Rsync, solaris 8, and live file systems

[Buddy Ellis]

I have been using rsync 2.6.6, to do an across the network sync on a quiet 
system in a Solaris 8 environment. Rsync is compiled from src on the 
sunfreeware gcc compiler, and has worked excellently in this capacity.   We 
are now wanting to attempt to do a similar thing more often in a 'live' 
environment (doing hourly snapshots), and in testing to see how locked files 
were being handled I'm running into an issue both locally and over ssh.

My test case:

If I start dumping data to a file, say 'cat reallybigfile > newfilename' and 
then attempt to rsync that file well before the cat is done using the 
following:

from a remote system:
rsync -av -e ssh --numeric-ids root at somehost:/srcdir /destdir

or locally

rsync -av --numeric-ids /srcdir /destdir

rsync will transfer a 'partial' file (which was probably the 'whole' file at 
the second that rsync examined the file) and transfer that portion of the 
file and exit as if all is kosher.

Is it not possible to use rsync to copy files from an live/in-use 
filesystem?

Any suggestions on other methods/means/products of how to do something like 
this if it is not possible with rsync?

Thanks in advance.

-b

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