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Thread: strange rsync message

  1. #1
    Join Date
    Feb 2006
    Beans
    168
    Distro
    Ubuntu 14.04 Trusty Tahr

    strange rsync message

    when I sync a directory on my flash drive with my hard drive I get
    these messages (file-1 to file-10 being files recently created):

    rsync: chgrp "/media/Kingston/.file-1.fwZRAO" failed: Operation not permitted (1)
    rsync: chgrp "/media/Kingston/.file-2.TI9uZ6" failed: Operation not permitted (1)
    rsync: chgrp "/media/Kingston/.file-3.1UzWtp" failed: Operation not permitted (1)
    rsync: chgrp "/media/Kingston/.file-4.Rh813H" failed: Operation not permitted (1)
    rsync: chgrp "/media/Kingston/.file-5.D2zsJ0" failed: Operation not permitted (1)
    rsync: chgrp "/media/Kingston/.file-6.287sHj" failed: Operation not permitted (1)
    rsync: chgrp "/media/Kingston/.file-7.LoP6XC" failed: Operation not permitted (1)
    rsync: chgrp "/media/Kingston/.file-8.F15imW" failed: Operation not permitted (1)
    rsync: chgrp "/media/Kingston/.file-9.zPjOPf" failed: Operation not permitted (1)
    rsync: chgrp "/media/Kingston/.file-10.bxlJoz" failed: Operation not permitted (1)
    rsync: chgrp "/media/Kingston/.file-11.28ZV2S" failed: Operation not permitted (1)
    but ls -a shows no such files, and when I try to remove them (as a
    superuser) I get these messages:

    rm: cannot remove `/media/Kingston/.file-1.TI9uZ6': No such file or directory
    rm: cannot remove `/media/Kingston/.file-2.1UzWtp': No such file or directory
    rm: cannot remove `/media/Kingston/.file-3.Rh813H': No such file or directory
    rm: cannot remove `/media/Kingston/.file-4.D2zsJ0': No such file or directory
    rm: cannot remove `/media/Kingston/.file-5.287sHj': No such file or directory
    rm: cannot remove `/media/Kingston/.file-6.LoP6XC': No such file or directory
    rm: cannot remove `/media/Kingston/.file-7.F15imW': No such file or directory
    rm: cannot remove `/media/Kingston/.file-8.zPjOPf': No such file or directory
    rm: cannot remove `/media/Kingston/.file-9.bxlJoz': No such file or directory
    rm: cannot remove `/media/Kingston/.file-10.28ZV2S': No such file or directory
    What's going on? Is it a virus? I ran sophos antivirus software on the
    flash drive, but the diagnostics came up clean.

  2. #2
    Join Date
    Nov 2004
    Beans
    560
    Distro
    Ubuntu 12.04 Precise Pangolin

    Re: strange rsync message

    what filesystems are you using on the source and the target directory?

  3. #3
    Join Date
    Oct 2008
    Location
    UK
    Beans
    1,816
    Distro
    Ubuntu Mate 22.04 Jammy Jellyfish

    Re: strange rsync message

    I'm a newbie so not really qualified to respond but I had a similar rsync output when copying to to backup HD. My problem was permissions - the owner of the HD was root and I was not so rsync did no like it. Who is the the owner of your destination drive? It may be a case that you need to change the ownership.

  4. #4
    Join Date
    Nov 2008
    Location
    Boston MetroWest
    Beans
    16,326

    Re: strange rsync message

    When rsync copies a file, it creates it first as a Unix "hidden" file, one that begins with a period as the first character, then renames it when the copy is complete. Most flash drives come formatted with the Microsoft FAT32 filesystem which doesn't support these types of filenames (or anything else like permissions, symlinks, etc.).

    You've got two options. If you're only going to be using the drive with Linux, then you should reformat it with ext4. If you need to share the drive with Windows machines, then you need to take another approach to backups. You can create a compressed "tarball" of the files to be backed up like this:

    tar cjvpf backup.tar.bz2 /path/to/my/source/files

    then copy the resulting file called backup.tar.bz2 to the flash drive with the "cp" command.

  5. #5
    Join Date
    Feb 2006
    Beans
    168
    Distro
    Ubuntu 14.04 Trusty Tahr

    Re: strange rsync message

    Thank you for your help. This probably explains it. My flash drive is FAT. Although I must say that the problem only started occurring a few days ago, and I didn't have any problems with the flash drive before when it was also FAT. But I just needed to know that there isn't a virus creating mysterious files. It's just rsync. That's fine.

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