Aged the 2.6.3 release news.

[rsync/rsync.git] / NEWS

NEWS for rsync 2.6.4 (UNRELEASED)
Protocol: 28 (unchanged)
Changes since 2.6.3:

  BUG FIXES:

    - Restore the list-clearing behavior of "!" in a .cvsignore file (2.6.3
      was only treating it as a special token in an rsync include/exclude
      file).

    - Avoid a mkdir warning when removing a directory in the destination
      that already exists in the --backup-dir.

    - An OS that has a binary mode for its files (such as cygwin0 needed
      setmode(fd, O_BINARY) called on the temp-file we opened with
      mkstemp().

    - We now check if the OS doesn't support using mknod() for creating
      FIFOs and sockets, and compile-in using mkfifo() and socket() when
      necessary.

    - Fixed an off-by-one error in the handling of --max-delete=N.

    - One fork() call needed to check for and handle a failure.

  ENHANCEMENTS:

    - Added the --max-size option (promoted from the patches dir).

    - The daemon-mode options were separated from the normal rsync options
      so that they can't be mixed together.  This makes it impossible for a
      user to start a daemon that had improper default option values that
      could cause problems (a hang or an exit) when a client connects.

    - In _exit_cleanup(): when we are exiting with a partially-received
      file, we now flush any data in the write-cache before closing the
      partial file.

  BUILD CHANGES:

    - Handle an operating system that use mkdev() in place of makedev().

\f
NEWS for rsync 2.6.3 (30 Sep 2004)
Protocol: 28 (unchanged)
Changes since 2.6.2:

  SECURITY FIXES:

    - A bug in the sanitize_path routine (which affects a non-chrooted
      rsync daemon) could allow a user to craft a pathname that would get
      transformed into an absolute path for certain options (but not for
      file-transfer names).  If you're running an rsync daemon with chroot
      disabled, *please upgrade*, ESPECIALLY if the user privs you run
      rsync under is anything above "nobody".

  OUTPUT CHANGES (ATTN: those using a script to parse the verbose output):

    - Please note that the 2-line footer (output when verbose) now uses the
      term "sent" instead of "wrote" and "received" instead of "read".  If
      you are not parsing the numeric values out of this footer, a script
      would be better off using the empty line prior to the footer as the
      indicator that the verbose output is over.
      
    - The output from the --stats option was similarly affected to change
      "written" to "sent" and "read" to "received".

    - Rsync ensures that a filename that contains a newline gets mentioned
      with each newline transformed into a question mark (which prevents a
      filename from causing an empty line to be output).

    - The "backed up ..." message that is output when at least 2 --verbose
      options are specified is now the same both with and without the
      --backup-dir option.

  BUG FIXES:

    - Fixed a crash bug that might appear when --delete was used and
      multiple source directories were specified.

    - Fixed a 32-bit truncation of the file length when generating the
      checksums.

    - The --backup code no longer attempts to create some directories
      over and over again (generating warnings along the way).

    - Fixed a bug in the reading of the secrets file (by the daemon) and
      the password file (by the client):  the files no longer need to be
      terminated by a newline for their content to be read in.

    - If a file has a read error on the sending side or the reconstructed
      data doesn't match the expected checksum (perhaps due to the basis
      file changing during the transfer), the receiver will no longer
      retain the resulting file unless the --partial option was specified.
      (Note: for the read-error detection to work, neither side can be
      older than 2.6.3 -- older receivers will always retain the file, and
      older senders don't tell the receiver that the file had a read
      error.)

    - If a file gets resent in a single transfer and the --backup option
      is enabled, rsync no longer performs a duplicate backup (it used to
      overwrite the original file in the backup area).

    - Files specified in the daemon's "exclude" or "exclude from" config
      items are now excluded from being uploaded (assuming that the module
      allows uploading at all) in addition to the old download exclusion.

    - Got rid of a potential hang in the receiver when near the end of a
      phase.

    - When using --backup without a --backup-dir, rsync no longer preserves
      the modify time on directories.  This avoids confusing NFS.

    - When --copy-links (-L) is specified, we now output a separate error
      for a symlink that has no referent instead of claiming that a file
      "vanished".

    - The --copy-links (-L) option no longer has the side-effect of telling
      the receiving side to follow symlinks.  See the --keep-dirlinks
      option (mentioned below) for a way to specify that behavior.

    - Error messages from the daemon server's option-parsing (such as
      refused options) are now successfully transferred back to the client
      (the server used to fail to send the message because the socket
      wasn't in the right state for the message to get through).

    - Most transfer errors that occur during a daemon transfer are now
      returned to the user in addition to being logged (some messages are
      intended to be daemon-only and are not affected by this).

    - Fixed a bug in the daemon authentication code when using one of the
      batch-processing options.

    - We try to work around some buggy IPv6 implementations that fail to
      implement IPV6_V6ONLY.  This should fix the "address in use" error
      that some daemons get when running on an OS with a buggy IPv6
      implementation.  Also, if the new code gets this error, we might
      suggest that the user specify --ipv4 or --ipv6 (if we think it will
      help).

    - When the remote rsync dies, make a better effort to recover any error
      messages it may have sent before dying (the local rsync used to just
      die with a socket-write error).

    - When using --delete and a --backup-dir that contains files that are
      hard-linked to their destination equivalents, rsync now makes sure
      that removed files really get removed (avoids a really weird rename()
      behavior).

    - Avoid a bogus run-time complaint about a lack of 64-bit integers when
      the int64 type is defined as an off_t and it actually has 64-bits.

    - Added a configure check for open64() without mkstemp64() so that we
      can avoid using mkstemp() when such a combination is encountered.
      This bypasses a problem writing out large temp files on OSes such as
      AIX and HP-UX.

    - Fixed an age-old crash problem with --read-batch on a local copy
      (rsync was improperly assuming --whole-file for the local copy).

    - When --dry-run (-n) is used and the destination directory does not
      exist, rsync now produces a correct report of files that would be
      sent instead of dying with a chdir() error.

    - Fixed a bug that could cause a slow-to-connect rsync daemon to die
      with an error instead of waiting for the connection to finish.

    - Fixed an ssh interaction that could cause output to be lost when the
      user chose to combine the output of rsync's stdout and stderr (e.g.
      using the "2>&1").

  ENHANCEMENTS:

    - Added the --partial-dir=DIR option that lets you specify where to
      (temporarily) put a partially transferred file (instead of over-
      writing the destination file).  E.g.  --partial-dir=.rsync-partial
      Also added support for the RSYNC_PARTIAL_DIR environment variable
      that, when found, transforms a regular --partial option (such as
      the convenient -P option) into one that also specifies a directory.

    - Added --keep-dirlinks (-K), which allows you to symlink a directory
      onto another partition on the receiving side and have rsync treat it
      as matching a normal directory from the sender.

    - Added the --inplace option that tells rsync to write each destination
      file without using a temporary file.  The matching of existing data
      in the destination file can be severely limited by this, but there
      are also cases where this is more efficient (such as appending data).
      Use only when needed (see the man page for more details).

    - Added the "write only" option for the daemon's config file.

    - Added long-option names for -4 and -6 (namely --ipv4 and --ipv6)
      and documented all these options in the man page.

    - Improved the handling of the --bwlimit option so that it's less
      bursty, more accurate, and works properly over a larger range of
      values.

    - The rsync daemon-over-ssh code now looks for SSH_CONNECTION and
      SSH2_CLIENT in addition to SSH_CLIENT to figure out the IP address.

    - Added the --checksum-seed=N option for advanced users.

    - Batch writing/reading has a brand-new implementation that is simpler,
      fixes a few weird problems with the old code (such as no longer
      sprinkling the batch files into different dirs or even onto different
      systems), and is much less intrusive into the code (making it easier
      to maintain for the future).  The new code generates just one data
      file instead of three, which makes it possible to read the batch on
      stdin via a remote shell.  Also, the old requirement of forcing the
      same fixed checksum-seed for all batch processing has been removed.

    - If an rsync daemon has a module set with "list = no" (which hides its
      presence in the list of available modules), a user that fails to
      authenticate gets the same "unknown module" error that they would get
      if the module were actually unknown (while still logging the real
      error to the daemon's log file).  This prevents fishing for module
      names.

    - The daemon's "refuse options" config item now allows you to match
      option names using wildcards and/or the single-letter option names.

    - Each transferred file now gets its permissions and modified-time
      updated before the temp-file gets moved into place.  Previously, the
      finished file would have a very brief window where its permissions
      disallowed all group and world access.

    - Added the ability to parse a literal IPv6 address in an "rsync:" URL
      (e.g. rsync://[2001:638:500:101::21]:873/module/dir).

    - The daemon's wildcard expanding code can now handle more than 1000
      filenames (it's now limited by memory instead of having a hard-wired
      limit).

  INTERNAL:

    - Some cleanup in the exclude code has saved some per-exclude memory
      and made the code easier to maintain.

    - Improved the argv-overflow checking for a remote command that has a
      lot of args.

    - Use rsyserr() in the various places that were still calling rprintf()
      with strerror() as an arg.

    - If an rsync daemon is listening on multiple sockets (to handle both
      IPv4 and IPv6 to a single port), we now close all the unneeded file
      handles after we accept a connection (we used to close just one of
      them).

    - Optimized the handling of larger block sizes (rsync used to slow to a
      crawl if the block size got too large).

    - Optimized away a loop in hash_search().

    - Some improvements to the sanitize_path() and clean_fname() functions
      makes them more efficient and produce better results (while still
      being compatible with the file-name cleaning that gets done on both
      sides when sending the file-list).

    - Got rid of alloc_sanitize_path() after adding a destination-buffer
      arg to sanitize_path() made it possible to put all the former's
      functionality into the latter.

    - The file-list that is output when at least 4 verbose options are
      specified reports the uid value on the sender even when rsync is
      not running as root (since we might be sending to a root receiver).

  BUILD CHANGES:

    - Added a "gen" target to rebuild most of the generated files,
      including configure, config.h.in, the man pages, and proto.h.

    - If "make proto" doesn't find some changes in the prototypes, the
      proto.h file is left untouched (its time-stamp used to always be
      updated).

    - The variable $STRIP (that is optionally set by the install-strip
      target's rule) was changed to $INSTALL_STRIP because some systems
      have $STRIP already set in the environment.

    - Fixed a build problem when SUPPORT_HARD_LINKS isn't defined.

    - When cross-compiling, the gettimeofday() function is now assumed to
      be a modern version that takes two-args (since we can't test it).

  DEVELOPER RELATED:

    - The scripts in the testsuite dir were cleaned up a bit and a few
      new tests added.

    - Some new diffs were added to the patches dir, and some accepted
      ones were removed.