Here is what I've learned so far about using rsync on Mac OS X 10.4.6 ("Tiger") in case others find it useful: I did a test where I rsync a small directory with a few text files, from one directory to another directory on the same Mac OS X hard disk (disk was formatted with Apple's default HFS+ filesystem). The first time I rsync, everything gets transferred, of course. If I immediately rsync again using rsync with --verbose option, then it seems that only the so-called "Apple Double" files are being transferred (or examined). For example, I see output like this from rsync: $ sudo rsync -E -a -x -S --delete -v --stats ~/Documents/rsource ~/Documents/rtarget building file list ... done rsource/._.DS_Store rsource/._AdjectiveNounTemplate.java rsource/._AdjectiveNounTest.java rsource/._AdjectiveTerminal.java rsource/._AdjectiveTerminalTest.java (The .DS_Store file is a hidden file where Apple's Finder puts file metadata like where the icon is dragged to, etc.) Here is some background on these Apple Double files (from "Mac OS X Tiger for Unix Geeks"): <quote> Although UFS doesn't natively support resource forks or HFS+ attributes, Mac OS X finds a place to stash that info. If the file has either a resource fork or any attributes that depend on HFS+ semantics, this information goes into a file named ._filename, where filename is the name of the original file (this is known as the Apple Double format ) Before Mac OS X Tiger, you had to be very careful with what you did at the command line. If you used cp, mv, rsync, or any of the other command line utilities that move stuff around, you could have lost part of your file. It was easy to miss this sort of mayhem, since this metadata isn't apparent until you go looking for it, and it wasn't always a disaster. Fortunately, Mac OS X Tiger finally makes this problem (mostly) go away by making all the cp, mv, and rsync command-line utilities aware of the resource forks and HFS+: </quote> So, my hypothesis is this: Apple has modified rsync so that any files with resource forks or HFS+ attributes appear to rsync as two files: the regular data fork, plus the Apple Double file that begins with "._". These Apple Double files do not seem to exist before or after the rsync, only DURING the rsync process. (This is when the volume is an Apple HFS+ volume... if it was UFS then the Apple Double files probably would appear). At least they aren't visible with ls -la in the Terminal, which I take to mean they don't exist. I guess the bottom line for me is to not worry and be happy. Meaning I should just ignore or filter out all the messages from rsync about the Apple Double files. (P.S. I'm not doing rsync between Windows and Mac, its just that I recently moved all my files from Windows to Mac, and noticed that the creation dates are missing) Any other ideas on this subject? --erikn On Apr 6, 2006, at 12:54 AM, John Van Essen wrote:
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