rsync over ssh hang on error

Volker Kuhlmann
Fri, 16 Aug 2013 23:49:27 -0000

I have an "interesting" problem that I didn't think would ever
happen...

Using rsync over ssh to mirror a local directory on a remote host.
On the remote host the disk becomes full during the rsync run.

What I find then is an ssh process on the remote host with no child
processes, i.e. the remote rsync has correctly terminated, but the shell
has not. On the lost host, rsync is still waiting for the remote to
finish. The local ssh client process (a subprocess of the local rsync)
is still running too.

What's going on here? I'd be expecting the local rsync to report some
error and exit on-zero.

Both systems are openSUSE 12.3, kernel 3.7.10, rsync 3.0.9, openssh
6.1p1.

The local rsync is started from a script that is started by rsnapshot's
cmd_postexec facility. (Essentially, I am rsync'ing a local snapshots
tree to a remote host.) The process worked fine before the remote ran
out of disk space.

Thanks for any pointers,

Volker

--
Volker Kuhlmann
http://volker.dnsalias.net/	Please do not CC list postings to me.