Rsync? Is it working?

[IonutZ]

Hey there, I have 2 FreeNAS servers on the network and I'm attempting to backup a bunch of files from one to the other. The initial backup is somewhere around 100GB. The connection is somewhere around 20Mbps because it's over the internet. It's been around 4 days now since I've set up the backup, and I see almost the entire folder structure that's on the other server, but no files. It seems every folder has a .~tmp~ folder and that is full of files, but NONE of the folders actually have files in them.

1. Is this normal? Will the files from the .~tmp~ folder be moved to the parent folder?
2. If this is not normal, is it because I have rsync running every minute of every hour? I just want everything to be backed up as soon as possible after the system is nominal.

Your help is much appreciated.

 

[MatthewSteinhoff]

1. Rsync typically builds the directory structure first so it is common to see all the directories before the files.

2. You shouldn't run multiple copies of rsync (acting on the same file set) at the same time. It'll mess you up. If you insist on using rsync from cron, wrap it in a script such that if the rsync task hasn't finished running from the last invocation a new instance doesn't start running.

3. Instead of using rsync to keep your FreeNAS servers in sync, use snapshots and replication.

Cheers,
Matt