Rsync warning: some files vanished before they could be transfered (code 24) at main.c(633)

[Alex Fedyashov]

We are using rsync to copy a considerable number of files over to our disaster recovery site. We are using rsync because we want the files that have already been transferred skipped. I would like rsync to ignore the files that have already been deleted because such cases will occur. I couldn't find anything that would ignore errors when I ran man on rsync. Any recommendations or solutions would be appreciated.

Thanks,
Alex

[Andrew Merritt_2 · Accepted solution]

Hi Alex,
What's the problem being caused by this? I believe the exit code and message are warnings, the copying doesn't stop when the missing files are encountered.

If you are wrapping 'rsync' in a script, you just need to treat exit code 24 as success.

It's a FAQ here -
http://samba.anu.edu.au/rsync/FAQ.html#10

Andrew

[TwoProc]

Alex, I don't know exactly what you're asking, but it looks to me like the error is caused by a file that rsync meant to be sent since the rsync began has been deleted before it could be sent. Meaning, that a file has been deleted that needed to be sent - since the rsync has begun. It planned to send the file, but it was taken away (probably) by the application before it was sent over.

How to handle? That depends on whether or not your hot-site needs that file to facilitate a disaster-recovery solution.

If the file is not needed at the hot-site, then I wouldn't worry about it (like say an intermediate temporary report output file used to construct the final report).

If it is needed at the hot-site, then you've got a whole other problem which means that you've got to come up with a system that checks to see that a file is over on the hot-site before it can be deleted from the originating server. The most obvious place to put in the fix would be at the code level of whatever tool is responsible for and performing the delete. Whether or not the delete is actually doable at that level depends on what the deletion mechanism is written in/based on.

[Steven E. Protter]

Shalom Alex,

The message is accurate, which for Unix is pretty rare. The rsync file transfer to the DR site is slow and files were deleted during the tranfer.

Possible culprits:
cron
sysadmins
regular users.

SEP