From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: from lists.gentoo.org (pigeon.gentoo.org [208.92.234.80]) (using TLSv1.2 with cipher ECDHE-RSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384 (256/256 bits)) (No client certificate requested) by finch.gentoo.org (Postfix) with ESMTPS id 21A221396D0 for ; Sat, 19 Aug 2017 04:57:05 +0000 (UTC) Received: from pigeon.gentoo.org (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by pigeon.gentoo.org (Postfix) with SMTP id 34911E0BE5; Sat, 19 Aug 2017 04:56:58 +0000 (UTC) Received: from pmta11.teksavvy.com (pmta11.teksavvy.com [76.10.157.34]) (using TLSv1.2 with cipher ECDHE-RSA-AES128-GCM-SHA256 (128/128 bits)) (No client certificate requested) by pigeon.gentoo.org (Postfix) with ESMTPS id E0EABE0BCB for ; Sat, 19 Aug 2017 04:56:57 +0000 (UTC) X-IronPort-Anti-Spam-Filtered: true X-IronPort-Anti-Spam-Result: =?us-ascii?q?A2HZCQB8xJdZ/7SXCkxdHAEBBAEBCgEBg?= =?us-ascii?q?1qBeYkDhgKPIAGCHAGXfhyFJQSDcVgBAgEBAQEBAgNoKIVZHF8TIQUlJBOKMK9?= =?us-ascii?q?IjByDKIJUeoFjh1iEBYIxBaBNAoFmRJIJi0UahwyUWYFFWIEKgQQIhRABC4JjJ?= =?us-ascii?q?DaKFAEBAQ?= X-IPAS-Result: =?us-ascii?q?A2HZCQB8xJdZ/7SXCkxdHAEBBAEBCgEBg1qBeYkDhgKPIAG?= =?us-ascii?q?CHAGXfhyFJQSDcVgBAgEBAQEBAgNoKIVZHF8TIQUlJBOKMK9IjByDKIJUeoFjh?= =?us-ascii?q?1iEBYIxBaBNAoFmRJIJi0UahwyUWYFFWIEKgQQIhRABC4JjJDaKFAEBAQ?= X-IronPort-AV: E=Sophos;i="5.41,395,1498536000"; d="scan'208";a="2013040" Received: from 76-10-151-180.dsl.teksavvy.com (HELO waltdnes.org) ([76.10.151.180]) by smtp.teksavvy.com with SMTP; 19 Aug 2017 00:56:56 -0400 Received: by waltdnes.org (sSMTP sendmail emulation); Sat, 19 Aug 2017 00:56:56 -0400 From: "Walter Dnes" Date: Sat, 19 Aug 2017 00:56:55 -0400 To: Gentoo Users List Subject: [gentoo-user] Symlinked directories and rsync Message-ID: <20170819045655.GA11275@waltdnes.org> Precedence: bulk List-Post: List-Help: List-Unsubscribe: List-Subscribe: List-Id: Gentoo Linux mail X-BeenThere: gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org Reply-to: gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline User-Agent: Mutt/1.7.2 (2016-11-26) X-Archives-Salt: aecbe8fe-a17d-4c00-8efd-4549b3a55cca X-Archives-Hash: 921600dad19fbe14b316b79f1bc33d04 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? -- Walter Dnes I don't run "desktop environments"; I run useful applications