X-Git-Url: https://mattmccutchen.net/rsync/rsync.git/blobdiff_plain/5575de140d17f201f370fe6a1ea091c5ee592800..9935066b704bcf2e6e48dac85cb1b4047d8f439d:/TODO diff --git a/TODO b/TODO index 438aa995..c0fb759d 100644 --- a/TODO +++ b/TODO @@ -1,22 +1,166 @@ -*- indented-text -*- -URGENT --------------------------------------------------------------- +BUGS --------------------------------------------------------------- +Fix progress indicator to not corrupt log +lchmod question +Do not rely on having a group called "nobody" +Incorrect timestamps (Debian #100295) +Win32 +FEATURES ------------------------------------------------------------ +server-imposed bandwidth limits +rsyncd over ssh +Use chroot only if supported +Allow supplementary groups in rsyncd.conf 2002/04/09 +Handling IPv6 on old machines +Other IPv6 stuff: +Add ACL support 2001/12/02 +Lazy directory creation +Conditional -z for old protocols +proxy authentication 2002/01/23 +SOCKS 2002/01/23 +FAT support +Allow forcing arbitrary permissions 2002/03/12 +--diff david.e.sewell 2002/03/15 +Add daemon --no-detach and --no-fork options +Create more granular verbosity jw 2003/05/15 + +DOCUMENTATION -------------------------------------------------------- +Update README +Keep list of open issues and todos on the web site +Update web site from CVS +Perhaps redo manual as SGML + +LOGGING -------------------------------------------------------------- +Make dry run list all updates 2002/04/03 +Memory accounting +Improve error messages +Better statistics: Rasmus 2002/03/08 +Perhaps flush stdout like syslog +Log deamon sessions that just list modules +Log child death on signal +Keep stderr and stdout properly separated (Debian #23626) +Log errors with function that reports process of origin +verbose output David Stein 2001/12/20 +Add reason for transfer to file logging +debugging of daemon 2002/04/08 +internationalization -IMPORTANT ------------------------------------------------------------ +DEVELOPMENT -------------------------------------------------------- +Handling duplicate names +Use generic zlib 2002/02/25 +TDB: 2002/03/12 +Splint 2002/03/12 +Memory debugger +Create release script +Add machines to build farm -Cross-test versions +PERFORMANCE ---------------------------------------------------------- +File list structure in memory +Traverse just one directory at a time +Allow skipping MD4 file_sum 2002/04/08 +Accelerate MD4 - Part of the regression suite should be making sure that we don't - break backwards compatibility: old clients vs new servers and so - on. Ideally we would test the cross product of versions. +TESTING -------------------------------------------------------------- +Torture test +Cross-test versions 2001/08/22 +Test on kernel source +Test large files +Create mutator program for testing +Create configure option to enable dangerous tests +If tests are skipped, say why. +Test daemon feature to disallow particular options. +Create pipe program for testing +Create test makefile target for some tests +Test "refuse options" works - It might be sufficient to test downloads from well-known public - rsync servers running different versions of rsync. This will give - some testing and also be the most common case for having different - versions and not being able to upgrade. +RELATED PROJECTS ----------------------------------------------------- +rsyncsh +http://rsync.samba.org/rsync-and-debian/ +rsyncable gzip patch +rsyncsplit as alternative to real integration with gzip? +reverse rsync over HTTP Range + + + +BUGS --------------------------------------------------------------- + +Fix progress indicator to not corrupt log + + Progress indicator can produce corrupt output when transferring directories: + + main/binary-arm/ + main/binary-arm/admin/ + main/binary-arm/base/ + main/binary-arm/comm/8.56kB/s 0:00:52 + main/binary-arm/devel/ + main/binary-arm/doc/ + main/binary-arm/editors/ + main/binary-arm/electronics/s 0:00:53 + main/binary-arm/games/ + main/binary-arm/graphics/ + main/binary-arm/hamradio/ + main/binary-arm/interpreters/ + main/binary-arm/libs/6.61kB/s 0:00:54 + main/binary-arm/mail/ + main/binary-arm/math/ + main/binary-arm/misc/ + + -- -- + + +lchmod question + + I don't think we handle this properly on systems that don't have the + call. Are there any such? + + -- -- + + +Do not rely on having a group called "nobody" + + http://www.linuxbase.org/spec/refspecs/LSB_1.1.0/gLSB/usernames.html + + On Debian it's "nogroup" + + -- -- + + +Incorrect timestamps (Debian #100295) + + A bit hard to believe, but apparently it happens. + + -- -- + + +Win32 + + Don't detach, because this messes up --srvany. + + http://sources.redhat.com/ml/cygwin/2001-08/msg00234.html + + + + -- -- + +FEATURES ------------------------------------------------------------ + +server-imposed bandwidth limits + + -- -- + + +rsyncd over ssh + + There are already some patches to do this. -use chroot + BitKeeper uses a server whose login shell is set to bkd. That's + probably a reasonable approach. + + -- -- + + +Use chroot only if supported If the platform doesn't support it, then don't even try. @@ -26,31 +170,259 @@ use chroot http://lists.samba.org/pipermail/rsync/2001-August/thread.html http://lists.samba.org/pipermail/rsync/2001-September/thread.html ---files-from + -- -- - Avoids traversal. Better option than a pile of --include statements - for people who want to generate the file list using a find(1) - command or a script. -Performance +Allow supplementary groups in rsyncd.conf 2002/04/09 - Traverse just one directory at a time. Tridge says it's possible. - - Can possibly also be smarter about memory use while looking for hard - links by reducing the refcount as we find alternative names. + Perhaps allow supplementary groups to be specified in rsyncd.conf; + then make the first one the primary gid and all the rest be + supplementary gids. + + -- -- + + +Handling IPv6 on old machines + + The KAME IPv6 patch is nice in theory but has proved a bit of a + nightmare in practice. The basic idea of their patch is that rsync + is rewritten to use the new getaddrinfo()/getnameinfo() interface, + rather than gethostbyname()/gethostbyaddr() as in rsync 2.4.6. + Systems that don't have the new interface are handled by providing + our own implementation in lib/, which is selectively linked in. + + The problem with this is that it is really hard to get right on + platforms that have a half-working implementation, so redefining + these functions clashes with system headers, and leaving them out + breaks. This affects at least OSF/1, RedHat 5, and Cobalt, which + are moderately improtant. + + Perhaps the simplest solution would be to have two different files + implementing the same interface, and choose either the new or the + old API. This is probably necessary for systems that e.g. have + IPv6, but gethostbyaddr() can't handle it. The Linux manpage claims + this is currently the case. -IPv6 + In fact, our internal sockets interface (things like + open_socket_out(), etc) is much narrower than the getaddrinfo() + interface, and so probably simpler to get right. In addition, the + old code is known to work well on old machines. + + We could drop the rather large lib/getaddrinfo files. + + -- -- + + +Other IPv6 stuff: + + Implement suggestions from http://www.kame.net/newsletter/19980604/ + and ftp://ftp.iij.ad.jp/pub/RFC/rfc2553.txt + + If a host has multiple addresses, then listen try to connect to all + in order until we get through. (getaddrinfo may return multiple + addresses.) This is kind of implemented already. + + Possibly also when starting as a server we may need to listen on + multiple passive addresses. This might be a bit harder, because we + may need to select on all of them. Hm. Define a syntax for IPv6 literal addresses. Since they include colons, they tend to break most naming systems, including ours. Based on the HTTP IPv6 syntax, I think we should use - rsync://[::1]/foo/bar - [::1]::bar + rsync://[::1]/foo/bar [::1]::bar which should just take a small change to the parser code. -Errors + -- -- + + +Add ACL support 2001/12/02 + + Transfer ACLs. Need to think of a standard representation. + Probably better not to even try to convert between NT and POSIX. + Possibly can share some code with Samba. + + -- -- + + +Lazy directory creation + + With the current common --include '*/' --exclude '*' pattern, people + can end up with many empty directories. We might avoid this by + lazily creating such directories. + + -- -- + + +Conditional -z for old protocols + + After we get the @RSYNCD greeting from the server, we know it's + version but we have not yet sent the command line, so we could just + remove the -z option if the server is too old. + + For ssh invocation it's not so simple, because we actually use the + command line to start the remote process. However, we only actually + do compression in token.c, and we could therefore once we discover + the remote version emit an error if it's too old. I'm not sure if + that's a good tradeoff or not. + + -- -- + + +proxy authentication 2002/01/23 + + Allow RSYNC_PROXY to be http://user:pass@proxy.foo:3128/, and do + HTTP Basic Proxy-Authentication. + + Multiple schemes are possible, up to and including the insanity that + is NTLM, but Basic probably covers most cases. + + -- -- + + +SOCKS 2002/01/23 + + Add --with-socks, and then perhaps a command-line option to put them + on or off. This might be more reliable than LD_PRELOAD hacks. + + -- -- + + +FAT support + + rsync to a FAT partition on a Unix machine doesn't work very well at + the moment. I think we get errors about invalid filenames and + perhaps also trying to do atomic renames. + + I guess the code to do this is currently #ifdef'd on Windows; + perhaps we ought to intelligently fall back to it on Unix too. + + -- -- + + +Allow forcing arbitrary permissions 2002/03/12 + + On 12 Mar 2002, Dave Dykstra wrote: + > If we would add an option to do that functionality, I + > would vote for one that was more general which could mask + > off any set of permission bits and possibly add any set of + > bits. Perhaps a chmod-like syntax if it could be + > implemented simply. + + I think that would be good too. For example, people uploading files + to a web server might like to say + + rsync -avzP --chmod a+rX ./ sourcefrog.net:/home/www/sourcefrog/ + + Ideally the patch would implement as many of the gnu chmod semantics + as possible. I think the mode parser should be a separate function + that passes back something like (mask,set) description to the rest + of the program. For bonus points there would be a test case for the + parser. + + Possibly also --chown + + (Debian #23628) + + -- -- + + +--diff david.e.sewell 2002/03/15 + + Allow people to specify the diff command. (Might want to use wdiff, + gnudiff, etc.) + + Just diff the temporary file with the destination file, and delete + the tmp file rather than moving it into place. + + Interaction with --partial. + + Security interactions with daemon mode? + + -- -- + + +Add daemon --no-detach and --no-fork options + + Very useful for debugging. Also good when running under a + daemon-monitoring process that tries to restart the service when the + parent exits. + + -- -- + + +Create more granular verbosity jw 2003/05/15 + + Control output with the --report option. + + The option takes as a single argument (no whitespace) a + comma delimited lists of keywords. + + This would separate debugging from "logging" as well as + fine grained selection of statistical reporting and what + actions are logged. + + http://lists.samba.org/archive/rsync/2003-May/006059.html + + -- -- + +DOCUMENTATION -------------------------------------------------------- + +Update README + + -- -- + + +Keep list of open issues and todos on the web site + + -- -- + + +Update web site from CVS + + -- -- + + +Perhaps redo manual as SGML + + The man page is getting rather large, and there is more information + that ought to be added. + + TexInfo source is probably a dying format. + + Linuxdoc looks like the most likely contender. I know DocBook is + favoured by some people, but it's so bloody verbose, even with emacs + support. + + -- -- + +LOGGING -------------------------------------------------------------- + +Make dry run list all updates 2002/04/03 + + --dry-run is too dry + + Mark Santcroos points out that -n fails to list files which have + only metadata changes, though it probably should. + + There may be a Debian bug about this as well. + + -- -- + + +Memory accounting + + At exit, show how much memory was used for the file list, etc. + + Also we do a wierd exponential-growth allocation in flist.c. I'm + not sure this makes sense with modern mallocs. At any rate it will + make us allocate a huge amount of memory for large file lists. + + -- -- + + +Improve error messages If we hang or get SIGINT, then explain where we were up to. Perhaps have a static buffer that contains the current function name, or @@ -59,66 +431,416 @@ Errors "The dungeon collapses! You are killed." Rather than "unexpected eof" give a message that is more detailed if possible and also more - helpful. + helpful. -File attributes + If we get an error writing to a socket, then we should perhaps + continue trying to read to see if an error message comes across + explaining why the socket is closed. I'm not sure if this would + work, but it would certainly make our messages more helpful. - Device major/minor numbers should be at least 32 bits each. See - http://lists.samba.org/pipermail/rsync/2001-November/005357.html + What happens if a directory is missing -x attributes. Do we lose + our load? (Debian #28416) Probably fixed now, but a test case would + be good. - Transfer ACLs. Need to think of a standard representation. - Probably better not to even try to convert between NT and POSIX. - Possibly can share some code with Samba. -PLATFORMS ------------------------------------------------------------ -Win32 + -- -- - Don't detach, because this messes up --srvany. - http://sources.redhat.com/ml/cygwin/2001-08/msg00234.html +Better statistics: Rasmus 2002/03/08 - According to "Effective TCP/IP Programming" (??) close() on a socket - has incorrect behaviour on Windows -- it sends a RST packet to the - other side, which gives a "connection reset by peer" error. On that - platform we should probably do shutdown() instead. However, on Unix - we are correct to call close(), because shutdown() discards - untransmitted data. + + hey, how about an rsync option that just gives you the + summary without the list of files? And perhaps gives + more information like the number of new files, number + of changed, deleted, etc. ? -BUILD FARM ----------------------------------------------------------- + + nice idea there is --stats but at the moment it's very + tridge-oriented rather than user-friendly it would be + nice to improve it that would also work well with + --dryrun -Add machines + -- -- - AMDAHL UTS (Dave Dykstra) - Cygwin (on different versions of Win32?) +Perhaps flush stdout like syslog - HP-UX variants (via HP?) + Perhaps flush stdout after each filename, so that people trying to + monitor progress in a log file can do so more easily. See + http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=48108 - SCO + -- -- -NICE ----------------------------------------------------------------- ---no-detach and --no-fork options +Log deamon sessions that just list modules + + At the connections that just get a list of modules are not logged, + but they should be. + + -- -- + + +Log child death on signal + + If a child of the rsync daemon dies with a signal, we should notice + that when we reap it and log a message. + + -- -- + + +Keep stderr and stdout properly separated (Debian #23626) + + -- -- - Very useful for debugging. Also good when running under a - daemon-monitoring process that tries to restart the service when the - parent exits. -hang/timeout friendliness +Log errors with function that reports process of origin + + Use a separate function for reporting errors; prefix it with + "rsync:" or "rsync(remote)", or perhaps even "rsync(local + generator): ". + + -- -- + + +verbose output David Stein 2001/12/20 + + Indicate whether files are new, updated, or deleted + + At end of transfer, show how many files were or were not transferred + correctly. + + -- -- + + +Add reason for transfer to file logging + + Explain *why* every file is transferred or not (e.g. "local mtime + 123123 newer than 1283198") + + -- -- + + +debugging of daemon 2002/04/08 + + Add an rsyncd.conf parameter to turn on debugging on the server. + + -- -- - On internationalization Change to using gettext(). Probably need to ship this for platforms - that don't have it. + that don't have it. Solicit translations. - Does anyone care? + Does anyone care? Before we bother modifying the code, we ought to + get the manual translated first, because that's possibly more useful + and at any rate demonstrates desire. + + -- -- + +DEVELOPMENT -------------------------------------------------------- + +Handling duplicate names + + We need to be careful of duplicate names getting into the file list. + See clean_flist(). This could happen if multiple arguments include + the same file. Bad. + + I think duplicates are only a problem if they're both flowing + through the pipeline at the same time. For example we might have + updated the first occurrence after reading the checksums for the + second. So possibly we just need to make sure that we don't have + both in the pipeline at the same time. + + Possibly if we did one directory at a time that would be sufficient. + + Alternatively we could pre-process the arguments to make sure no + duplicates will ever be inserted. There could be some bad cases + when we're collapsing symlinks. + + We could have a hash table. + + The root of the problem is that we do not want more than one file + list entry referring to the same file. At first glance there are + several ways this could happen: symlinks, hardlinks, and repeated + names on the command line. + + If names are repeated on the command line, they may be present in + different forms, perhaps by traversing directory paths in different + ways, traversing paths including symlinks. Also we need to allow + for expansion of globs by rsync. + + At the moment, clean_flist() requires having the entire file list in + memory. Duplicate names are detected just by a string comparison. + + We don't need to worry about hard links causing duplicates because + files are never updated in place. Similarly for symlinks. + + I think even if we're using a different symlink mode we don't need + to worry. + + Unless we're really clever this will introduce a protocol + incompatibility, so we need to be able to accept the old format as + well. + + -- -- + + +Use generic zlib 2002/02/25 + + Perhaps don't use our own zlib. + + Advantages: + + - will automatically be up to date with bugfixes in zlib + + - can leave it out for small rsync on e.g. recovery disks + + - can use a shared library + + - avoids people breaking rsync by trying to do this themselves and + messing up + + Should we ship zlib for systems that don't have it, or require + people to install it separately? + + Apparently this will make us incompatible with versions of rsync + that use the patched version of rsync. Probably the simplest way to + do this is to just disable gzip (with a warning) when talking to old + versions. + + -- -- + + +TDB: 2002/03/12 + + Rather than storing the file list in memory, store it in a TDB. + + This *might* make memory usage lower while building the file list. + + Hashtable lookup will mean files are not transmitted in order, + though... hm. + + This would neatly eliminate one of the major post-fork shared data + structures. + + -- -- + + +Splint 2002/03/12 + + Build rsync with SPLINT to try to find security holes. Add + annotations as necessary. Keep track of the number of warnings + found initially, and see how many of them are real bugs, or real + security bugs. Knowing the percentage of likely hits would be + really interesting for other projects. + + -- -- + + +Memory debugger + + jra recommends Valgrind: + + http://devel-home.kde.org/~sewardj/ + + -- -- + + +Create release script + + Script would: + + Update spec files + + Build tar file; upload + + Send announcement to mailing list and c.o.l.a. + + Make freshmeat announcement + + Update web site + + -- -- + + +Add machines to build farm + + Cygwin (on different versions of Win32?) + + HP-UX variants (via HP?) + + SCO + + + + -- -- + +PERFORMANCE ---------------------------------------------------------- + +File list structure in memory + + Rather than one big array, perhaps have a tree in memory mirroring + the directory tree. + + This might make sorting much faster! (I'm not sure it's a big CPU + problem, mind you.) + + It might also reduce memory use in storing repeated directory names + -- again I'm not sure this is a problem. + + -- -- + + +Traverse just one directory at a time + + Traverse just one directory at a time. Tridge says it's possible. + + At the moment rsync reads the whole file list into memory at the + start, which makes us use a lot of memory and also not pipeline + network access as much as we could. -rsyncsh + -- -- + + +Allow skipping MD4 file_sum 2002/04/08 + + If we're doing a local transfer, or using -W, then perhaps don't + send the file checksum. If we're doing a local transfer, then + calculating MD4 checksums uses 90% of CPU and is unlikely to be + useful. + + Indeed for transfers over zlib or ssh we can also rely on the + transport to have quite strong protection against corruption. + + Perhaps we should have an option to disable this, + analogous to --whole-file, although it would default to + disabled. The file checksum takes up a definite space in + the protocol -- we can either set it to 0, or perhaps just + leave it out. + + -- -- + + +Accelerate MD4 + + Perhaps borrow an assembler MD4 from someone? + + Make sure we call MD4 with properly-sized blocks whenever possible + to avoid copying into the residue region? + + -- -- + +TESTING -------------------------------------------------------------- + +Torture test + + Something that just keeps running rsync continuously over a data set + likely to generate problems. + + -- -- + + +Cross-test versions 2001/08/22 + + Part of the regression suite should be making sure that we + don't break backwards compatibility: old clients vs new + servers and so on. Ideally we would test both up and down + from the current release to all old versions. + + Run current rsync versions against significant past releases. + + We might need to omit broken old versions, or versions in which + particular functionality is broken + + It might be sufficient to test downloads from well-known public + rsync servers running different versions of rsync. This will give + some testing and also be the most common case for having different + versions and not being able to upgrade. + + The new --protocol option may help in this. + + -- -- + + +Test on kernel source + + Download all versions of kernel; unpack, sync between them. Also + sync between uncompressed tarballs. Compare directories after + transfer. + + Use local mode; ssh; daemon; --whole-file and --no-whole-file. + + Use awk to pull out the 'speedup' number for each transfer. Make + sure it is >= x. + + -- -- + + +Test large files + + Sparse and non-sparse + + -- -- + + +Create mutator program for testing + + Insert bytes, delete bytes, swap blocks, ... + + -- -- + + +Create configure option to enable dangerous tests + + -- -- + + +If tests are skipped, say why. + + -- -- + + +Test daemon feature to disallow particular options. + + -- -- + + +Create pipe program for testing + + Create pipe program that makes slow/jerky connections for + testing Versions of read() and write() that corrupt the + stream, or abruptly fail + + -- -- + + +Create test makefile target for some tests + + Separate makefile target to run rough tests -- or perhaps + just run them every time? + + -- -- + + +Test "refuse options" works + + What about for --recursive? + + If you specify an unrecognized option here, you should get an error. + + We need a test case for this... + + Was this broken when we changed to popt? + + -- -- + +RELATED PROJECTS ----------------------------------------------------- + +rsyncsh Write a small emulation of interactive ftp as a Pythonn program that calls rsync. Commands such as "cd", "ls", "ls *.c" etc map @@ -126,3 +848,33 @@ rsyncsh current host, directory and so on. We can probably even do completion of remote filenames. + -- -- + + +http://rsync.samba.org/rsync-and-debian/ + + + -- -- + + +rsyncable gzip patch + + Exhaustive, tortuous testing + + Cleanups? + + -- -- + + +rsyncsplit as alternative to real integration with gzip? + + -- -- + + +reverse rsync over HTTP Range + + Goswin Brederlow suggested this on Debian; I think tridge and I + talked about it previous in relation to rproxy. + + -- -- +