shutil.copyfile is incomplete (truncated)

[Steven D'Aprano]

On Thu, 11 Apr 2013 19:55:53 +0000, Neil Cerutti wrote:

> On 2013-04-11, Rob Schneider <rmschne at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Thanks. Yes, there is a close function call  before the copy is
>> launched. No other writes. Does Python wait for file close command to
>> complete before proceeding?
> 
> The close method is defined and flushing and closing a file, so it
> should not return until that's done.

But note that "done" in this case means "the file system thinks it is 
done", not *actually* done. Hard drives, especially the cheaper ones, 
lie. They can say the file is written when in fact the data is still in 
the hard drive's internal cache and not written to the disk platter. 
Also, in my experience, hardware RAID controllers will eat your data, and 
then your brains when you try to diagnose the problem.

I would consider the chance that the disk may be faulty, or the file 
system is corrupt. Does the problem go away if you write to a different 
file system or a different disk?



-- 
Steven