This are my notes in the fields of computer science and technology. Everything is written with ABSOLUTE NO WARRANTY of fitness for any purpose. Of course, feel free to comment anything.

Saturday, April 11, 2009

rsync and symbolic links

some possible behaviours of rsync (from the man page):

(1) SKIP:
default case => symlinks are simply not followed

(2) COPY THE LINK:
"symlinks are recreated with the same target on the destination"
rsync --links
also: rsync --archive implies --links

(3) FOLLOW THE LINK
rsync --copy-links

safe/unsafe:

relevant for case 3 is the "safe" vs. "unsafe" difference which I did not understand good.
This is what is written: "An example where this might be used is a web site mirror that wishes ensure the rsync module they copy does not include symbolic links to /etc/passwd in the public section of the site. Using --copy-unsafe-links will cause any links to be copied as the file they point to on the destination. Using --safe-links will cause unsafe links to be ommitted altogether."

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Hamburg, Hamburg, Germany
Former molecular biologist and web developer (Rails) and currently research scientist in bioinformatics.