OT: rsync question

[Dale Sykora]

James Pifer wrote:

> Quick rsync question. I have a whole bunch of data that I rsync to
> another machine for backup purposes. I had to rebuild the primary system
> and I copied all the data back to it from the backup. Now when I run the
> rsync script it wants to recopy everything, even though it's already
> there on both the primary and backup system. 
> 
> Are there any options on rsync to tell it to look at what's already
> there and figure that out without recopying the whole thing? I looked at
> the options and it wasn't obvious to me how to do this. 
> 
> My script looks like this:
> rsync -av0 --progress --delete --exclude=nice_names /sourcedir
> /mnt/destdir
> 
> Any help is appreciated. 
> 
> James
> 
> 
> 
James,
	It shouldn't have to recopy the entire contents, only the differences. 
  It might be updating external file info group/owner/timestamp which 
will take a little time.  It also might be that you have the path wrong 
and it is trying to copy to the new path, however this seems unlikely as 
you use a script.  rsync has a "dry run" option that shows what would 
have been copied but doesn't actually copy anything.  You might try 
using it to debug the problem.  see "man rsync" for details.

Thanks,

Dale