On Thu, Jan 25, 2001 at 11:47:32AM -0500, Lenny Foner wrote:
> While we're discussing memory issues, could someone provide a simple
> answer to the following three questions?
> (a) How much memory, in bytes/file, does rsync allocate?
Andrew Tridgell said 10-14 bytes per file in
http://lists.samba.org/pipermail/rsync/1998-December/000895.html
where he proposed a mechanism to eliminate it. He had hoped to implement
it in 1999 but it still hasn't happened.
> (b) Is this the same for the rsyncs on both ends, or is there
> some asymmetry there?
> (c) Does it matter whether pushing or pulling?
...
I don't know, I suggest running a test and watching the process sizes.
> By the way, this does seem to be (once again) a potential argument for
> the --files-from switch: doing it -that- way means (I hope!) that
> rsync would not be building up an in-memory copy of the filesystem,
> and its memory requirements would presumably only increase until it
> had enough files in its current queue to keep its network connections
> streaming at full speed, and would then basically stabilize. So
> presumably it might know about the 10-100 files it's currently trying
> to compute checksums for and get across the network, but not 100,000
> files.
No, that behavior should be identical with the --include-from/exclude '*'
approach; I don't believe rsync uses any memory for excluded files.
- Dave Dykstra
