Epilogue: of course, rsync hasn’t worked either — but since I’d used the –progress option the error messages were drowned in the list of uploaded files, so I only realized the problem when I checked on the Mac side and saw there were missing files.

So I ended up having to use Samba (which, fortunately, is included in the Knoppix live CD, you only have to launch it). Not only did it take the whole night (I can’t even imagine what makes this thing take so much time, even though I had connected my Mac to the PC with a crossover cable, sacrificing my internet access for all that time), but now it’s not even a question of being afraid I might have lost some files — I just have to live with the fact that some will be missing, period. Let’s get rid of our virtual possessions and be zen.

Incidentally, I found out the problem’s origin wasn’t so much in Linux or OS X, but rather in Samba itself: even on the Linux side, filenames with accents are unreadable. I’d say I could have misconfigured Samba’s charset, but the unconfigured version on the Knoppix CD had absolutely no problem reading files and understanding accents, so… I don’t know, screw this shit, forget about Linux, long live the Mac. And, come to think of it, I could use an Xserve RAID with the fastest network connection — how does it work with Firewire?