rsync - Apr 2004 - want to write a patch, need help getting started...

Greetings,

I have two systems that have identical file hierarchies, except the
owners/groups and timestamps differ.  All of the files have the same
checksums.  Is there a way to tell rsync to compare checksums, and if
they are the same, simply change the owner/group/timestamp?  I really
only care about timestamps.  This way, once the timestamps are duplicated,
rsync can operate more efficiently the next time it is run.

If there is not a way to do this, I would like to write a patch.  I was
wondering if a developer could tell me which source files to look in,
functions names, data structures, etc.

Thanks,
John Taylor

On Thu, Apr 15, 2004 at 11:24:46AM -0400, John Taylor
wrote:
> Is there a way to tell rsync to compare checksums, and if they are
> the same, simply change the owner/group/timestamp?
The --checksum (-c) option does that when combined with -a.

..wayne..

--archive will make it match up all the timestamps. owners, etc, along 
with the data.  If the metadata matches, it won't read the files to verify 
content,  so you might want to add --checksum to force reading, though 
that will make it take a whole lot longer.
If you want it to leave owner alone, do individual options instead of the 
--archive bundle... --times will do, though you probably want it 
recursive, too.

Tim Conway
Unix System Administration
Contractor - IBM Global Services
desk:3032734776
conway@us.ibm.com






Greetings,

I have two systems that have identical file hierarchies, except the
owners/groups and timestamps differ.  All of the files have the same
checksums.  Is there a way to tell rsync to compare checksums, and if
they are the same, simply change the owner/group/timestamp?  I really
only care about timestamps.  This way, once the timestamps are duplicated,
rsync can operate more efficiently the next time it is run.