When syncing my Documents directory, I've been having some problems of this kind:
2022/04/03 15:47:20 ERROR : Code/C++/boost/libs/array/.git: Failed to copy: is a directory not a file
2022/04/03 15:47:20 ERROR : Code/C++/boost/tools/docca/.git: Failed to copy: is a directory not a file
2022/04/03 15:47:22 ERROR : Code/C++/boost/libs/utility/.git: Failed to copy: is a directory not a file
2022/04/03 15:47:22 ERROR : Google drive root 'Documents': not deleting files as there were IO errors
2022/04/03 15:47:22 ERROR : Google drive root 'Documents': not deleting directories as there were IO errors
2022/04/03 15:47:22 ERROR : Attempt 1/3 failed with 3 errors and: is a directory not a file
This is very similar to Rclone Failing to copy File because it thinks it is a directory, with the difference in the use case: these files and directories are automatically created by git. It's usually a file when you clone the repo but it becomes a directory once you start collaborating with the repo.
Is there an option I can use to just remove the .git file from the remote and copy the new directory in this case?
Or is there an option to at least still delete the files when there are IO errors?
Just deleting the files from google drive manually, in this case, is a poor solution because
This happens kind of automatically with git.
So I would need to go to google drive manually every time I collaborate with a repo.
The consequences of forgetting to do that are also kind of dangerous, since this is running in the background as a cron job
Forgetting to check the cron log for a period of time would mean I'm not backing up my files properly for some time.
I wouldn't be able to trust these automatic backups as much
Run the command 'rclone version' and share the full output of the command.
// INFO: (Files copied correctly)
2022/04/03 15:47:20 ERROR : Code/C++/boost/libs/array/.git: Failed to copy: is a directory not a file
2022/04/03 15:47:20 ERROR : Code/C++/boost/tools/docca/.git: Failed to copy: is a directory not a file
2022/04/03 15:47:22 ERROR : Code/C++/boost/libs/utility/.git: Failed to copy: is a directory not a file
2022/04/03 15:47:22 ERROR : Google drive root 'Documents': not deleting files as there were IO errors
2022/04/03 15:47:22 ERROR : Google drive root 'Documents': not deleting directories as there were IO errors
2022/04/03 15:47:22 ERROR : Attempt 1/3 failed with 3 errors and: is a directory not a file
$ mkdir a b
$ echo hello >a/fileordir
$ rsync -av a/ b/
sending incremental file list
./
fileordir
sent 131 bytes received 38 bytes 338.00 bytes/sec
total size is 6 speedup is 0.04
$ ls a b
a:
fileordir
b:
fileordir
Attempt to overwrite file with dir - success
$ rm a/fileordir
$ mkdir a/fileordir
$ touch a/fileordir/file.txt
$ rsync -av a/ b/
sending incremental file list
./
fileordir/
fileordir/file.txt
sent 166 bytes received 46 bytes 424.00 bytes/sec
total size is 0 speedup is 0.00
$ tree a b
a
└── fileordir
└── file.txt
b
└── fileordir
└── file.txt
2 directories, 2 files
Attempt to overwrite dir with file - failure
$ rm -rf a/fileordir
$ echo helo > a/fileordir
$ rsync -av a/ b/
sending incremental file list
could not make way for new regular file: fileordir
cannot delete non-empty directory: fileordir
./
sent 78 bytes received 64 bytes 284.00 bytes/sec
total size is 5 speedup is 0.04
rsync error: some files/attrs were not transferred (see previous errors) (code 23) at main.c(1330) [sender=3.2.3]
That kind of makes sense as overwriting one file is probably not a biggie, but overwriting a whole directory is. We could implement that in rclone and I'm pretty sure there is an issue about that already - yes here it is:
We've seen that in case 1 rsync just overwrites the file. This is is probably OK for rclone sync but I'm not sure it is OK for rclone copy.
In case 2 we potentially lose an entire directory tree which seems less acceptable.
What I could do is add try --delete-before to the error message to give a hint as to a workaround? This will only work with rclone sync though not rclone copy.
Thanks. --delete-before is probably going to help here. I think it's the default option but it probably gets cancelled by --delete-excluded. In any case, this should solve the issue.
That kind of makes sense as overwriting one file is probably not a biggie, but overwriting a whole directory is
I agree that overwriting a whole directory is a big issue when it's wrong. But not being able to overwrite the whole directory when this is the right thing to do looks like a bigger problem. It's like this rclone configuration is making the right thing impossible in fear of maybe doing the wrong thing.
