rsync - May 2006 - rsync fails if it cannot stat destination file

rsync version: 2.6.8 on both source and destination
linux kernel: 2.4.29-3.2a on both

command:

rsync --whole-file --temp-dir /tmp file.txt
destination.machine:/path/to/file/file.txt

error:

rsync: stat "/path/to/file/file.txt" failed: No such file or directory
(2)
rsync error: some files could not be transferred (code 23) at main.c(702)

rsync is attempting to stat() the transferred file in its final destination, not
its temporary destination.  This means that if you have any process polling the
destination directory, and that process takes (moves/deletes/etc) the
transferred file before rsync can stat() it the rsync operation fails.

Is there anyway to stop rsync from trying to stat() the file in its destination
location?

Steps to reproduce:

1.) Set up a tight loop on the destination machine:

    % while true ; do ; rm /path/to/file/file.txt ; done ;

2.) Get yourself a temp on the source machine

    % dd if=/dev/zero of=file.txt bs=1024 count=1024

3.) rsync to the file

    % rsync --whole-file --temp-dir /tmp file.txt
destination.machine:/path/to/file/file.txt


I've tried this on a bunch of different machines and it seems like
multiprocessor machines exhibit this issue, but single processor machines do
not.

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On Wed, May 17, 2006 at 05:03:15PM -0700, Ferguson, Eric
wrote:
> rsync --whole-file --temp-dir /tmp file.txt
destination.machine:/path/to/file/file.txt
> 
> error:
> 
> rsync: stat "/path/to/file/file.txt" failed: No such file or
directory (2)
> rsync error: some files could not be transferred (code 23) at main.c(702)
This is caused by the use of a temp-dir on a different filesystem than
the destination file.  In this case, rsync tries to rename the finished
file into place, but if it cannot, it copies it into place and then must
finish updating the permissions, ownership, etc. after the copy.  If the
file vanishes during this updating, rsync will complain about it.

The easiest fix is to change your temp dir to be on the same filesystem
as the destination dir, e.g. --temp-dir=../tmp (create that if it does
not yet exist).

If you must use a temp-dir on a different drive (typically for I/O
reasons, which wouldn't be the case when using --whole-file), there is
another way to tell rsync that you want the file to be renamed into its
final destination rather than copied into place:  if you use a relative
partial-dir option, rsync will first copy the file from the temp-dir
into the partial-dir, and then rename it into place.  For instance:

rsync --temp-dir=/tmp --partial-dir=../tmp file.txt dest:/path/

..wayne..