problem: svnsync to external ISCSI drive increases size of repos

Hello all,

I have the following problem and I don't know whether this is an error in subversion, whether I make some user error, or whether this normal behaviour.

I'm using subversion (Version 1.7.9) on a Ubuntu Linux machine (Ubuntu 12.04.4 LTS (GNU/Linux 3.2.0-64-generic x86_64)).

For backup I use svnsync to create a mirror on an external ISCSI drive. The curious thing is now that for some mirror repositories the size is exact the same as for the original repositories. For some the size of the mirror repositories is little bigger and for some it is much bigger, for one double the size. When I check the size of the single revisions, most of them are identically but some differ very big between the original the revision and the revision in the mirror.
Originally I thought with the size of the backup/mirror, I can easily verify that the backup is fine/complete.

There are two other curious things:
When I sync back the mirror to the Linux system the size is reduced again and is exactly the size of the original repo.

Original the repos on the Linux system were created (by svnsync) from the backup on the ISCSI drive which was filled from repos on a Windows system. By this svnsync (the sync from Windows to ISCSI as well as the sync from ISCSI to Linux) the size of the repos did not change.

This means I watch the following behaviour:

Svnsync from Windows to Windows : no change of repository size
Svnsync from Windows to ISCSI drive : no change of repository size
Svnsync from ISCSI drive to Linux : normaly no change of repository size (expection if the ISCSI repository was originally synced from Linux, the during the ISCSI --> Linux sync the repository size is reduced to the original size on Linux))
Svnsync from Linux to Linux: no change of the repository size
Svnsync from Linux to ISCSI drive : repository size is increased. For some repositories only little, for some very much (e.g. Double size)
Svnsync from Linux to ISCSI and back to Linux : First size is increased and then size is reduced for the same rate, this means after both syncs the size is again identical.

Is it normal that the repository size is changed during sync from Linux to external ISCSI drive? Why is the size changed very much (factor 1 :10) for single revisions. Do I make any error during svnsync, or is this the normal behaviour?

Does this mean if I want to use the backup from the ISCSI drive on my Linux system I must to a sync back and it is no good idea, to only a robocopy of the Repository content from the ISCSI drive to the Linux file system?

Thanks in advance.

Best regards
Michael Korte
Received on 2014-06-16 14:20:48 CEST