rsync

notes on rsync usage with google-drive-ocamlfuse mounts

Temporary files and file mimeType

rsync copies the files using temporary random names by default (e.g. .filename.pdf.0MN9tN), but the content type is assigned derived the file extension, and when the file is uploaded, the extension is wrong. There's a known google drive api issue on updating mimeType so the mimeType stays wrong.

This doesn't affect the actual file content but it impacts how google drive manages the file (i.e.: a pdf file identified as application/octet-stream won't show any preview and won't open in google drive leaving download as the only option)

The workaround is to use rsync option --inplace that avoids creating temporary files (see issue #21)

Improve transfer speed

• you can set a very high timeout in metadata_cache_time= so your cache doesn't risk to be invalidated
• using rsync with -W (no delta operations - copy Whole file) speeds it up and handles corrupted files better than cp (see issue #48)
• rsync is single-theaded, but you can test parallel
• increasing sqlite3_busy_timeout and max_cache_size_mb seems to mitigate "Device or resource busy" issues (see issue #48)

Examples

rsync -trluhv --delete --stats --inplace /folder/to/upload/* /folder/mounted/with/google-drive-ocamlfuse/
rsync -rlvW --inplace --size-only /folder/to/upload/* /folder/mounted/with/google-drive-ocamlfuse/