Wayne Davison wrote: > > On Mon, Mar 22, 2004 at 04:49:15PM -0700, Eric Whiting wrote: > > rsync (2.5.[67]) --delete fails on dirs with the w bit cleared. (example below) > > Rsync will sync a dir with w bit clear, but will not remove it with --delete. > > It's actually debatable what the correct behavior is in this case. > Using "rm -rf" on that same directory tree would also fail, so rsync is > currently behaving in a consistent manner with other unix/linux tools. > I'm inclined to leave it that way.
Wayne, Thanks. yes I agree with your statements... This is not a clear 'problem' nor is there a 'right' way to fix this. Yet I think there are still reasons to change this behavior. If we depend on -a and --delete to keep sites in sync then what I have described is a scenario where rsync can create/mirror read only dirs/files, but it will refuse to delete them. Rsync is already doing the chmod required for the creation of those dirs/files -- therefore the chmod for deletion is not that inconsistent with the overall purpose of the tool. Rsync is not emulating rm, nor other 'single' commands. Rsync is a tool that combines features of chmod/chown/compress/gzip/tar/find/ssh/rsh/tar/etc -- that is what makes it so useful. I have workarounds for this issue and I can deal with it. (manual chmods, private patch, or running as root) Running rsync as root does not have this problem. The root user has permission to rm dirs/files with the w bit clear (under most OSs). Yet I don't like to run these syncs as root. In this case that just came up we had to go to the destination boxes and do some chmods. The source files/dirs on the master site are already gone so we did not have other simple options. Of course another fix is to keep the source tree 'clean' in not having and files/dirs with the w bit clear for the file owner. I saw that the CVS tree had a change regarding suid behavior. This too might be another solution, but it is also something that I might be hesitant to use as well. (an not sure it would fix the problem) I think this 'small' issue will come up again. Rsync is a very useful tool that is only gaining in popularity. I don't think I'll be the only person who will run into this. Just my 2cents.. eric -- To unsubscribe or change options: http://lists.samba.org/mailman/listinfo/rsync Before posting, read: http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html
