On 06/06/2014 12:08:46 AM, L. A. Walsh wrote: > samba-b...@samba.org wrote: > > > https://bugzilla.samba.org/show_bug.cgi?id=10637 > > > > --- Comment #1 from Karl O. Pinc <k...@meme.com> 2014-05-28 19:05:04 > UTC --- > > Yum is also rsync happy. That's where our --link-dest backups > always break due > > to too many hard links. > > ---------- > > What would be "too many"? -- a few million? I have files in a test > setup that have over 7000 files hard linked (only an 8 byte file, but > since > minimum block size is 4K, that would be 28MB w/o the hard link v. 4k > with.
Too many would be when the link(2) call returns EMLINK because your filesystem has hit it's hard link limit. The ext2/3 limit is 32,000, the ext4 limit is twice that. (EXT3_LINK_MAX, EXT4_LINK_MAX) This is low enough that I can't fill a 4TB drive with --link-dest backups without EMLINK error. > > It would NOT be good for rsync to start breaking > links w/standard options. Maybe a new option > to allow link breaking? Rsync has no choice. If you hit the filesystem link limit then you can't make more hardlinks. The only question is what link to break. The proposal is to break the --link-dest links. Currently rsync instead almost always breaks the -H links. Because there's only 1 --link-dest link but almost always many -H links you're simply more likely to run out when linking -H links. If you're preserving hard links you probably really want an accurate copy of your hard links and would much rather, since you're forced to sacrifice something, forgo the --link-dest for that particular file. It would be nice to have an option, after this proposal is implemented, to control whether rsync reports an error when breaking --link-dest links. It might even be nice to have the default be to _not_ report errors when breaking --link-dest links. However, once started down the path of controlling which errors rsync reports and which it does not, it's probably better to implement an option that controls/filters error reporting in general instead of having separate options for each kind of error that rsync might report. Regards, Karl <k...@meme.com> Free Software: "You don't pay back, you pay forward." -- Robert A. Heinlein -- Please use reply-all for most replies to avoid omitting the mailing list. To unsubscribe or change options: https://lists.samba.org/mailman/listinfo/rsync Before posting, read: http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html