# Re: Atomic File.copy from Linux to Windows shared drive

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/re-atomic-file-copy-from-linux-to-windows-shared-drive/95181>\
**Category:** Ruby\
**Created:** [May 23, 2006, 11:27pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/re-atomic-file-copy-from-linux-to-windows-shared-drive/95181 "2006-05-23T23:27:00Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![BergerS\_Daniel](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/b/bc8723/32.png) [@BergerS\_Daniel](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/BergerS_Daniel)\
**Post date:** [May 23, 2006, 11:27pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/re-atomic-file-copy-from-linux-to-windows-shared-drive/95181/1 "2006-05-23T23:27:00Z")

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> > The problem is that File.rename is raising Errno::EXDEV errors, and  
> > simply ignoring those won’t work.
> 
> Shouldn’t it be:  
> File.copy(‘temp.txt’, ‘/X/temp.bak’)  
> File.rename(’/X/temp.bak’, ‘/X/temp.txt’)

Whoops! Yeah, that worked. I still don’t know what will happen if the  
share goes down, though.

Regards,

Dan

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**Author:** ![BergerS\_Daniel](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/b/bc8723/32.png) [@BergerS\_Daniel](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/BergerS_Daniel)\
**Post date:** [May 24, 2006, 12:01am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/re-atomic-file-copy-from-linux-to-windows-shared-drive/95181/2 "2006-05-24T00:01:16Z")

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On Wed, 24 May 2006, Berger, Daniel wrote:

> > > The problem is that File.rename is raising Errno::EXDEV errors, and
> 
> Dan

this **should** depend on how the drive is mounted. for instance, with  
an  
nfs ‘hard’ mount your script would hang until the remote server came  
back up -  
and then proceed. as amazing as this sounds it routinely works for us  
with 30  
nodes hits giant nfs mounted raids. i assume there are similar options  
for  
mounting windows shared drives but you’ll have to consult the docs for  
that…  
in any case you are looking for something like ‘hard’ mount.

cheers.

-a

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![BergerS\_Daniel](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/b/bc8723/32.png) [@BergerS\_Daniel](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/BergerS_Daniel)\
**Post date:** [May 24, 2006, 12:36am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/re-atomic-file-copy-from-linux-to-windows-shared-drive/95181/3 "2006-05-24T00:36:15Z")

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On 5/23/06, removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) wrote:

> > > > require ‘ftools’  
> > > > end
> > > > 
> > > > The problem is that File.rename is raising Errno::EXDEV errors, and  
> > > > simply ignoring those won’t work.
> > > 
> > > Shouldn’t it be:  
> > > File.copy(‘temp.txt’, ‘/X/temp.bak’)  
> > > File.rename(‘/X/temp.bak’, ‘/X/temp.txt’)
> > 
> > Whoops! Yeah, that worked. I still don’t know what will happen if the  
> > share goes down, though.

You may need some way of checking the files on the other side to see  
if they check out. If not, try and get the report generator to copy  
them again.

You could write a small Ruby script on the report-sending side that  
makes an MD5 sum and puts in a “latest.md5” file, here’s some help:

require ‘md5’  
puts MD5.new(File.open(‘filename’, ‘rb’).read).hexdigest

Then you’d need a script on the other side to pick up the latest file,  
make sure the date is right and check the MD5 sum to be sure the  
report is intact. If not, signal the report writer to recopy and then  
check again in a a few minutes. When everything checks out, run the  
report reader program.

Oh, I just noticed that the server is not available to you. Never mind  
then.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![BergerS\_Daniel](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/b/bc8723/32.png) [@BergerS\_Daniel](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/BergerS_Daniel)\
**Post date:** [May 24, 2006, 2:37am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/re-atomic-file-copy-from-linux-to-windows-shared-drive/95181/4 "2006-05-24T02:37:32Z")

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removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid wrote:

> > > > require ‘ftools’  
> > > > end
> 
> mounting windows shared drives but you’ll have to consult the docs for  
> that…  
> in any case you are looking for something like ‘hard’ mount.

Unfortunately I know very little about the setup, so I’m not sure what  
I’m dealing with.

However, after I wrote that I noticed something odd. The File.copy from  
ftools was sometimes failing, even when there didn’t appear to be a  
problem with the shared drive! I was getting partial copies, or copies  
that appeared to be intact but had slightly different file sizes.

I switched to FileUtils.cp and things seem to work much better. I  
haven’t dug into the implementations too much, so I’m curious as to why  
that might be.

Anyway, between that and a timeout wrapper, I’m hoping to catch the next  
failure.

Thanks,

Dan