Vanished Files issue/enhancement

[Bill Crowell]

Hi Rsync/Samba team,

First of all, cudos on rsync 2.6.6! It is running exceptionally well.

I'm using a script executed by cron to keep warm-backup servers in sync 
with the primary server. The execution is set to run every 5 minutes. 
Like any good programmer, this process is *very* paranoid and uses 
'wall' to notify the users if any error occurs during the transmissions.

This is working extremely well. We've already done an emergency failover 
to the warm-backup servers with an acceptable amount of data loss - 
mostly nothing!

I have found; however, a race condition exists between users and rsync 
that causes a 'vanished file' error. This race condition is exacerbated 
when the link speed between the systems is slow such as a T1.

rsync -avpozO -e ssh /somedirectory/  backupserver:/somedirectory/

During normal system operation, users are allowed to delete files that 
they own in 'somedirectory'. This is especially true in /home. When 
rsync is instantiated, the file list is created and the transfer begins. 
The problem comes up when a user deletes a file during the transfer. 
Rsync exits 24 and this causes the paranoia messages to go out.

Reading the documentation, I see no method or option to deal with this 
situation.

I request an option flag '--ignore-vanished' to be added. This flag 
would disable exit 24. With the -v option, vanished files would be 
described as "file xxx Vanished - Ignored" so it still may be seen in logs.

Regards,

Bill

-- 
William G. Crowell, VP & CTO
Crowell Systems
4235 South Stream Blvd Suite 100
Charlotte NC 28217
704.665.2000 fax 704.665.2180