Odd behavior with rsync/ssh/--delete

[Wayne Davison]

On Sun, Mar 21, 2004 at 09:51:18PM -0700, Peter Wargo wrote:
> However, my syncs are much bigger then they should be.  I'm getting a
> bunch more than I expect - files that haven't changed in a long time
> are being deleted and re-sync'd.

Does the destination system have any mounted filesystems inside the
single mount from the source system?  Try dropping the -x and using one
or more --exclude directives for the mount point(s) that should be
skipped.

Can you reproduce the problem with a smaller file set?  Try transferring
just one home dir that had a problem and see if that still fails.  Use
-vvvv so you can see the file list from both sides of the transfer
(which is why I recommend trying this with a smaller file set -- it
generates a lot of output).  There will be two dumps of the file list
from the receiving side.  The first is the list it received from the
sender, and the second is the list that it created to look for
deletions.  Look for any unexpected differences between those two lists.
Rsync will delete anything that is extra in the second list, even if it
is just out of order (which it shouldn't be).

..wayne..