When doing an "emerge sync", it happens rather frequently that files on the server have a date-stamp a different from my local copies -- even though the files itself are identical. As a result, rsync has to process a largish list of files only to conclude, that nothing has changed. (Adding "-c" to the rsync flags would fix this.) That's not really a major problem, but it's a waste of system resources nonetheless, so I wonder how it is possible that this phenomenon occurs? Shouldn't a file's date-stamp change *only* when the file itself changes? Reproducible: Sometimes Steps to Reproduce:
Nick -- any idea why this might happen?
Which files exactly? With the mirror and rsnyc1 settings, it shouldn't happen. Metadata changing is perfectly understandable. Reverting changes is perfectly understandable. Unless we're talking hundreds of non-metadata files this is normal. The entire file list is required anyway... -c would just increase load... And you can do that via the '--debug' option for emerge. As far as it fixing anything... You're making rsync do more work to ensure that everything matches. size+timestamps are a shortcut. Checksums are the long way.