I recently made a mess when using rsync, and am wondering why. As I needed to backup a Windows machine on a regular basis I just mounted the C$ and D$ partitions on my Linux box, and used rsync to copy.
However, a few days later, the mail server on the Windows machine stopped working, as it had a load of corrupt files. After a day's work I managed to repair it with minimal loss of data, but need to know if it was caused by rsync.
With this method, if rsync (on the Linux box) is accessing a file on the mounted Windows partition, does it lock the file so it can't be written to? Or does it sense the file has been changed and skip/repeat the process for that file?
What happens when rsync is running (in this case, an rsync client on a Windows box (cwRsync)), and the file it comes across is locked for writing... does it go back to it, or wait for access? What *should* rsync do in this case?
Cheers,
Steve :)
I assume that a locked file is opened for writing. Rsync will simply skip those files and continue after generated warning messages.