I am using rsync to synchronize directories and have noticed (I think) the following behavior.....

I created a snapshot on my filer and ran rsync from the snapshot directory to copy the files to a remote directory. The following day I mistakenly ran rsync from the same snapshot directory without taking a new snapshot.

On almost all directories rsynced in this fashion there were no differences between the source and destination directories, as expected. However, in one directory rsync deleted the directory ".nfs18C041/" and all files and subdirectories of this directory from the destination file system, indicating that it had disappeared from the snapshot directory. A check of the two directories using find that was run between the execution of the two rsync commands showed that this directory was the only difference between the two directories other than symbolic link dates and directory sizes which we expected.

Given the nature of the .nfs directory it occurs to me that removing this type of directory from snapshots when they disappear from the regular file system might be intentional.

Does this seem reasonable or have I done something dumb and possibly misinterpreted what occurred? That couldn't be, could it?

Thanks.

Greg Kitch UCLA SEASnet Computing Facility