These responses have been very useful. Thanks especially to *Roland* devzero at web.de <rsync%40lists.samba.org?Subject=Re%3A%20Aw%3A%20Re%3A%20rsync%20remote%20raw%20block%20device%20with%20--inplace&In-Reply-To=%3Ctrinity-177d08a5-29f5-475c-916b-85273fc31962-1546203055586%403c-app-webde-bs15%3E>because...I'm installing diskrsync <https://github.com/dop251/diskrsync> . So far it looks like it pretty much works. It's written in Go, which I hadn't used before. There was a bit of a learning curve there, but I attached the script I used to install it, which is a github-wiki script contributed by "udif" which I have refined in minor respects. (Attached.)
I still think this is a reasonable feature for rsync to have, but at least there appears to be a reasonable solution -- diskrsync -- and I didn't know about it before. On Debian Buster/Sid and Debian 9, the following procedure worked, and it will probably work on Ubuntu and other Debian derivatives. Note: Be sure to install on both the source and target hosts! If diskrsync is not found on the remote server, this message appears: bash: /usr/local/ch-tools3/diskrsync: No such file or directory Install procedure: (1) sudo apt-get install golang (2) As root (if necessary) put the following script in dir-in-PATH/install_diskrsync.txt (below script contains minor refinements of udif's script, above). install_diskrsync.txt <https://github.com/dop251/diskrsync/files/2718788/install_diskrsync.txt> (3) sudo chmod +x dir-in-PATH/install_diskrsync.txt (4) sudo dir-in-PATH/install_diskrsync.txt Steve
#!/bin/bash echo echo '## ' echo '## installing/updating diskrsync' echo '## ' echo set -x ## customize below lines export GOPATH="/usr/local/ch-static/GO" ## wherever you keep your go projects export EXECDIR="/usr/local/ch-tools3" ## where the executable diskrsync command will be put ## customize above lines export GOBIN="$GOPATH/bin" export GOROOT="`go env GOROOT`" export PATH="$PATH:$GOROOT/bin:$GOBIN" mkdir -p ${GOPATH}/{bin,src,pkg} mkdir -p ${GOPATH}/src/github.com/dop251 cd ${GOPATH}/src/github.com/dop251 if [ -d diskrsync ] ; then cd diskrsync git pull cd .. else git clone https://github.com/dop251/diskrsync.git diskrsync fi go get -v github.com/dop251/diskrsync go build -v github.com/dop251/diskrsync go install -v github.com/dop251/diskrsync/diskrsync cp -p ${GOPATH}/bin/diskrsync "$EXECDIR" set +x echo echo '## ' echo '## finished installing/updating diskrsync' echo '## ' echo
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