rsync - Nov 2004 - what are "false_alarms"?

Hi all.

I'm sorry if this is a simple, obvious question, but I've looked around,
and can not find an answer to this.

What exactly are the false_alarms in the rsync summary?

I am getting a number of false alarms in several of my rsync processes.
Here's my output from one of my logfiles:
total: matches=9724  tag_hits=741242  false_alarms=36 data=20850152
wrote 11731892 bytes  read 106084 bytes  17218.87 bytes/sec
total size is 3772079819  speedup is 318.64

If it matters:
rsync server: win2k server, cwRsync 1.2.7
rsync client: mandrakelinux, rsync 2.6.0
command: /usr/bin/rsync -ruzvv /eng1/SW_Part_Templates/ 
dell5::newdell/engineering/SW_Part_Templates/

Should  I be concerned about the false alarms? Another rsync process 
(different linux box to the same win2k server) shows "false_alarms=0",
as do some of the others on the first machine.

Thanks,
john


p.s. rsync rocks. cut my backup time from 5-6+ hours using MSrobocopy to 
about 1.5 hours.

On Wed, Nov 24, 2004 at 10:37:04AM -0600, John Jablonski
wrote:
> What exactly are the false_alarms in the rsync summary?
That just tells you how many blocks had a matching weak checksum that
did not match when the strong checksum was compared.
 
> Should  I be concerned about the false alarms?
Not unless the number is huge.  The algorithm handles the situation as
it should (and rsync only mentions this stat if debugging levels of
verbosity are set).

..wayne..