#24 Files which have not changed still being transferred

[Dan Freedman]

Hi,
I am using Grsync latest version on Linux Mint Cinnamon 21.x with rsync version 3.2.7 protocol version 31

I send folders of Pictures, Music, Documents etc with Grsync from their respective folders to a Seagate NAS (Personal Cloud) and a strange and very annoying behavior takes place - the following describes the sequence - in each case Preserve Time/Permissions/Owner is selected - screen print attached - no other options on the other tabs selected other than "Protect remote Args"

1. The process is run for the 1st time to completion and I can see the changed and new files being transferred from source to destination.
2. Running the process a second time either immediately or at any time later, after reboot etc send exactly the same files again. A manual directory compare appears to show the dates and times not matching (despite the NAS set up to check against the same time server as the PC
3. Running the session again but with "Size only" selected as expected no longer send the files to the destination. But what is strange is:
4. If you run the session a 4th time after deselecting "Size only" Grsync/rsync no longer sends the files and
5. A manual check on the directories now shows the date and time matches as expected.

I tried turning on "Always use checksum", but the system ground to an almost complete halt.
If you can throw some light on this for me it would save me a lot of headache.

[Piero Orsoni]

Hello!
How's linux seeing the NAS? Is the NAS folder mounted as filesystem on linux (and how), or is it using the rsync remote protocol (eventually by ssh)? What filesystem is the NAS using?

[Dan Freedman]

Hiya,
The NAS is on a LAN using powerline adapters and Ethernet, it is mounted under
File system /media/SEA using cifs.

In fstab there is a line to automatically mount the drive :

//192.168.1.110/Public/ /media/SEA cifs guest,uid=1000,iocharset=utf8 0 0

I do not know for sure what file system is being used on the Seagate NAS but googling the question comes up with:

"The Seagate personal cloud runs on NAS OS which is a custom embedded operating system based on the Linux kernel. The OS offers a number of functionality that enable network sharing of files."

So as it is a Linux distro, I expect it is ext4

I also have an external Seagate hard drive attached to the main PC, which is ext4 formatted and the issue does not arise on that.

Dan
PS, I am only a just above average NOOB on NAS's, networking and Linux, although I am a just about a competent user. So, most of the stuff I have typed above is not actually understood by me that well and gained from various bits of help and forums etc

Thanks for your help to date. Oh and yeah and for the best rsync wrapper I could find too.

[Dan Freedman]

Oh, I think this might not be a Grsync issue. I just installed another rsync wrapper and got exactly the same result. - I shall do a forced reinstall of rsync - if that fails, I will try another non ubuntu based distro, if that fails then I will have to accept there is something wrong with the NAS itself.

[Piero Orsoni]

Maybe try to investigate if the mount options make any difference, or if rsync works the same from another PC. Running rsync directly from the command line without GUI will help. Just some ideas, as it may be anything :-)

[Batwam]

Did you try to to check the "Windows Compatibility" checkbox? There seems to be some slight differences in timestamp on Samba shares and setting it to --modify-window=1 or --modify-window=2 has helped me fix a very similar issue to yours with files getting copied over and over. and yes, this is nor a grsync issue, you might even argue that it's not even an rsync issue.