Backup Central

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Hi Paul,

Has rsnapshot ever dereferenced symlinks for you? The behaviour you
describe is what I would expect.

rsnapshot should never dereference symlinks. The reasons are twofold:

1) How would you back up symlinks if it did?
2) If symlinks were backed up, should the delete operations
recursively delete all the files under the symlink as well?
What if the symlinks points to the root filesystem?

It's always possible I've overlooked something here. However, I'm not
sure how to accomodate your request without breaking other parts of
the program.

Maybe I'm overlooking something here...?

Thanks,
- -Nathan

Hargreaves, Paul wrote:

Both my source folder and destination folder are symlinks (dynamic
pointers to USB disks that change where they think they are); the
--relative option is causing just a single symlink to be created.

If I completely rm -rf /media/secondary/snapshots/* and perform an
rsnapshot hourly I get the following created in
/media/secondary/snapshots/hourly.0/primary/media lrwxrwxrwx 1
root root 15 Sep 6 12:37 primary -> /media/usbdisk3

---- The important parts of /etc/rsnapshot.conf are:

config_version 1.2 interval hourly 20 link_dest 1
one_fs 1

backup /media/primary/ primary/ ----

The log generates the following:

[dates missing since no cut/paste in vnc...] /usr/bin/rsnapshot
hourly: started Setting locale to POSIX "C" echo 23036 >
/var/run/rsnapshot.pid mkdir -m 0755 -p
/media/secondary/snapshots/hourly.0/ /usr/bin/rsync -avx --delete
--numeric-ids --relative --delete-excluded /media/primary/
/media/secondary/snapshots/hourly.0/primary/ touch
/media/secondary/snapshots/hourly.0/ rm -f /var/run/rsnapshot.pid
/usr/bin/logger -i -p user.notice -t rsnapshot /usr/bin/rsnapshot
hourly: completed successfully /usr/bin/rsnapshot hourly: completed
successfully


rsync --version shows 2.6.4.

Should I hack out the --relative? If I do - what are the
implications? Any other suggestions?

Regards

Paul



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I would expect the source and destination paths to be walked into natively - once we're in the source and destination directories then I wouldn't want the symlinks deferencing.

This is a new environment so it's the first time I've tried it with symlink source and destination directories.


What if the symlinks points to the root filesystem?

What would happen if the destination path was just /; I'd expect all sorts of chaos and badness to happen anyway. But just because someone _could_ do something silly, in my case I'm not. Since the symlink can change at boot time depending on what USB decides I'm struggling to set up entires in rsnapshot.conf that will allow me to tell it where my source and destinations are...

Kind regards

Paul


From: Nathan Rosenquist [mailto:nathan < at > rsnapshot.org]
Sent: Wed 9/7/2005 03:07
To: Hargreaves, Paul
Cc: rsnapshot-discuss < at > lists.sourceforge.net
Subject: Re: [rsnapshot-discuss] Problem with 1.2.1 [--relative option?]



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Hi Paul,

Has rsnapshot ever dereferenced symlinks for you? The behaviour you
describe is what I would expect.

rsnapshot should never dereference symlinks. The reasons are twofold:

1) How would you back up symlinks if it did?
2) If symlinks were backed up, should the delete operations
recursively delete all the files under the symlink as well?
What if the symlinks points to the root filesystem?

It's always possible I've overlooked something here. However, I'm not
sure how to accomodate your request without breaking other parts of
the program.

Maybe I'm overlooking something here...?

Thanks,
- -Nathan

Hargreaves, Paul wrote:

Both my source folder and destination folder are symlinks (dynamic
pointers to USB disks that change where they think they are); the
--relative option is causing just a single symlink to be created.

If I completely rm -rf /media/secondary/snapshots/* and perform an
rsnapshot hourly I get the following created in
/media/secondary/snapshots/hourly.0/primary/media lrwxrwxrwx 1
root root 15 Sep 6 12:37 primary -> /media/usbdisk3

---- The important parts of /etc/rsnapshot.conf are:

config_version 1.2 interval hourly 20 link_dest 1
one_fs 1

backup /media/primary/ primary/ ----

The log generates the following:

[dates missing since no cut/paste in vnc...] /usr/bin/rsnapshot
hourly: started Setting locale to POSIX "C" echo 23036 >
/var/run/rsnapshot.pid mkdir -m 0755 -p
/media/secondary/snapshots/hourly.0/ /usr/bin/rsync -avx --delete
--numeric-ids --relative --delete-excluded /media/primary/
/media/secondary/snapshots/hourly.0/primary/ touch
/media/secondary/snapshots/hourly.0/ rm -f /var/run/rsnapshot.pid
/usr/bin/logger -i -p user.notice -t rsnapshot /usr/bin/rsnapshot
hourly: completed successfully /usr/bin/rsnapshot hourly: completed
successfully


rsync --version shows 2.6.4.

Should I hack out the --relative? If I do - what are the
implications? Any other suggestions?

Regards

Paul



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Version: GnuPG v1.2.5 (GNU/Linux)
Comment: Using GnuPG with Thunderbird - http://enigmail.mozdev.org

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fBLv6KCifKphocyuffp/ttk=
=USvo
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