update wrong date, soft links, Debian stable, -L, ...

[John D. Hendrickson]

Debian r2.5 (Potato)
    rsync version 2.3.2  protocol version 21
    ( the latest stable deb version anyway :)

RE: absolutely older file keeps getting chosen for update

Hi.

    I have something like:

    rsync -vxuaz  /sendmail/  /mnt/nfs-mount/sendmail

    In the nfs drive the files are links to other files in a
subdirectory of that same directory.   Both the links and the files they
point to  are newer in every respect (both 'stat' and 'newer' say so)
than the files in /sendmail.

    However - rsync chooses the older files in sendmail as updates to
the newer files (newer ones get clobbered) -- but only on soft-linked
files.

    If I use the -L option this happens with only one file.  BUT even
after writing the file (on the nfs drive) to make it today's date across
the board, rsync still chooses the older file -- even with the
-L option.

    --------------------------------

    The man page says -u chooses the newer date base on mod time.  The
-L option I though a little unclear - it says treat links like files -
but that leaves me wondering as I don't know the special rules for
treating links and whether the -a option effects that still.

    I'll have to admitt I haven't searched all 10MB of prev. questions.

Anyway, thanks - I get allot of mileage out of rsync: its a ton better
than writing a shell script using rcp :)

    John Hendrickson

jdh at hend.net

johndhendrickson22124 at yahoo.com

PS

    My most desired feature is:  If you use

        user at host:/directory

    notation right on host, rysnc won't grok it
    (you gotta use /directory if your executing
    on host).

    That means scripts must be
    different depending on which host they
    run on.  Hopfully, newer versions of
    rsync would resolve the remote spec down
    to a local spec (if host is local) before using it.

    Guess you knew that :)