[PLUG] Compare folders?

John Jason Jordan johnxj at comcast.net
Mon Dec 8 02:07:48 UTC 2008


On Sun, 7 Dec 2008 18:34:13 -0700 (MST)
Carlos Konstanski <ckonstanski at pippiandcarlos.com> dijo:

> >> For some reason the cp command has let me down, at least when performed
> >> with Nautilus.
> >> There must be a simple file compare utility that will work across two
> >> computers connected by NFS. Any suggestions?

> > diff -r -s <folder1> <folder2>

> Or, better yet, if you just want the problem fixed, use rsync to make
> a mirror copy of a directory tree:
> 
> rsync -av --delete folder1/ folder2/
> 
> Notice the trailing slashes.  These are vitally important in rsync.
> You want to copy the contents of folder1 into folder2.  Always use
> rsync like this to avoid disaster, especially when using the --delete
> switch.  When not specifying --delete, you can get away with copying
> folder1 itself to a destination (i.e. leaving off one or both trailing
> slashes) without causing major data wiping.
> 
> Or, if you don't want to bother with a network mount, use rsync over
> ssh:
> 
> rsync -e ssh -av --delete folder1/ user at desthost:folder2/
> 
> or if the source folder is on the remote host, and the destination is
> local:
> 
> rsync -e ssh -av --delete user at sourcehost:folder1/ folder2/

I have not tried rsync in over two years. That is because it is far too
complicated for me. I cannot get the syntax correct. Plus it locked up
at random times. Luckily I never lost anything, but I had numerous
close calls. Yes, I know there are front ends for it and scripts
galore, but I don't understand the scripts either. I don't even
understand what the instructions mean. 

However, "copy" is a concept I can handle. I think a backup system I
can understand is better than a backup system I do not understand.

However, I want to steer this discussion far away from whether my
backup strategies are elegant, suitable, correct, or whatever. All I
want to do is get to the bottom of why Nautilus failed to copy a third
of the files. There were no error messages. The progress bar
continuously showed it copying files. The number of files remaining
continually decreased. The time remaining continually decreased until
it got to 0. The MB/sec indicator adjusted occasionally. The progress
bar progressed to the end. 

Thanks muy mucho for the  "diff -r -s" command. It gave me a list of
files that didn't make it. The bad news is that there is no pattern
that I can see. Some are hidden files, but a lot of hidden files and
folders did make it. Some are OOo documents, some are PDF files, some
are log files - in the list of files that didn't make it there is an
example for just about every kind of file on the computer. Also, some
are tiny, some are large, yet files of all sizes made it.

The laptop (source) has 79 GB free and the desktop (destination) has 45
GB free. The total of ~/ on the laptop is only 14.1 GB.

Still scratching my head.



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