Re: "Broken pipe" during rsync, tunneled over ssh: Help!

[Jack Bowling <jbinpg shaw ca>]

** Reply to message from RD Egeland <rde lists oxsyn com> on Fri, 31 Jan 2003 10:39:14 +0000


> I'm running rsync tunneled over ssh in a cron job (the error also occurs if 
> run manually) to send nightly backup files to a remote server, and I've got 
> troublesome problems with either rsync or ssh.  Has anyone had similar errors?
> 
> The rsync command in my cron job is:
> rsync -e ssh -avz /mnt/claws/backups/mail/mail\ foo com-`date +%A`.tar.gz 
> foo bar ac uk:~/backups/foo/
> 
> Uploading machine (.com):
> RH 7.3 with
> openssh-3.5p1-1 (I upgraded)
> rsync-2.5.4-2
> 
> Downloading machine (.ac.uk):
> RH 8.0 with
> openssh-3.4p1-2
> rsync-2.5.5-1
> 
> Error which comes out quite regularly (usually less than 10M into the 
> upload, but sometimes not at all):
> rsync: error writing 9 unbuffered bytes - exiting: Broken pipe
> rsync error: error in rsync protocol data stream (code 12) at io.c(464)
> 
> 
> Greek to me.  At first, I assumed this was due to intermittent connectivity 
> (I am using a cable modem and D-Link firewall router on one side), but the 
> connection (amazingly) is quite rock-solid.  I've read about bugs in ssh, 
> and notably, I notice that ssh connections to the 7.3 machine are dropped 
> occasionally, sometimes with "bad network packet size" (or something like 
> that).
> 
> So I believe this could be due to SSH problems.  But before I upgrade SSH 
> using the sources, I figure I'd ask if anyone has been through this before.

ssh prefers having the line to itself and since theoretically nothing else is occurring while you are transferring, try this:

rsync -e ssh --blocking-io -avz /mnt/claws/backups/mail/mail\ foo com-`date +%A`.tar.gz 

I do the same regularly and it is rock solid.

jb
foo bar ac uk:~/backups/foo/

-- 
Jack Bowling
mailto: jbinpg shaw ca