I have recently come across an issue when rsyncing data from my local PC to my ReadyNAS 304. I play a selection of SoE games, which get updated regularly over the internet. So I backup a copy, for easy re-installs on my numerous PC/Laptops.
However, recently it has started to “hang” i.e. stop and wait on certain files (unless I put in a –timeout command, which aborts the copy). Upon further inspection, if I try to manually copy a file rsync has “hung” on, I get the following error in Windows:
The file filename.ext has properties that can’t be copied to the new location.
Looking into this, it seems that some of the files have additional alternative data streams, i.e.
On NTFS, files can have more than one stream of data. Usually there's only one, the default, data stream.
Windows 2000 and XP used to use alternate streams to store additional properties which you could add in Summary tab of Properties dialog. This feature has been deprecated since Windows Vista. Yet you may still have files with such properties.
The warning is displayed when you copy a file which has alternate streams from NTFS drive to a drive that does not support alternate data streams. Therefore the alternate streams will be lost.
Usually it's rather safe to ignore this warning. Anyway, in most cases, you can't use that data.
Windows also uses alternate data streams to mark files as downloaded from the Internet.
Is there a way for rsync to ignore this data and just copy the file, or do I need to think of another solution to “clean” the files first?
Re: Rsync Problem - Files with Alternative Steam Data
Hi, I was using rsync v3.0.4 protocol version 30 with Deltacopy. I have now downloaded rysnc v3.1.1pre1 protocol version 31 via (https://www.itefix.net/content/cwrsync-free-edition), but I'm still getting the same issue.
Re: Rsync Problem - Files with Alternative Steam Data
I don't use deltacopy, but as far as I can tell by googling ADS files should be transferred, but the ADS are lost. This leads to a different symptom - the sizes mismatch, so they get recopied on every backup. For instance, this thread here: https://www.mail-archive.com/cygwin@cyg ... 01046.html
Have you checked the other ntfs attributes (ownership, permissions)? How many of these files do you have? Perhaps they can be converted to remove the ADS? Or if they aren't used much, perhaps zipped?
