[ILUG] Weirdness with rsync and symlinks

[Niall O Broin]

On 29 Mar 2007, at 13:10, Jeroen Massar wrote:

> Niall O Broin wrote:
>> I use rsync a lot, and my normal call to rsync includes --symlinks .
>
> Hmmm, my rsync (2.6.9-3 on debian unstable) doesn't include that  
> option
> it seems.

Nor does mine :-) The sym was added in by the keyboard daemons -  
that's my story and I'm sticking to it. I did of course actually use  
--links ( I have that option in scripts I'm using for years - in such  
scripts I tend to use the long options as an aid to documentation)

> I do tend to use ssh to copy my files over and will steer clear  
> from any
> other server, more listening sockets and services to check for  
> security
> holes is not a good thing IMHO.

Yes, but OTOH if you want to do regular scripted backups with rsync,  
the choice is ssh with keys with no passphrases, or rsync server. You  
pays your money . . .

>> A careful reading of the man page doesn't show up any reason for this
>> behaviour, and googling finds lots of pages explaining the --symlinks
>> option etc. - thanks :-(.
>
> My rsync does have:
>  -l, --links                 copy symlinks as symlinks
>  -L, --copy-links            transform symlink into referent file/dir
>      --copy-unsafe-links     only "unsafe" symlinks are transformed
>      --safe-links            ignore symlinks that point outside the  
> tree
>  -k, --copy-dirlinks         transform symlink to dir into referent  
> dir
>  -K, --keep-dirlinks         treat symlinked dir on receiver as dir
>
> And -a is:
>  -a, --archive               archive mode; same as -rlptgoD (no -H,  
> -A)
>
> Depends of course on what you want to accomplish, but I guess you are
> looking for -a in essence as that makes a full 1:1 copy into a remote
> location

I don't have a problem with the options to rsync (my misspelling  
notwithstanding). What was puzzling me about this situation (and I  
thought I made that clear in the original mail) was what happened to  
the symlinks copied to the rsync server - they lost their leading /  
and this did NOT happen with rsync to another local disk, or to a  
remote box over ssh. I wondering is this is a bug, or a not very well  
documented feature.


Niall