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May 18, 2005

Rsync and Forks

Q: I read somewhere that Tiger has an rsync that works properly for Mac files.

A: I read that too - on Apple's developer site. Mind you, having tested it, it just ain't true. A number of other Unix utilities (like cp) are now smart enough to deal with resource forks but rsync is broken (as at 10.4.1). The theory is that something like: rsync -Eavzx /Applications /Volumes/External/Applications would copy all the files properly. It doesn't. Things like OmniGraffle and Microslosh Oriface end up as useless, unexecutable, files. However cp -Rp /Applications /Volumes/External/Applications works like a charm (and about 3 times faster than the rysnc command which is going to fail anyway).

BTW the good old standby CCC (CarbonCopyCloner) is also broken on Tiger. For an alternate GUI solution, try SuperDuper!.

Posted by Ozguru at May 18, 2005 06:00 AM