[Box Backup] Long path names, open files, etc

[Chris Wilson]

Hi Dnk,

On Sat, 28 Mar 2009, Dnk wrote:

> Will box backup fail if there is a long file /path name?
>
> I had run into that with rsync on windows in the past. Does the box 
> backup windows client rely on cygwin? If so, I suspect of will fail if 
> it is a version less than cygwin 1.7.

Box should support file names as long as Windows can. If not, please let 
us know. We don't use Cygwin apart from the build process, so Cygwin 
limitations should not apply.

> Also, how does it deal with open files?

On Windows, open files which are exclusively locked cannot be opened, even 
for backup, so they are skipped with a warning. See this ticket for 
a workaround: http://www.boxbackup.org/trac/ticket/13

On other platforms, open files can be opened again (file locking is 
discretionary), so we just back them up as they are, and hope for crash 
consistency in the application (or to get a better copy later). We try not 
to back up files that were modified too recently to reduce the risk of 
backing up while the file is inconsistent.

Cheers, Chris.
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