rsync - Jan 2009 - Delete only run

Hi

I have a backup on a NAS that is quite full. So when I try to backup
changed stuff it may run out of space, but only because rsync may
try to write a new file before deleting the old one. That not only means
changed files in the same place but also moved files, so delete-before
wouldn't help.

Is there a possibility to have a complete rsync run that only deletes
files to make space for the new files being synched in a second run?
Could this be done with the batch mode and some file sorting?

Thanks

bye  Fabi

On Thu, 2009-01-08 at 09:42 +0100, Fabian Cenedese
wrote:
> I have a backup on a NAS that is quite full. So when I try to backup
> changed stuff it may run out of space, but only because rsync may
> try to write a new file before deleting the old one. That not only means
> changed files in the same place but also moved files, so delete-before
> wouldn't help.
You may be misunderstanding --delete-before.  It makes rsync perform all
necessary deletions at the beginning of the run, and yours is precisely
the use case that motivated it.

-- 
Matt

Sorry Matt for mailing you personally.

At 03:58 08.01.2009 -0500, you wrote:
>On Thu, 2009-01-08 at 09:42 +0100, Fabian Cenedese wrote:
>> I have a backup on a NAS that is quite full. So when I try to backup
>> changed stuff it may run out of space, but only because rsync may
>> try to write a new file before deleting the old one. That not only
means
>> changed files in the same place but also moved files, so delete-before
>> wouldn't help.
>
>You may be misunderstanding --delete-before.  It makes rsync perform all
>necessary deletions at the beginning of the run, and yours is precisely
>the use case that motivated it.
Ack. Seems to be so. Sorry for that. Just a small thing:

http://samba.anu.edu.au/ftp/rsync/rsync.html
--delete-before         receiver deletes before transfer (default)

So it should already be like that. However:

"Because of this, the default delete mode when you specify --delete is now
--delete-during when both ends of the connection are at least 3.0.0"

The options summary is therefore a bit misleading.

The second thing:
"Some options require rsync to know the full file list, so these options
disable the incremental recursion mode." like --delete-before

Is there a way to take advantage of incremental, even if it means
running rsync twice?

Thanks

bye  Fabi