rsync - May 2005 - Mysterious (bogus?) rsync(d) errors -- (code 23) at main.c(1045)

Folks,

(1) Please pardon me if this is something stupid, but I've googled like mad 
and not figured it out (the other reports of this error don't seem to apply 
to me)
(2) I would be thrilled to hire an rsync expert to troubleshoot this for me, 
so offer if you are one.

The setup:
I have 2 identical RHAS3u4 servers, running linux 2.6.10.
On a nightly basis, we are rsyncing all of the database files on both servers 
which are in identical file locations.   The same users, with the same UIDs, 
exist on both servers
rsyncd.conf is further down this message

On trying sync'ing by both the "push" and "pull" methods
(i.e. either by
copying from the local directories to the other server's rscynd, or the
other
way), we are getting mysterious failures to rsync. 
The command line used is:
/usr/bin/rsync --perms --owner --group --times --recursive --safe-links 
--delete-after  server2::postgres-data /pgdata

Which transfers a whole bunch of data, and then gives these failures:
chown . : Operation not permitted
skipping non-regular file "pgdata/base/17521/pgsql_tmp"
skipping non-regular file "pgdata/pg_xlog"
chown . : Operation not permitted
rsync error: some files could not be transferred (code 23) at main.c(1045)

I really can't figure out what could be causing this; all of the files being
copied are owned by the "postgres" user.  What is it trying to chown? 
I've
turned off all database processes to prevent the files from being modified 
during transfer.  And nothing is being logged to /var/log/messages for the 
error.  And it appears that all files actually transferred.  To make it even 
more mysterious, rsync works sometimes.

Any help is appreciated; we're already past deadline!

Rsyncd.conf 
--------------------
       uid = nobody
       gid = nobody
       use chroot = no
       max connections = 4
       syslog facility = local5
       pid file = /var/run/rsyncd.pid

       [postgres-data]
                uid = postgres
                gid = dba
               path = /pgdata
               comment = whole pgdata area
               read only = false
               write only = false

       [postgres-log]
                uid = postgres
                gid = dba
                path = /wal
                comment = Postgresql WAL
                read only = false
                write only = false


-- 
--Josh

Josh Berkus
Aglio Database Solutions
San Francisco

On Wed, 18 May 2005, Josh Berkus <josh@agliodbs.com>
wrote:
>
> The command line used is:
> /usr/bin/rsync --perms --owner --group --times --recursive --safe-links
> --delete-after  server2::postgres-data /pgdata
> 
> Which transfers a whole bunch of data, and then gives these failures:
> chown . : Operation not permitted
> skipping non-regular file "pgdata/base/17521/pgsql_tmp"
> skipping non-regular file "pgdata/pg_xlog"
> chown . : Operation not permitted
> rsync error: some files could not be transferred (code 23) at main.c(1045)
A little more info would help.

Which version of rsync are you using (on source and target)?

What is the output of "ls -ld /pgdata" on both machines?  I suspect
that
on the target it was created with non-postgres userid.

What is the output of "ls -l" for the two "non-regular"
files?
-- 
        John Van Essen  Univ of Minn. Alumnus  <vanes002@umn.edu>

On Wed, May 18, 2005 at 09:39:35PM -0700, Josh Berkus
wrote:
> skipping non-regular file "pgdata/base/17521/pgsql_tmp"
> skipping non-regular file "pgdata/pg_xlog"
This is because you didn't specify --links.  It would be easier if you
just specifed "-a" instead of --perms --owner --group --times
--recursive
and --links, though.
> chown . : Operation not permitted
This is an attempt to set the group (when not running as root) of the
base directory (you get two of them because of the post-processng
directory-permissions pass).  So, if the destination is "/pgdata",
that
is the directory with the chown problem.  Perhaps your OS doesn't allow
a mount point to be changed to a different group?

..wayne..