"intelligent" rsync scripts?

[Eberhard Moenkeberg]

Hi,

On Wed, 26 Oct 2005, Tomasz Chmielewski wrote:

> I use rsync for backing up user data, profiles, important network shares etc. 
> (from several locations over WAN).
>
> Overall it works flawlessly, as it transfers only changes, but sometimes 
> there are some serious hiccups.
>
> Suppose this scenario, suppose it's 1 GB of files:
>
> user shares:
>
> /home/joe/data/file1
>              /file2
>              /...
>              /file1000
>
> Now the user _moves_ that data to some other folder:
>
> /home/joe/WAN_goes_crazy/file1
>                          /file2
>                          /...
>                          /file1000
>
> ...and we start a backup process.
>
> rsync will first transfer data from "/home/joe/WAN_goes_crazy/file...", and 
> then deletes "/home/joe/data/data...".
>
> Basically, this is how rsync works, but in the end, we transfer 1 GB of files 
> over WAN that we already have locally - the only thing that changed was the 
> folder where that data is.
>
> Is there some workaround for this (some intelligent script etc.)?

I guess it needs some intelligent users.
If you can teach your clients to process their moves in three steps:

   1. hard link the old file to the new location
   2. wait until the next rsync has run
   3. delete the file at the old location

then rsync with -H will detect the hard link and not fetch the file over 
the net.

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