Your message dated Tue, 19 May 2026 09:13:02 +0000
with message-id <[email protected]>
and subject line Contribute to upstream
has caused the Debian Bug report #887505,
regarding rsync: manpage should advise --modify-window=2 for FAT operation
to be marked as done.
This means that you claim that the problem has been dealt with.
If this is not the case it is now your responsibility to reopen the
Bug report if necessary, and/or fix the problem forthwith.
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--
887505: https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=887505
Debian Bug Tracking System
Contact [email protected] with problems
--- Begin Message ---
Source: rsync
Severity: normal
Tags: upstream
rsync(1) states that "In particular, when transferring to or from an
MS Windows FAT filesystem (which represents times with a 2-second
resolution), --modify-window=1 is useful (allowing times to differ by up
to 1 second)." However, both Linux [1] and FreeBSD [2] simply round down
to the next-lowest two-second interval, which means that a time like
00:00:01.999 will be rounded to 00:00:00. The man page should thus read
"--modify-window=2 is useful (allowing times to differ by up to 2
seconds)."
[1]
https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/tree/fs/fat/misc.c?id=b45a53be53d660c4b8fa4d1ef852439607611424#n226
[2]
https://svnweb.freebsd.org/base/head/sys/kern/subr_fattime.c?revision=326271&view=markup#l139
-- System Information:
Debian Release: 9.3
APT prefers stable-updates
APT policy: (500, 'stable-updates'), (500, 'stable')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)
Kernel: Linux 4.14.0-0.bpo.2-amd64 (SMP w/8 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=en_US.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8),
LANGUAGE=en_US.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash
Init: systemd (via /run/systemd/system)
-- no debconf information
--- End Message ---
--- Begin Message ---
Hello Benjamin,
thank you for the report. I do agree with your arguments.
I am assuming there are good reasons why rsync choose 1 instead of 2.
But the man page lacks of good explanation. Currently the man page
simplifies the situation to much and could be improved.
Please report the issue to upstream. Maybe you can also come up with an
improved man page section about that that is easier to understand for
users.
Regards,
Christian Buhtz
--- End Message ---
