On Saturday, 19 August 2017 06:33:27 BST John Covici wrote: > On Sat, 19 Aug 2017 00:56:55 -0400, > > Walter Dnes wrote: > > I've RTFM'd, and it looks like there is no way to get rsync to copy > > > > over symlinked directories as symlinks. E.g. I build Pale Moon browser > > from source for 3 machines at home. I prefer downloading the source > > once and symlinking to it from 3 different working directories. I also > > have a personal project where I analyze the same text data files in 3 > > different ways. It makes things so much simpler to use the same code, > > with different runtime parameters. So I symlink the main data directory > > to 3 working directories. Even "better" (or worse) I've got a situation > > where I symlink directories to... other symlinked directories. Yes; > > symlinks pointing to symlinks work, even for directories. > > > > Unfortunately, rsync will not create a symlink where appropriate, but > > > > will de-reference the symlink, and duplicate multiple gigabytes of data > > needlessly. I eventually gave up trying, and made a tarball, and pushed > > it over to my "hot backup" machine, and extracted it there. That works > > OK for the initial setup, but is painfull for "minor incremental" > > updates. > > > > Am I missing something glaringly obvious, or is this a limitation of > > > > rsync? If so, is there another tool that can copy over symlinked > > directories properly? > > I always use -av which copies simlinks correctly. -H is necessary to > copy hardlinks. If you need it -l also ensures this.
I've also found that 'rsync -a -l' does the job, but other tools exist to achieve the same: https://www.gnu.org/software/tar/manual/html_node/Incremental-Dumps.html https://linux.die.net/man/1/star (look for the section 'Incremental Backups' HTH. -- Regards, Mick
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