rsync - Oct 2004 - [Fwd: question for file attributes (atime, ctime)]

It looks like I need to elaborate further to get a feedback.

I checked the rsync source code and it is using utime()  to restore 
atime file attribute.   It is fine to change ctime for that transferred 
file in this case.  

What we are having problem is that when rsync gets kicked off and 
transfers one file to the destination, this action changes ctime of 
"all" files in the same directory and sub directories on the
destination
side, even though a ctime for those files should not be changed, but it 
should change ctime only for the file transferred.   Please advise me 
how rsync should behave in terms of ctime file attribute.  Or could this 
problem be nfs/kernel issue or something else ?   Does rsync change 
ctime for all files under the same directory trees ?

Thanks in advance,
yasushi

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: 	question for file attributes (atime, ctime)
Date: 	Mon, 25 Oct 2004 14:28:40 -0400
From: 	Yasushi Okubo <yasushi@cabm.rutgers.edu>
To: 	rsync@lists.samba.org



Hi,

I looked though documentation and also checked last 9 months of 
archives, but could not find the corresponding information.   We are 
having an issue with incremental backup with arkeia.   Arkeia checks if 
ctime/mtime of the file are changed, if so, it backs up.

I realized that when I ran rsync from a command line, it changed ctime, 
and preserved atime of the file in a destination as follows even though 
a file has no change in its content.  Is this a expected  action for rsync ?

OS:  Redhat linux WS 3.0
kernel: 2.4.21-20.ELsmp
nfs: nfs-utils-1.0.6-31EL
rsync: rsync-2.5.7-5.3E

Thanks,
yasushi

== ctime ==ls -ltrc /mirror2/backup_test/current/test_dir/test_dir2/
total 4
-rw-r--r--    2 root     root           22 Oct 25 13:45 testfiles3.txt

== atime ==ls -ltra /mirror2/backup_test/current/test_dir/test_dir2/
total 12
-rw-r--r--    2 root     root           22 Apr 28 10:13 testfiles3.txt
drwxr-xr-x    2 root     root         4096 Apr 28 10:13 .
drwxr-xr-x    3 root     root         4096 Oct 21 14:22 ..

== mtime ==ls -ltr /mirror2/backup_test/current/test_dir/test_dir2/
total 4
-rw-r--r--    2 root     root           22 Apr 28 10:13 testfiles3.txt


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On Tue, Oct 26, 2004 at 10:17:15AM -0400, Yasushi Okubo
wrote:
> What we are having problem is that when rsync gets kicked off and
> transfers one file to the destination, this action changes ctime of
> "all" files in the same directory and sub directories on the
> destination side
Rsync only preserves the mtime for the files it transfers -- atime gets
set to "now" if the file is transferred or if the file was scanned for
some reason (e.g. --checksum was used).  The ctime is set by the system
if something in the inode was changed.  This could mean something as
simple as rsync needing to set the mode of the file to match the mode of
the source file, for instance.  There is no way to preserve ctime using
standard library calls, so this is not something that will ever change.
There is a diff in the patches dir that adds the ability to preserve the
atime, however (at the cost of some extra memory for all transfers, even
if you aren't preserving the atime).

..wayne..