[Pan-users] Re: Problem syncing two copies of Pan

[Duncan]

Bas Mevissen posted on Thu, 08 Jul 2010 11:31:21 +0200 as excerpted:

> On Wed, 07 Jul 2010 13:35:30 -0700, Joe Zeff
> <address@hidden> wrote:
> 
>     rsync -avr address@hidden:~/.pan2
>     ~/.pan2
> 
> 
> You might add --delete to remove older no longer existing files from the
> destination. But take care that the dest is not $HOME or / :-)

That's what -n/--dry-run is for. =:^)

I run Gentoo on my netbook but build/install all the updates in a 32-bit 
chroot on my main (otherwise 64-bit) amd64 machine.  I then ssh/rsync 
across to the netbook, using a script with the appropriate options to do 
the right thing with symlinks, device-files, etc, and feeding it an 
exclude-file.  By default, it adds -n so it only does a dry-run.  I always 
run it that way first, checking what it spits out to change before I add 
the last (optional) script parameter, which deletes the -n on the rsync 
call, thus making it a LIVE run.  The first (dry) run takes a lot of time 
since it's having to do actual disk accesses to check everything on both 
sides, but by the time it's done, everything's in cache on both sides, so 
the actual LIVE run normally takes far less time than the dry-run, even 
tho the LIVE run has to do the actual writes that are skipped with the dry-
run.

So I know well what --dry-run does, and yes, it has definitely saved me a 
number of times when I tried to run the script without the correct 
partitions mounted on one side or the other. Conclusion: If you care about 
your data, do the --dry-run first!  =:^)

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman