Does rsync detect file corruption?

[Christian Hecht]

Am 24.05.2009 um 18:01 schrieb Daniel Carrera:

> Jamie Lokier wrote:
>> Daniel Carrera wrote:
>>> But there is no way to distinguish between file corruption and a  
>>> legitimate change. All you can do is keep old backups for a few  
>>> days or weeks and hope that you detect the file corruption before  
>>> the backup rotation deletes all the good copies.
>> I'm under the impression ZFS (Solaris) and BTRFS (Linux) allow a
>> checksum to be stored with the file data, so if the data changes due
>> to disk corruption or glitches in the I/O cabling, that will be  
>> detected.
>
> Thinking a little more about this problem, there is one possible  
> solution: Store a checksum and mod time when the file is backed up.  
> If later on, the file's checksum is different but the modification  
> time has not changed, it is safe to assume that the file is corrupt.  
> So we can distinguish between legitimate edits an accidental  
> corruption.
>
Exactly.
Such a tool i plan to write for Mac OS X. The first time it should  
store checksums and mod times for all files to verify.
Later on it can check the stored values against the files and alert if  
checksum is different.

Maybe i will combine this tool with my existing GUI for rsync: http://software.mortaxx.net/sw_en/rp_en.html

Best regards
Christian

> Daniel.
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