Report by Stuart Inglis: When I perform a rsync with backup I get 100's of: make_bak_dir mkdir "/export/giger.back.....eary/java/weka/gui" failed: File exists make_bak_dir mkdir "/export/giger.back....ary/java/weka/gui" failed: File exists make_bak_dir mkdir "/export/giger.back...ary/java/weka/gui" failed: File exists . . . My backup command is: rsync -q --backup --backup-dir=/export/giger.backup/share-`date +%Y-%m-%d` --exclude="/javadocs/" --exclude="/tmp/" --exclude="*.class" --delete -ar giger::export/share.giger /export So I wasn't expecting to get lots of output. My cron entry now mails me errors whenever I backup.
Created attachment 531 [details] Avoid trying to create directories that already exist I found that some of the code paths try to call make_bak_dir() without first getting an ENOENT error. This can cause the code to try to create a directory that already exists. The attached patch should fix this for you.
The attached patch has been committed to CVS and will appear in the next release.
I do not believe this bug is completely fixed in 2.6.3. I am still seeing many errors of the type described. Here is one example: rsync: mkdir "/mnt/a/hpsvoh/incr-2004-12-23/home/haehre/filtered_backup/wjemulator/sherman/hppa" failed: File exists (17) I admit to having a hard time recreating a test case manually. The problem may still be one between my chair and keyboard. I see these errors as the output of a nightly cron run. But when I try to recreate the test case using smaller cases things work as desired. So I am mostly adding this as an informational data point to this bug report because I am at wit's end. It still appears to me to be a problem with rsync. But perhaps another set of eyes will see the root cause of the problem. I am using Debian woody with rsync-2.6.3-0.backports.org.1 from backports.org on two of the machines exhibiting this problem. On another machine with this problem I am using HP-UX 11.11 with a self compiled version of rsync-2.6.3, but compiled using the debian patches because I was lazy, so they might still be coupled. I will try a pristine source build to confirm or deny it.
Created attachment 866 [details] One more patch You are right that there was another bug that could result in this mkdir warning message. It was fixed in CVS on October 27, so this fix did not make it into 2.6.3. Sorry for not mentioning this fact as an addendum to this bug report (before this). I'm attaching the patch that was checked into CVS. Prior to this patch, if a directory was being removed, rsync would try to create a directory in the backup area to note this fact. This often resulted in rsync trying to create a directory that already existed. Fortunately, there is no real need to backup an empty directory on its own, so the new code only creates directories in the backup hierarachy when they are needed to hold other backup items.