Migrating Rsync Disk

[Matt McCutchen]

On Fri, 2007-12-28 at 09:48 -0800, pichi wrote:
> OK thanks for your reply, but it leads me to think of how rsync works. I
> don't need a huge answer but how will  server A (target) know that it has
> rsync(ed) with server B if this is the first time they have talked? I mean
> when I reinstall the OS and rsync, there are no more references on the
> target server, and I would hate to have to do another full copy because it
> took days.

This might be an issue for a two-way synchronization tool, but not for
rsync because rsync is stateless.  It decides what needs to be copied
based on a simple comparison of the source and destination, not by
keeping any information in the source or destination about what copies
may have been performed in the past.  You can rebuild the first server
and the copy will still be properly incremental.

Matt