[Unison-hackers] Bug? - Long/Short Filenames conflict at Windows?

listobserver-58846c6e-unison@m-e-leypold.de listobserver-58846c6e-unison at m-e-leypold.de
Mon Aug 29 10:58:35 EDT 2005



Dear Friends,

I've found a rather strange problem with an older (2.9.1) Version of
Unison. I'd like to ask, wether anybody knows about the problem,
wether it has been fixed recently or could kindly point me to some
solution.

Before you ask: I'm asking this questions before upgrading to a newer
version because:

  - There was a 'winui'-Version for 2.9.1 which didn't require
    installing GTK. This is the version that had been installed at the
    machines I'm talking about.

  - I'd have to install GTK for a newer version of unison - something
    I'll perhaps have to do anyway, but I'm shy away from just now.

  - If possible (one can hope :-) I'd be happy to hear that the
    problem is known and fixed in recent versions before going through
    the effort of installing GTK (and a newer version of unison).

I'd be glad to try a newer version of unison, before waiting for
answers on my question, if anybody would be so nice point me to a
self-contained windows binary of unison.


  The Problem
  ~~~~~~~~~~~

  Setup:

  Files get synched with unison using TCP/IP (not ssh) between 2
  machines:

    - Unison server: Windows XP + SP2, Unison 2.9.1.

    - Unison Client + GUI: Windows 98, Unison 2.9.1.


  (AFAIK the unison binaries have been distributed under the name
  unison-2.9.1-win32-gui.exe).


  Symptoms:

  If there are 2 files of the following names at the client side
  (which need to be synched to the server side):

    - NR 03.QEL
    - NR03~1.QEL (yes I _think_ there was no space after NR)

  Then the synchronization attempt aborts with one of the following 2
  errors:

    - Some failure of rsync.    
    - File "NR03~1.QEL" has changed during synchronisation.


  (Sorry, the error messages are not verbatim and I do not have
   continous access to the systems in question so I can't look just
   now.)

  Interesting enough, after the (aborted) synchronisation there is a
  file "NR 03.QEL" at the server side, but with the content of
  NR03~1.QEL.


  Some (vague) ideas:
  -------------------

  I had the idea, that this has somehow to do with the way, Win* maps
  long file names to short file names and the way, unison chooses the
  names for the temporary file. Somehow 2 unison server threads end up
  writing into the same temporary file for the files NR03~1.QEL and
  "NR 03.QEL".


Now my question: Is that problem known? Has it been fixed? Has anybody
heard about something similar.

I can reproduce it rather consistently and would gladly go through the
effort of installing a newer unison version to reproduce it with that
if this would help to catch a new bug.

Regards, have Fun -- Markus


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