Re: Copy slower than rsync Re: Bugs and features

[Ted Zlatanov]

On Fri, 8 Nov 2002, mark@daneel.iu.hio.no wrote:
> I looked at this a while back and there are several issues
> 
> * seem to be version differences with rsync and cfengine
> 
> * cfengine spreads things out over time (low CPU, slower total time)
> rsync (high CPU, short total time). Thus with multiple connections
> one would expect cfengine to survive/scale longer than rsync.
> 
> * rsync trusts everything and caches like mad to go fast.
> 
> * cfengine trusts very little and does lots of checks. (In my
> opinion this is the correct approach, since speed is rarely of the
> essence in system admin).

Speaking as a sysadmin, speed is often of the essence :) An extra
minute for a file copy can be very important.  In one particular
instance, I observed the Solaris cron daemon crash sometimes when a
cron job took more than 1 minute.  I can also think of implications
for high-availability environments.

Perhaps the cfengine copy could have an option to eliminate the
internal checks, use all the available CPU, and cache as much as
possible?

Ted