Issue with and question about rsync.hbs

English Backup and data protection
1

Hi!

Just got my TS-216G (QTS 5.2.8.3359) and I’m trying to find the best way to back-up from my QNAP to a USB drive using rsync. After installing HBS 3 there’s now three flavours of rsync available: ‘classic’ (just plain rsync, dating back to 2009), .official (2024), and .hbs (2025).

Using rsync.hbs seems most logical to me, as it is at the newest rsync version and because it includes the option –qnap-mode= (it says mode 3 is meant to rsync QNAP → USB drive).

Question: What does option ‘–qnap-mode=3’ mean exactly? Does it for example take into account that a USB drive spins down and has to be ‘woken up’ sometimes?

Issue: When I run rsync.hbs with option “-n” I get the error ‘rsync error: syntax or usage error (code 1) at main.c(2600) [sender=3.4.1]’. This only happens when the source and destination are different file wise (new directories don’t cause the issue).

This issue does not occur with rsync.official, but this version does not include the ‘–qnap-mode=’ option. I’m not sure how much of a difference this option makes in terms of functionality, but I noticed the logfile was a bit messy when using rsync.official and the USB drive had yet to spin up out of ‘sleep mode’. Not sure how reliable this is then…

Thanks in advance for your feedback!

2

Honestly, if you are just backing up to a USB drive, don’t use rsync. Just make it a standard Hybrid Backup Sync backup job. Simpler is better…

3

Regarding your question, based on my understanding, I recommend proceeding with normal usage; there is no need to specify or consider the –qnap-mode parameter.

Thanks!

4

Ok, thanks for clearing that up.

BTW, in the meantime I got rid of the rsync error simply by reverting to the 2009 version of rsync (included in QTS) in my script, and have not had issues with it since.