Using rsync to sync to NTFS: permission issues

[Warren Young]

Wim Heemskerk Lists wrote:

> I (want to) use rsync under cygwin to sync files from a Linux box to a 
> WinXP box. I want to maintain a full backup, including the file 
> permissions.

Without something like NIS or LDAP to synchronize the user and group 
databases between the machines, I think you will have problems with that 
goal.

> -> rsync locks itself out sometimes: when I sync a file my way with 
> permissions like this: rwxrwx--- user1:user1 rsync will make it just 
> fine. But: when it wishes to update that file next time, it has no 
> access. 

Are you running rsync as the SYSTEM user?

> -> rsync handles this rather badly btw: it goes to 100% CPU use and 
> stays there forever and ever, not getting any further

I've seen this before, but only on a Win98 box, where it would freeze 
the machine, hard.  I have no more information on the problem beyond 
that, and won't be able to investigate it because that box has since 
been replaced by a WinXP box.

> -> WinXP info tell me that to get this special access the application 
> must use the NTFS back-ups API. Apperently cygwin+rsync does not.. how 
> can I change that?

Such an effort would be best done with a native port of rsync, I'd 
think.  Adding Win32-specific calls to Cygwin rsync would be missing the 
whole point of Cygwin, I think.

Bottom line, I think if I had a hard requirement to back up files with 
permissions from a Linux box to a Win32 box, I'd just tar them up and 
send the tar file to the PC.  If you don't compress the tar file, 
there's a nonzero chance that rsync can still save some I/O when 
synchronizing after the first copy.

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