Rsync stops and seems to do nothing

**GrouchyGaijin** · April 15th, 2018

I am running Ubuntu 16.04 with Gnome Shell.
I have a WD Ultra Ex2 NAS

The easiest way I have found to have a script copy/move files to the NAS share is via is:

Code:

run/user/1000/gvfs/smb-share:server=192.168.1.100,share=<share name>

This works fine if I tar.gz a very large folder and then use pv to copy it to the above path. I use pv so that I can see the progress of the transfer.

I would like to use rsync with the delete option instead of comprssing an entire folder then copying it. The problem is that everytime I use rsync with this:

Code:

rsync -avz --delete /home/<my user name>/<folder> /run/user/1000/gvfs/smb-share:server=192.168.1.100,share=<share name>/

All of the sub-folders are copied, so I can see the structure. Rsync indicates it is copying files then after a while it simply stops responding. When I open the destination folder, it is empty. I know that sometimes if the destination folder is open I need to navigate to another folder and back to the destination folder to see any changes. The sub-folders are still all empty. Even using ls from the terminal they appear empty.
I have also tried the above rsync command without the

Code:

--delete

flag and just

Code:

rsync -avzh and the path to source and destination

Does anyone know what could be causing this or how to fix it? The directory I want to copy is 20 GB and I have over three TB of space on the NAS left.
Since my work around actually does successfully copy the files I think the problem may be with rsync or, much more likely, my command.

**SeijiSensei** · April 16th, 2018

Looks like you're trying to rsync to a windows share. NTFS doesn't offer the same filesystem primitives as *nix. If you must back up to a windows share, the only reliable method is the tarball method you used before.

If the NAS offers the option to connect via NFS, you could mount a share with that and use rsync.

**GrouchyGaijin** · April 16th, 2018

Thank you for the reply.
I checked the web interface for my NAS and indeed it is mountable via NFS.
It says Mount Point:

Code:

nfs://192.168.1.100/nfs/<share name>

When I clicked the configure box it has the host listed as *

I am not sure how I to actually use this information with rsync.
Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

GG

**SeijiSensei** · April 16th, 2018

Try this:

1) Create a "mount point" on your system. I usually place them under /media.

Code:

sudo mkdir /media/nas

2) Next install the NFS client software

Code:

sudo apt install nfs-common

3) Now try and see if you can mount the share defined above:

Code:

sudo mount 192.168.1.100:/nfs/<share name> /media/nas

Obviously you'll have to replace <share name> with the name of the directory on the NAS that you want to export. I presume you can configure that on the NAS. If you have other options available to you, see if you can enable "no_root_squash".

If that works, the contents of the share will be available at /media/nas/.

There's all sorts of ways this can fail to work. Let see what happens.

I run NFS on normal Linux platforms, so I don't know how hard or easy it is to get a commercial NAS to do what you need.

**GrouchyGaijin** · April 17th, 2018

Thank you for your help. I think I found another way that seems to be working. I can use lftp with the --mirror flag to ftp the files from my laptop to the NAS.