I have been using rsync for several years to back up data onto local SATA drives using a docking station. Originally it worked quite well, but over the past year or two it has caused my system to crash any time it runs more than a few minutes and some times in just a few seconds. The backups can be continued after a reboot, each time sequentially adding more data until it either hangs again or completes. I thought, as you are probably thinking, that the drives were failing. So I bought two new Hitachi 1TB drives and saw no improvement. This problem can be found in many forums; but so far I have not found a solution – if people have resolved the issue it appears they did not return to the forum to document it.
A few links:
https://forums.opensuse.org/english/get-technical-help-here/network-internet/454704-rsync-freezes-whole-computer-without-error-messages.html
https://forums.opensuse.org/english/other-forums/news-announcements/tech-news/476148-rsync-opensuse-org-unreliable.html
The bash file:
FileID=MMSSataUpdate$(date +%Y-%m-%d_%H%M) #appending date to filename
begin=$(date +%k%M) #starting time
echo Starting MMS data update for $(date +%D)
#mount /dev/mapper/cr_sdc1
rsync -avu --delete /media/data/* /media/backupSATA/ >> /var/log/MMS_SataUpdateLogs/$FileID.log
#umount /dev/mapper/cr_sdc1
end=$(date +%k%M) #ending time
echo the elapsed time was: $(expr $end - $begin) minutes
# -a Archive mode preserve everything
# -v Verbose
# -u Update Update only - don't overwrite newer files
# --delete Delete files that don't exist on the sending side.
Pertinent facts.
- The system drives (backup source) are RAID 1 with a promise 8350 controller. No problems noted outside of backup.
- The destination drives are SATA drives formatted with EX4 and encryption but I have tested without encryption with the same result.
- The backup destination drive is placed in a docking station however I have connected directly to the MB to test with the same result.
- I have unmounted and tested all drives and RAID pairs with e2fsck and all return clean.
- SMART shows all drives functional.
- Five drives are rotated through the backup plan. As a test, I reformatted two with the same result.
- There is never an error message or an error in any log file. The system just hangs, I reboot, and sda recovers from journals during restart.
- After reboot, the backup process can be continued, with more progress made each time, until eventually the backup is complete.
- The glitches are totally random in time and volume of data written to the drive. I keep log files of progress and their sizes are all over the map.
- I upgraded rsync to the latest version - no change.
- In addition to rsync, I have used the cp command as root in a gnome terminal with the same result.
- I recently upgraded 11.3 to 11.4 but the problem persists.
- Backups can be successfully completed over the network to another computer, albeit prohibitively slow.
I still am leaning to a hardware fault, but I think it would be a mistake to write off the OSS. So, how do I further troubleshoot this problem?