Rsync help needed...

[Wayne Davison]

On Fri, Mar 03, 2006 at 09:21:25AM -0500, Linus Hicks wrote:
> I'm transferring one file, which is obvious from my command line. Is the 
> FAQ incorrect?

The FAQ is incomplete in how the size of the file can affect the sender's
memory.  If the destination file already exists, the sender needs to be
able to store all the checksum data for the receiver's file in memory.
This is nowhere near as large of a chuck of memory as a large file list,
but I thought that perhaps this was the cause since you only experienced
a slowdown when the receiver had a large file it was overwriting.  

One thing you don't mention is if the destination disk is local or
network mounted.  If it is not local, the extra I/O needed for the
incremental-update algorithm could be slowing down the transfer (though
the amount of the slowdown is very surprising).  You can always choose
to use the --whole-file option if the incremental update isn't a speed
win for you (this is easier than having to remove the destination file
for anything you want to update).

..wayne..