rsync - Jul 2006 - does partial option work over ssh?

Dear All,

I am hoping that someone might be able to help me here.  I have been
trying to use rsync to pick up a half-finished file copy and continue
from that point, rather than restarting, but can't seem to get it right.

Running rsync 2.6.7 and OpenSSH_3.6.1p2 on RHEL3; 
pc-87 (see below) is rsync 2.6.3 and (OpenSSH_3.9p1, OpenSSL 0.9.7a Feb
19 2003) on RHEL4.

This is what I believe SHOULD work, but it doesn't:

rsync -aP -e 'ssh -c blowfish' user@host:/path/to/file1/ newpath/

- it just starts again.

Both machines are behind firewalls, but going in the above direction
should be okay; plus of course it does succeed in copying, just not in
appending.

A colleague here says he has tried to do the same thing, and he could
get it to work for an rsync daemon, but not over ssh.

Does anyone know what I'm doing wrong?  

Thanks for any hints,

Glen Davison

-- 
Glen Davison            davo@sirca.org.au
SIRCA Pty Ltd           Ph 9236 9133

On Fri 14 Jul 2006, Glen Davison wrote:
> 
> This is what I believe SHOULD work, but it doesn't:
> 
> rsync -aP -e 'ssh -c blowfish' user@host:/path/to/file1/ newpath/
> 
> - it just starts again.
The interrupted rsync session also needs to have had the --partial
option (implied here by -P) active, otherwise the interrupted session
will have discarded the partial data.

If --partial _was_ in effect, then how did you determine it starts
again? Remember that rsync will still verify the contents of the partial
transfer, i.e. use checksums to verify the data already there. That may
look like it's transferring again.  If you want to skip that, use
--append to just append data.
> Both machines are behind firewalls, but going in the above direction
> should be okay; plus of course it does succeed in copying, just not in
> appending.
> 
> A colleague here says he has tried to do the same thing, and he could
> get it to work for an rsync daemon, but not over ssh.
The underlying transport is not relevant.


Paul Slootman