Problem with rsync-2.6.8 and -c (checksum)

Andreas Fehr andreas at mrs.ch
Mon May 22 17:59:16 GMT 2006


Hi

I have a problem with rsync and the -c option. I think understand what 
it does, but I'm not sure, it does it correctly. But then I guess, 
perhaps I don't understand what it does... :-)

I use "rsync  version 2.6.8  protocol version 29"



I use the following command:

/opt/rsync/bin/rsync -av 
--link-dest=/home/user/backup/old
            /home/user/source 
            /home/user/backup/new

This works ok.

If I touch a file in the source directory, I get a copy in the 
'backup/new' directory, all the other files there are hard linked to 
'backup/old'. This is still ok and how I expected rsync to work (as the 
one file changed it's timestamp).


If added '-c' to the already existing '-a'. Now it looks as follows:

/opt/rsync/bin/rsync -cav
--link-dest=/home/user/backup/old
            /home/user/source 
            /home/user/backup/new


I expected, that rsync doesn't care about the timestamp anymore. It 
should calc the checksum of all the files in the source directory, 
compares them with the files in the '--link-dest' directory and just 
copies the files with a different checksum. But there is no change in 
the behavior of rsync. I get the same result with or without the '-c' 
option.

My guess: --checksum does not work on --link-dest. Is this by design?


Any help on this (and is it clear, what I have in mind)?

Thanks,
Andreas


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