rsync man page: out of date corruption warning

Justin Roth Justin.Roth at Sun.COM
Thu Dec 4 21:52:14 GMT 2008


Hi all,

The part about the -S option in the rsync man page says:

     -S, --sparse
          Try to handle sparse files efficiently so they take  up
          less   space   on   the  destination.   Conflicts  with
          --inplace because it's not possible to  overwrite  data
          in a sparse fashion.

          NOTE: Don't use this option when the destination  is  a
          Solaris  "tmpfs"  filesystem. It doesn't seem to handle
          seeks over null regions correctly and ends up  corrupt-
          ing the files.

This may have been true for Solaris 2.5.1 and older, but is not for 
Solaris 2.6 or later (for the last 12 years). 

Solaris tmpfs does not implement sparse files, so if you use -S on a 
Solaris tmpfs system, the files won't be sparse. 

This note would be more accurate if it said:

          NOTE: This option has no effect if the destination is a
          Solaris  "tmpfs"  filesystem. The files won't be sparse.

Thanks,
-Justin


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