Debian upgrade and rsync changes.

[Mike Daws]

I've finally been given the go-ahead to upgrade from Woody to Sarge. I
am comparing rsync man pages to try to determine what effects a change
from 2.5.7 (protocol 26) -> 2.6.4 (protocol 29) may have.

We have ~1000 rsync clients (also at 2.5.7) maintaining their entire
filesystem from one server. I plan to upgrade the server first, and then
the clients.

This is an example rsync command we use:

  rsync --timeout 150 
        --port 443
        --password-file /etc/little_password
        --exclude-from /local_mirror/netpost/etc/rsync_remote_list
        --partial
        --delete
        -z -a -v 
       $info{machine_name}\@$info{logging_host}::$image /local_mirror

The basic gist is that a script will periodically perform these rsyncs,
syncing a 'local mirror' against a remote image, and only when an rsync
has completed successfully (and made changes) will the live filesystem
be synced against this local mirror. This is due to the unreliable
nature of theses client's internet connections.

The man page shows new --delete options - particularly reference is made
to --delete-during being more efficient than --delete. Is this likely to
be a desirable parameter change for us?

There seems to have been a lot of activity around the include/exclude
type features. However, as far as I can see the basic functionality does
not appear to have changed. That is, a simple list of +/- files in a
--exclude-from file would still be interpreted in the same way?

cheers,
Mike