rsync - Apr 2004 - Q: --one-file-system and nested file systems

Greetings rsync gurus!
  I'm trying to run rsync from machine A to backup files on machine B.

I want the files to be copied into a directory -- /backups/B -- on machine 
A and mimic the directory structure on machine B.

Machine B has the following file systems (and some NFS mounts I don't 
want):
  /
  /boot
  /usr
  /usr/local
  /usr/local/apache

The problem comes when I run rsync with --one-file-system against the /usr
file system on the remote machine. Rsync deletes all the files in and
below /backups/B/usr/local on A as it rsyncs B:/usr

I think I can work around this behavior by tuning the --exclude= pattern 
when I rsync against /usr/local and /usr/local/apache, but I was wondering 
if there is a better way.

* Is there a way for --one-file-system to know on dest side not to delete
files that are not part of the target file system on the src side?


Example commands and details:

First step works okay, backs up B:/ to A:/backups/B

  rsync -av -e ssh --one-file-system --numeric-ids --relative --delete \
  --exclude-from=/backups/control/all.exclude root@B:/ .


This is where it stops working as desired, rsync deletes everything under 
/backups/BB/usr/local on A while trying to rsync /usr from B --

  rsync -av -e ssh --one-file-system --numeric-ids --relative --delete \
  --exclude-from=/backups/control/all.exclude root@B:/usr .


This also doesn't work as desired, it deletes everything under
/backups/B/usr/local/apache --

  rsync -av -e ssh --one-file-system --numeric-ids --relative --delete \
  --exclude-from=/backups/control/all.exclude root@B:/usr/local .


Finally, this works fine, it is the deepest file system on B:

  rsync -av -e ssh --one-file-system --numeric-ids --relative --delete \ 
  --exclude-from=/backups/control/all.exclude root@B:/usr/local/apache .


I've tried fiddling with trailing slashes on the src spec, tried w/wo 
--relative, and modifying the dest spec. I was not able to achieve the 
result I wanted and I'm pretty sure it's because the files on the remote
side are not part of the remote file system but they are part of the dest 
file system and so are deleted by rsync.

I'd much rather do this in a "pull" configuration similar to the
commands
given above than "pushing" the files... if possible.

Any ideas? Did I miss something simple? (I hope not!  :-)

-Brian

On Wed, Apr 07, 2004 at 03:38:28PM -0400, Brian McEntire
wrote:
> * Is there a way for --one-file-system to know on dest side not to delete
> files that are not part of the target file system on the src side?
No, that's not currently possible -- the -x option only affects the
reading of the files on the source machine.  However, you can include
all the source filesystems as args in a single copy command and it will
enforce the single-filesystem (inode-based) restriction separately for
each arg you specify:

  rsync -avxR -e ssh --numeric-ids --delete \
    --exclude-from=/backups/control/all.exclude \
    root@B:'/ /usr /usr/local /usr/local/apache' /backups/B

As long as that doesn't exhaust your machine's memory, it should work
fine.

..wayne..

On Wed, Apr 07, 2004 at 02:47:16PM -0700, Wayne Davison
wrote:
> the -x option only affects the reading of the files on the source
> machine.
Correction:  this is an inaccurate statement when using --delete;
the hierarchy of files created on the receiving machine that is used
to figure out what needs to be deleted is also constrained by the -x
option.

..wayne..