Rsync time comparison – what’s the precision of the Modified times comparison

datersync

I'm doing some synching with rsync using: 

rsync --rLvv --times --size-only

For my initial sync. My idea, now is to use: 

rsync --rLvv --times

To synch files that have a new modified time. My problem is that after the initial rsync, I see the following Modified times on the files that have been synced: 

remote$ stat 6080_04_big.mp4
  File: `6080_04_big.mp4'
  Size: 258788267       Blocks: 505448     IO Block: 4096   regular file
Device: 903h/2307d      Inode: 862897      Links: 1
Access: (0644/-rw-r--r--)  Uid: ( 2000/ht)   Gid: ( 2000/    cust)
Access: 2010-08-13 10:46:20.000000000 -0700
Modify: 2010-08-12 17:55:08.000000000 -0700
Change: 2010-08-13 10:46:20.205721673 -0700

local$ stat 6080_04_big.mp4
  File: `6080_04_big.mp4'
  Size: 258788267       Blocks: 505448     IO Block: 4096   regular file
Device: 902h/2306d      Inode: 136015      Links: 1
Access: (0664/-rw-rw-r--)  Uid: (  506/   admin)   Gid: (  506/   admin)
Access: 2010-08-12 20:55:01.482104000 -0400
Modify: 2010-08-12 20:55:08.468122000 -0400
Change: 2010-08-12 21:15:06.952810711 -0400

The modify time is 'effectively' the same, but only down to the second. What's the resolution of the comparison here? It seems that anything that is the same up to the second is considered the same, but I can't find any docs specifying this. Anyone know off the top of their heads?

Best Answer

Here's me answering my own question:

rsync uses the utime() call which sets the modification time of a file down to 1 second resolution. So, effectively, files that are the same up to the second, are considered the same for the time comparison piece of rsync's checks.

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