CODEWITHSUNDEEP
rsync
apollo901
apollo901

Reputation: 25

Rsync copy "unsafe" symlinks but don't update modification time on the symlink targets

Is it possible to have rsync copy "unsafe" symlinks (that is, those that refer to files/dirs outside of the copied tree, see docs here) but not update the times on them?

I'm using rsync -a --delete --omit-dir-times to copy a bunch of files from /home/somebody/foo/bar to a destination machine, but running into the following error: rsync: failed to set times on "/home/somebody/foo/bar/symlink": Operation not permitted (1), where /home/somebody/foo/bar/smylink refers to something in /usr/lib/ owned by root at the destination and lacking proper permission for the rsync user to update it.

Essentially rsync tries to update the time on the symlink like all other files it copies, but gets blocked by permissions because it's not root at the destination.

What I'd like to do is copy the link, but not touch the symlink target at all during the copy. I just want the link. I could change permissions on the target file, but I'd like to avoid that.

Is this achievable? Is this a terrible idea and I'd be abusing rsync? Suggestions for alternative approaches in the latter case?

Upvotes: 1

Views: 503

Answers (1)

andy
andy

Reputation: 21

There is another option for rsync --omit-link-times which will probably do what you are looking for. See man page at:

http://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/bionic/man1/rsync.1.html

Upvotes: 0

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