rsync error when using crontab

[ejs96]

I'm running rsync from cron and I received the following error last night when the the rsync ran:

ERROR: out of memory in flist_expand [sender]rsync error:
error allocating core memory buffers (code 22) at util.c(117)

As far as I could tell, the rsync worked as my mysql backup file was updated correctly so I'm not sure what impact this error is having on the sync job.

Any help would be much appreciated. Thanks!

[Kevin]

It sounds like rsync hit the memory limitation imposed on cron jobs. I am not sure if rsync continued with a partial list of files to sync or if it simply stopped using so much memory and still worked properly. I would add a -v option to rsync to see if it is still transferring files properly.

Also, it may be wise to launch the rsync from the other end of the connection. That way you would work around our cron limits.

[ejs96]

Thanks for the info. Can I ask what the memory limitation is on cron jobs? The thing with this rsync run is that it only synced about 5 changed files, the largest of which was 2 megs. The rest were 10k-50k in size.

[ejs96]

Any update on this? Can you tell me what the memory limitation is on the cron because I'm getting the "ERROR: out of memory in flist_expand [sender]" even when, like last night, I'm syncing about 100K worth of files.

I'm sure you have customers that are running rsync via cron nightly...strikes me as a pretty common task to have automated, no?

[Kevin]

Cron jobs are currently limited to 32MB of RAM and 2 minutes of CPU time.

I believe most people run the rsync job on their end not on the FutureQuest end. That is how I backup my web site.

BTW, you should also hit http://www.FutureQuest.net/Community/SiteOwner/ and get site owner status for your forum account.

[ejs96]

Thanks Kevin, appreciate the info. I really would prefer to handle all of my crons in one place but I can look into doing it that way.

I can't imagine that I'm running into either of those limits on my rsync jobs so I'm still a bit perplexed as to why I'm getting these errors.