Re: Links repeatedly being copied???

[Wayne Davison]

On Sun, Oct 16, 2016 at 1:17 PM, B. S.  wrote:

> I have for the longest time been seeing '.L..t..'s in my rsync log,
> despite no changes to such in quite some time, and in trying to track it
> down, been baffled.
>

This means that rsync is trying to set the timestamp on the symlink to
match the modify-time on the source symlink.  The initial dot tells you
that no "transfer" is happening (i.e. no change in symlink value). Some
filesystems don't allow a symlink's mtime to be set, so rsync can keep
trying to set the time and never be able to succeed.  You may want to use
this option: --omit-link-times (-J).

..wayne..
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Links repeatedly being copied???

[B. S.]

(Kubuntu 12.04.5 LTS rsync  version 3.0.9  protocol version 30)

I rsync the data ('data master') partition of my main machine to the 
global ('local global repository') partition, and this global partition 
to two other remote ('remote global repository') partitions, nightly. 
local -> global, global -> 2 x remotes. This is done via cifs - i.e. no 
daemons involved. (mount //remote/dest /mnt/remote/dest, rsync /src 
/mnt/remote/dest)


I have for the longest time been seeing '.L..t..'s in my rsync log, 
despite no changes to such in quite some time, and in trying to track it 
down, been baffled.


Only yesterday did I notice (man rsync):
(1) -l, --links copy symlinks as symlinks
(2) -l, --links
  When symlinks are encountered, recreate the symlink on 
the destination.


The aha moment was tracking the word 'recreate'!


Sanity check please: rsync DOES NOT COPY links just as it would any 
other file, it recreates them (at each creation / change detection)?


If so, could 'man rsync', (1) above, please s/copy/recreate/? I might 
have picked up on things rather earlier than I did. [i.e. rsync mirror 
... doesn't. At least for how I think of 'mirrors' - lose the local 
disk, pop the remote disk into the local machine, get on with your day.]
(Queue head change of what rsync is. Not so much complaining, I get 
rsync is what it is and it's a good thing, just need to change how my 
head is wrapped around it.)



So, sanity check please:
- I create a symlink locally.
- next time rsync is run, it duplicates the link on the remote, DATED AT 
THAT TIME OF (remote) LINK CREATION.
- subsequent rsync's detects a time difference between local vs remote 
symlinks, so again duplicates the link on the remote, DATED AT THAT TIME 
OF (remote) LINK CREATION. (This re-copying, er, link recreation, occurs 
ad infinitum.)


Am I understanding this correctly?
(It's what I'm seeing.)

How do I stop this repeat entry in my logs?

In googling, I can see, and have used, tar to work around this. However, 
I also keep seeing that rsync can be used instead of things like cp -ad, 
for just this sort of thing. (Except, I'm using rsync and seeing this 
sort of thing.)



rsync change request, please: When it creates that remote symlink, could 
rsync please change the date/time to match that of the symlink from 
which it's 'copying'? (Just like it does for any other file.)



Have I described / understood the above correctly / does it hold water?

If it is not expected that links would be recreated at every run, any 
observations as to in what way (parameters likely used) I might be doing 
myself in?


Thanks for listening, and thanks for your thoughts.

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