Copy whole files only

Question

Is there any way to copy directory from one filesystem to another but remove the partial file in case we run out of disk space on target filesystem?
I searched cp and rsync manuals but did not find anything; I could do this in a shell script but wanted to avoid it if possible.
At present I do:

cp -r /source /dest

or

rsync -avr /source /dest

m.

Answer 1

If you look at the rsync manual, you can read:

--partial
     By default, rsync will delete any partially transferred file if the transfer is
     interrupted. In some circumstances it is more desirable to keep partially 
     transferred files. Using the --partial option tells rsync to keep the partial file
     which should make a subsequent transfer of the rest of the file much faster.

This means that you don't need to worry about partial transfer.

You can make sure of the --partial-dir=DIR option. Then, you can remove all files under this directory if you want to eliminate partially transferred files.

Answer 2

Best way would be to check for free space before the copy is started (with a little space in excess).

The normal behaviour of cp is to drop the incomplete file.