John Van Essen
2004-Apr-03 07:13 UTC
--hard-link option now uses the first existing file - Excellent!
With regard to this NEWS item from 2.6.1pre-1: * The --hard-link option now uses the first existing file in the group of linked files as the basis for the transfer. This prevents the sub-optimal transfer of a file's data when a new hardlink is added on the sending side and it sorts alphabetically earlier in the list than the files that are already present on the receiving side. I am delighted to report that this fix works as advertised. An rsync that used to take 3+ hours now takes only 30 minutes since it no longer unnecessarily retransfers 200+ MB worth of files just because of the (bad) luck of the alphabetic sort. Many thanks for Wayne and JW for digging into this and fixing it. Wayne - there's no mention in the NEWS file about the changes to avoid modifying the file list entries after they are built that should allow shared data memory to remain intact (avoiding Copy on Write) after the client forks the generator, thus using less memory in systems that support CoW. I think this (perhaps reworded :D) is worth noting in the INTERNAL section. -- John Van Essen Univ of MN Alumnus <vanes002@umn.edu>