Vanished Files issue/enhancement

[Eberhard Moenkeberg]

Hi,

On Wed, 12 Oct 2005, Bill Crowell wrote:

> 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.

This is not a race condition.
rsync will continue till the end, and then just give exit code 24.
It is the same with 23.
So consider these exit codes as "fulfilled".

Cheers -e
-- 
Eberhard Moenkeberg (emoenke at gwdg.de, em at kki.org)