Re: Minimal rsync version

[Manuel Landesfeind]

Hi,

I am aware of the reason using "-E" and I was thinking that it is 
absolutely necessary. This is the reason why I would recommend a "die". 
But rsync 2.6.7 is a very old version (year 2006) and from my point of 
view it is ok not support it. Nevertheless I performed the checks you 
wanted (see below).

Funny story: From my check results it seems that the -E option is not 
necessary.

Manuel



---
www.landesfeind.de

On Thu, 12 May 2011 15:39:20 +0200, Ole Tange wrote:
> On Tue, May 10, 2011 at 8:13 PM, Manuel Landesfeind
> <manuel@landesfeind.de> wrote:
> > Hi,
> >
> > using parallel on an older system resulted in an error which can be 
> > tracked
> > down to the usage of the "-E" parameter to rsync (see below).
>
> -E is unfortunately necessary to transfer executable files (which may
> be the case for --basefile).
>
> > I checked the rsync git-log and it seems that the parameter has been
> > introduced in version 2.6.7. It may be useful to check if the 
> > required
> > version of rsync is available and print some warning if not. Please 
> > find
> > attached a code snippet which may help you.
>
> Maybe GNU Parallel should just warn if -E is not working and say that
> executables cannot be transferred and then transfer as non-executable
> - which would often be sufficient.
>
> I do not have access to a system with old rsync. Can you test what
> happens the 4 cases when running rsync -E:

For testing purpose I have created a executable file
$ touch testfile
$ chmod +x testfile
$ ls -l testfile
-rwxr-xr-x 1 manuel manuel 0 2011-05-12 16:37 testfile


> * sender rsync has -E, recipient rsync has -E

manuel@newserver: ~$ rsync -E testfile other_new_server:

=> (File has been transfered and executable flag is set)

> * sender rsync does not have -E, recipient rsync has -E
manuel@oldserver: ~$ rsync -E testfile newserver:
rsync: -E: unknown option
rsync error: syntax or usage error (code 1) at main.c(1084)

=> (Obviously the file has not been transfered)

> * sender rsync has -E, recipient rsync does not have -E
manuel@newserver: ~$ rsync -E testfile oldserver:
rsync: on remote machine: -Ee.Lsf: unknown option
rsync error: syntax or usage error (code 1) at main.c(1084)
rsync: connection unexpectedly closed (0 bytes received so far) 
[sender]
rsync error: error in rsync protocol data stream (code 12) at io.c(601) 
[sender=3.0.7]

=> (The file has not been transfered)

> * sender rsync does not have -E, recipient rsync does not have -E
manuel@oldserver: ~$ rsync -E testfile other_old_server:
rsync: -E: unknown option
rsync error: syntax or usage error (code 1) at main.c(1084)

=> (The file has not been transfered)


I tried another one:
* sender rsync has -E, recipient rsync does not have -E (but dont 
specify -E parameter)
manuel@newserver: ~$ rsync testfile oldserver:

=> (File has been transfered and executable flag is set)

And then the funny one:
* sender rsync does not have -E, recipient rsync does not have -E (but 
dont specified -E parameter)

manuel@oldserver: ~$ rsync testfile other_old_server:

=> (File has been transfered and executable flag is set)

and also from older version to newer version:

manuel@oldserver: ~$ rsync testfile newserver:

=> (File has been transfered and executable flag is set)

> /Ole