rsync - Jun 2010 - How dangerous is --inplace

Hello list!

How dangerous is acctually the --inplace option if you want to run
rsync to update files that are only  read and not written to? What is
the worst that can happen? The file is not readable, the reader gets
half the file of an old version and the rest is from the new version?

There is not a simple way to make it update the file in the standard
way and then change the ownership afterwards, or is there? Do you have
to write that program your self?

Hi,

maybe not quite relevant to your question, but we currently experienced 
an issue using the "--inplace" option with rsync version 3.0.7
affecting
the "--link-dest" option.

As stated in the man page

--inplace
... Prior to rsync 2.6.4 --inplace was also incompatible with 
--compare-dest  and --link-dest.

"--inplace" should no longer be incompatible with
"--link.dest", but it
actually seems to be...

So if you don't need "--partial", you should better not use
"--inplace".

Best regards - Philipp

Mit freundlichen Gr??en
   Philipp Herz
Ihr allied internet Team

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Am 16.06.2010 23:16, schrieb A B:
> Hello list!
>
> How dangerous is acctually the --inplace option if you want to run
> rsync to update files that are only  read and not written to? What is
> the worst that can happen? The file is not readable, the reader gets
> half the file of an old version and the rest is from the new version?
>
> There is not a simple way to make it update the file in the standard
> way and then change the ownership afterwards, or is there? Do you have
> to write that program your self?

A B (gentosaker at gmail.com) wrote on 16 June 2010 23:16:
 >How dangerous is acctually the --inplace option if you want to run
 >rsync to update files that are only  read and not written to?

If they're not written to they don't change so that they don't need
to
be updated :-)

 >What is the worst that can happen?

Depends on your usage. If there are readers during the sync they'll
probably get a corrupted version; this is usually not acceptable. If
it's a backup it's rarely a problem. However during the update you
have no working backup; if there's a crash in the source in this
period and you lose the original you lose everything. If you have
multiple or incremental backups it's not a problem.