Yes if rsync could keep a 'last state file' that'd be great, which would require the target be unchanged by any other process/usage - this is however the case with many of our uses here - as a backup only target.
Then it could just load the target statefile, and only scan the source for changes vs the last-state file. Cant think of any way around this issue with rsync alone without some external parsing of previous logs, etc. This is unfortunately why I never use 5400/5900 rpm disks on my backup targets, and use raid 10 not 5, for speed. Little more $ in the end, but necessary to scan 50-80M inodes per night in my ~6hr backup window. /kc On Thu, Jul 02, 2015 at 11:43:37AM +0200, Dirk van Deun said: >> What is taking time, scanning inodes on the destination, or recopying the entire >> backup because of either source read speed, target write speed or a slow interconnect >> between them? > >It takes hours to traverse all these directories with loads of small >files on the backup server. That is the limiting factor. Not >even copying: just checking the timestamp and size of the old copies. > >The source server is the actual live system, which has fast disks, >so I can afford to move the burden to the source side, using the find >utility to select homes that have been touched recently and using >rsync only on these. > >But it would be nice if a clever invocation of rsync could remove the >extra burden entirely. > >Dirk van Deun >-- >Ceterum censeo Redmond delendum -- Ken Chase - k...@heavycomputing.ca skype:kenchase23 +1 416 897 6284 Toronto Canada Heavy Computing - Clued bandwidth, colocation and managed linux VPS @151 Front St. W. -- 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