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Is it safe to have multiple folders Rsync simultaneously into one?

Each of the source folders contains a subset of the destination folder, and everybody just syncs into a master destination folder. I realize that if any two create the same file, their files will overwrite each other, but what I'm wondering is if this simultaneous sync could cause some file structure confusion in the master destination as there are many processes syncing to it at the same time.

Does anybody know anything about this or have any experience with doing this?

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I don't expect any problem as far as each directory have different file names and you don't use the --delete flag. The caveat is that you have to guarantee the file name uniqueness across the sources.

If you have a file called foobar in more than one source, each rsync process would replace the destination foobar with its own source version.

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    I realise that a file will overwrite another in the destination, but a directory should just add whatever content it has extra over the other one, right? I mean provided I don't have the --delete flag on.
    – john-jones
    Aug 27, 2013 at 18:06
  • You are right. You are probably using the -r / --recursive flag, so you should expect the same behaviour inside the subdirectories as in the root. Anyway, you should pay attention to the subdirectories names so that they don't collide with files in other sources at the same level.
    – Rafael Cavalcanti
    Aug 28, 2013 at 13:14
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    Also mind that if you are planning on doing that repeatedly, you may end up with lots of junk files in the receiver, as deletions on sources won't be reproduced (lack of --delete* flag).
    – Rafael Cavalcanti
    Aug 28, 2013 at 13:25

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