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I have 2 CentOS systems, one is rsyncing a ~411 gig directory to another.

On the receiving system, I typically run du -cs * |grep total;sleep 5 as a way to monitor the background rsync operation and make sure it is actually happening, since I don't know of a good way to monitor it as it runs otherwise.

The behavior I'm seeing is that du will show the total number of kilobytes go up, then go back down to a previous (and exact) value:

430235952       total
430235952       total
430235952       total
430235952       total
430235952       total
430235952       total
430235952       total
430235952       total
430498032       total <----
432333040       total <----
434430192       total <----
430235952       total <---- Back down to original value>
430235952       total
430235952       total
430235952       total
430235952       total
430235952       total
431284468       total <---- Up again
434430196       total <----
430235952       total <---- Back down again>
430235952       total
430235952       total
430235952       total
431284468       total <---- ???
434430196       total <---- ???
430235952       total 
430235952       total
430235952       total

Does anyone know what's going on here?

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  • I guess that rsync uploads an already existing file to a temporary name and renames it to the correct one upon successful upload to prevent the original file being corrupt should the transfer be interrupted. Mar 1, 2018 at 21:30

1 Answer 1

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I could be wrong but it looks like maybe a file is being transferred and it is later found to have corrupt data so rsync deletes the corrupt copy and tries again, you could run rsync with the -v flag so it outputs verbose information but you really shouldn't sweat it too much. If there is a problem with the transfer it will likely output warning information letting you know what's going on and not just hang indefinitely.

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  • Thanks, that certainly sounds plausible to me. To be clear, I'm not super worried about it, just wondering since it seemed odd that it would fluctuate up and down to the exact kilobyte amount it was at before repeatedly.
    – Locane
    Mar 1, 2018 at 19:42

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