rsync - May 2006 - cross platform rsync avz lists all directory names in tree

Hi,

I have tried googling and reading the docs and examples but haven't yet 
managed to solve this issue.

rsyncing from Mac OS X to FreeBSD and from Linux to Windows XP, with the 
arguments avz I get the same thing in the reports (mailed from cron):

path/
path/to/
path/to/directories/
path/to/directories/changedfile.txt
another/path/
another/path/withoutanychangedfiles/
yet/anotherpath/
yet/anotherpath/withoutanychangedfiles/
...

and so on. With biggish directories this results in huge lists which 
have to be trawled through if manual checks are to be made that changed 
files were successfully copied/updated.

I have a feeling that this stems from differences in permission/uid/gid 
values but haven't managed to find a combination of arguments that give 
a useful report. rsyncing between Linux and FreeBSD boxes is fine (of 
course).

Can anyone advise how to limit the output to just files/directories that 
have been added, removed (if --delete is used) or changed when running 
across platforms like this?

TIA.

Please cc me, because I'm not a list subscriber.

Regards,

Peter Risdon.

On Tue, 2006-05-23 at 10:18 +0100, Peter Risdon wrote:
> Can anyone advise how to limit the output to just files/directories that 
> have been added, removed (if --delete is used) or changed when running 
> across platforms like this?
Maybe you could use -i (--itemize-changes).  That will produce lines
like the following for a file with unchanged content but a lot of
changed attributes:

.f..tpog. myfile

Then you could use grep -v '^\.' to filter out lines beginning with a
dot, i.e., those indicating that only attributes were changed.  If file
content is changed or a regular file is created, the line will begin
with < or >.  If a non-regular file is created, the line will begin with
c.  If something is deleted, the line will begin with *.

Matt McCutchen

On Tue, May 23, 2006 at 10:18:23AM +0100, Peter Risdon
wrote:
> another/path/
> another/path/withoutanychangedfiles/
> yet/anotherpath/withoutanychangedfiles/
> ...
If this is caused by a change in timestamps, you can avoid the updating
of directory timestamps by using the -O option.  If you still see
updates to the directories, then using -i will at least tell you what
attributes rsync thinks are different (and, as Matt indicated, you could
filter the -i output to get rid of any updating-attribute lines).

One other potential cause for a timestamp difference:  if you're copying
to a FAT filesystem, you should use the option --modify-window=1 because
the timestamps can't store an odd value.

..wayne..