[CentOS] rsync and cause/source of an empty file

Sat Jul 1 14:45:56 UTC 2017
Joseph L. Casale <jcasale at activenetwerx.com>

-----Original Message-----
From: CentOS [mailto:centos-bounces at centos.org] On Behalf Of James B.
Byrne
Sent: Friday, June 30, 2017 2:43 PM
To: centos at centos.org
Subject: [CentOS] rsync and cause/source of an empty file
 
> We transfer files from a VAN provider at 15 minute intervals using
> rsync over ssh.  The setup is somewhat complicated in that the VAN
> will not permit direct rsync access and so we establish the link via
> sshfs and then mount remote location as local.
> 
> My question is, given the above conditions and the following rsync
> command:
> 
> /usr/bin/rsync --chmod=o+r --chmod=g+w --itemize-changes
> --remove-sent-files --times /var/spool/imanet/pick_up/*
> /var/spool/imanet/drop_off
> 
> Under what circumstances would a file containing data at the remote
> end (/var/spool/imanet/pick_up/) arrive at our end
> (/var/spool/imanet/drop_off) as an empty file?  No transmission errors
> were logged and multiple files were transferred during the same
> session. All but one arrived with their contents intact.

First guess is you had the misfortune of syncing a file that was
being written to at the same time on the source end.

Not that it helps, but FFS, an EDI provider exposing rsync? What kind
of SP does that? This problem has been so concretely solved ages ago?