how to get around rsync error (OS X Tiger)

[Lee Cullens]

Wayne Davison wrote:

>On Sun, Aug 21, 2005 at 02:43:50PM -0400, Lee Cullens wrote:
>  
>
>>The most logical place to ask this question is this rsync forum, but
>>no one has yet even acknowledged the issue.
>>    
>>
>
>I was hoping that a MacOS user would respond and help you out since this
>issue appears to be specific to MacOS.
>
>As for why the rename is happening, that's how rsync updates all the
>files (unless overridden via options) -- it creates a new version and
>renames it over the old version.  The main reason for this is because of
>how the rsync algorithm works, but it is also a very safe idiom in that
>any process that has the file open (such as when a program is using the
>binary as read-only swap) is not disrupted as it would be if new data
>was simply written out to the old inode.
>
>I assume the root issue has to do with something non-Posix going on with
>the files in that directory, but I don't know enough about MacOS to be
>able to speculate about what that might be.
>
>..wayne..
>
>  
>
Thank you for the reply Wayne,

Yes, that makes sense and, of course, yet another reading of the man 
pages gives that impression if one is properly attuned :-)    So,  the 
option to override this behavior would be "--inplace" I assume, and do 
yo know of any caveats regarding such locally? 

If I might be so naive,  may I also ask about the  "-H"  option?   OS X  
Darwin is BSD with Apple's own twists thrown in,  and uses a lot of hard 
links, symbolic links and their own "aliases" to present the file system 
to the GUI user.  I am creating first a full direct (no intermediate 
image) clone with asr of my working volume "Mirrored_HD_Set" to an 
external HD "LaCie_Disk_A" (or B or C ...) as a bootable volume and I 
know from testing that just reversing source and destination in asr 
restores a fully functional working volume.  In the file system 
"LaCie_Disk_A" is a mount point in /Volumes/ but I notice the mount 
point of "Mirrored_HD_Set" is actually a symbolic link to (guess what) 
"Mirrored_HD_Set/" (wherever that is) just to give you an idea of the 
hijinks. 

Now, I am using the rsync options "-axEuvv --delete --exclude-from=..."  
(so far)  to differentially update the clone.  On initial readings of 
the rsync man pages I included the -H option, but on subsequent readings 
I took it out.  Can you tell me if I might be wrong in doing so?

Thanks again for your reply - it was greatly appreciated,
Lee C