"rsync --delete" won't delete certain files

[Peter Daum]

Hi,

I still couldn't find a really simple test case but at least I can
provide some more details regarding this obscure issue:

- The problem only occurs when there is more than 1 file system to
   sync. When I only backup "/", everything is fine, when I add another
   source file system, nothing below "/var" will be deleted (I still don't
   have a clue, why this occurs on "/var" but not on other paths)
- The issue has been around for quite a while: It has been introduced by
   some change between rsync 2.6.4 and 2.6.5

Regards,
                     Peter Daum

Peter Daum wrote:
> as I just discovered, in recent versions of rsync the "--delete" option
> seems to not work in certain cases. I couldn't come up with a simple
> scenario to reproduce the problem, so I'll have to tell the whole story:
> 
> I use rsync to regularly backup a system onto other disks. The filesystems
> I want to save are mounted on "/", "/usr/ and "/data", the target is below
> "/backup" (and has "/backup/usr" and "/backup/data" on separate file 
> systems).
> 
> the rsync command line looks like this:
> rsync [other options ...] -a --delete / /usr /data /backup/
> 
> For some reason, it seems like old data below /backup/var will never be 
> deleted
> again I don't see any reason why "/var" would be treated somehow 
> special, but I
> couldn't find another directory where this phenomenon also occurs; the 
> "other
> options" don't include anything referring to "/var". New data below 
> "/var" will
> be synced, but when files below "/var" are deleted, they will stay on
> "/backup/var". I don't know when this started (fortunately, I didn't 
> need the
> backup data recently ;-), I just discovered it when the partition on 
> "/backup/"
> ran out of space. This happened with rsync 3.03; I also tried 3.05 with 
> the same
> result. When I tried the same command line using rsync 2.6.3, the 
> leftover data
> on /backup/var/ was finally deleted. However, I would rather use a 
> recent version.
> 
> Any idea what is going on?