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JaSauders
Asked: 2012-03-19 19:36:19 +0800 CST

Rsync - GVFS - Questions

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I've noticed some issues with rsync and .gvfs over the years. Typically I just --exclude=.gvfs in my rsync command and call it a day.

Recently I decided to read the rsync man page top to bottom left to right. After all, what better way to learn? Man pages are quicker than Googling, if you ask me. I had noticed the -x flag, which was cited to not cross other file systems. I began to wonder what exactly that meant and thought... would -x also ignore .gvfs, being a virtual file system?

That said, would:

rsync -a --exclude=.gvfs /home/jason /media/externalhdd

(be kind of the same as)

rsync -ax /home/jason /media/externalhdd

????

gvfs rsync

2 Answers

  1. Yes, it should be the same.

    To check for sure: run stat on your two directories: /home/jason and /home/jason/.gvfs. The stat output will show a "device" entry:

    [jk@pecola ~]$ stat $HOME
  File: `/home/jk'
  Size: 4096        Blocks: 8          IO Block: 4096   directory
Device: 803h/2051d  Inode: 5242881     Links: 65
Access: (0755/drwxr-xr-x)  Uid: ( 1000/      jk)   Gid: ( 1000/      jk)
Access: 2012-03-19 11:53:31.209584100 +0800
Modify: 2012-03-19 11:50:42.941630852 +0800
Change: 2012-03-19 11:50:42.941630852 +0800
 Birth: -

    -- it's the first item in the third line. The number is shown twice: in hex ('h' suffix), and in decimal ('d' suffix).

    If these numbers are different between the two directories, they're considered to be on different device, so the -x option will prevent rsync from traversing to this directory.

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  2. I did a quick test on Ubuntu 18.04 and -x does not exclude .gvfs.

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