rename detection?

[Donovan Baarda]

On Thu, 2004-01-29 at 06:27, jw schultz wrote:
> On Wed, Jan 28, 2004 at 09:06:52PM +0300, ??????? ???????? wrote:
> > Hello!
> > 
> > As I was found rsync do not detect file renaming. If I just copy my
> > backup.0.tgz (many Mbytes in size having it's md5) to backup.1.tgz
> > (which will be equial in size and md5) it will be the same file
> > in fact...
> > 
> > Rsync will delete old file (backup.0.tgz) on the receiving side and
> > download new one (backup.1.tgz). I do not think there are any
> > difficulties to detect this situation and follow the natural way:
> > just rename the file on the receiving side.
> > 
> > Am I right?
> 
> Reliably detecting renamed files in a manner that rsync can
> act on it is very difficult.

I believe rsync currently sends whole-file md4sums along with the
signature. At least when using the -c option, it _could_ use the md4sums
to identify identical but moved files.

Actually implementing it is another story :-)

-- 
Donovan Baarda <abo at minkirri.apana.org.au>
http://minkirri.apana.org.au/~abo/