rsync suddenly hanging indefinitely during transfers

Solution 1:

I was having the same problem. Removing -v didn't work for me. My use-case is slightly different in that I'm going from source (EXT4) to ExFAT. The issue for me was that rsync was attempting to preserve device files and permissions, which ExFAT doesn't support. I was using the -hrltDvaP switches. The -D and -a switches seemed to be my problem. The -a switch translates to -rlptgoD (no -H,-A,-X). The -p, -g, and -o switches seemed to be my root cause as rsync was barfing on one or all of those during runtime. Removing -a and specifying -Prltvc switches explicitly is working for me.

bkupcmd="nice -n$nicelevel /usr/bin/rsync -Prltvc --exclude-from=/var/tmp/ignorelist "

Solution 2:

I've been running into the same thing again and again and it seems to help if you drop the -v option (which is annoying if you need that output).

Solution 3:

Try using --whole-file/-W. This command disables the rsync delta-transfer algorithm. That is what worked for us (WSL to OSX)

our full sync flags were -avWPle

(e was because we were using ssh, and that has to be the last flag)