hi guyz, One simple question. What does rsync do when it encounters open files. Do we have to use open file manager(like st bernard) to back up open files or is there any open source open file manager or can rsync backup open files by itself. thanx tarun --------------------------------- Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Mail SpamGuard - Read only the mail you want.
On Thu, Feb 19, 2004 at 07:40:14PM -0800, Tarun Karra wrote:> hi guyz, > > One simple question. What does rsync do when it encounters open files. > Do we have to use open file manager(like st bernard) to back up open files or is there any open source open file manager or can rsync backup open files by itself.Rsync is a POSIX/SUS compliant utility. It doesn't know from open files. I assume you are speaking from the context of some brain-damaged single-user OS that doesn't allow files to be opened by multiple processes simultaniously. -- ________________________________________________________________ J.W. Schultz Pegasystems Technologies email address: jw@pegasys.ws Remember Cernan and Schmitt
On Thu, Feb 19, 2004 at 07:40:14PM -0800, Tarun Karra wrote:> hi guyz, > > One simple question. What does rsync do when it encounters open files. > Do we have to use open file manager(like st bernard) to back up open files or is there any open source open file manager or can rsync backup open files by itself. > > thanx > tarun >rsync doesn't treat open files differently. They'll work as long as they don't change while rsync is reading it. On Windows, rsync cannot read open files, although I'm working on that at the moment (by using the Win32 backup semantics). -- Jason M. Felice Cronosys, LLC <http://www.cronosys.com/> 216.221.4600 x302
Hmmm. It's odd to think that Cygwin always uses backup semantics, because it DEFINITELY fails to process quite a lot of files that the high-dollar win32-native backup utilities can process. My experience has been that cygwin can open (for reading) any file that you can use the GUI to drag-and-drop-copy, but it cannot open any file that the GUI will not drag-and-drop copy. Example: you're downloading a large MPEG using IE. WMP will refuse to open the partial file because it's locked to some extent - but you can use the GUI to make a copy of the partial file, and WMP will then open the copy. Some other files, however - for instance Outlook .PST files - are absolutely uncopyable using the GUI when they are locked by the processes that play with them. My experience is that cygwin can open files that are locked read-only - like partial IE downloads - but CANNOT open files that are completely locked - like Outlook's .PSTs. Please keep us posted how your research on this stuff turns out. -J > I've received a reply from the Cygwin people that suggests > Cygwin _always_ uses backup semantics, and a little information > about how. It's some pretty hairy code and I'm still deciphering > it, but it could be that I was authoring that patch for nothing. > I'll post more when I figure it out.