On Fri, 1 May 2015 11:10:26 -0600 Frank Cox wrote: > I have a daily cron job that runs the following command: > > rsync -av --delete /home/frankcox/ /mnt/fileserver/backup Hi Frank, I've seen this when using the -a flag where it turns out there are discrepancies in ownerships (user:group, UID:GID) between the local source and a remote target. The -a flag intends to preserve user:group and timestamps, and despite the explicit 'archive mode' flag, it is possible between different implementations of rsync and differences between operating systems as well as differences between filesystems, that some of those attributes aren't being fully respected and preserved as the files are actually being written at the target. This can happen silently, so the sender receives no indication that there's a problem. In these cases, the next time rsync runs, it simply notes that there are differences and copies what it perceives to be the "changed" files again. Is there a specific rationale for using '-a' as opposed to the less stringent '-r' (recursive)? regards, Carl