exit code 23 - inappropriate error for copying symlinks?

[Kevin J Walters]

Hi,

I've just created a small directory as an example, it holds a file and 
two symlinks that don't point to anything, and another symlink going
nowhere in a subdirectory.

rsync (2.5.5) is happy to copy these but produces an error. I can't
see why it considers this an error? It's not even aborting after it
first encounters this 'error'.

$ ls -lR /var/tmp/rsync.test
/var/tmp/rsync.test:
total 8
drwxr-xr-x   2 kjw      group        512 May 20 15:45 deeper
-rw-r--r--   1 kjw      group          6 May 20 15:29 hello.world
lrwxrwxrwx   1 kjw      group          9 May 20 15:30 symbolic.link -> inky-void
lrwxrwxrwx   1 kjw      group         11 May 20 15:38 symbolic.link.2 -> inky-void.2
 
/var/tmp/rsync.test/deeper:
total 2
lrwxrwxrwx   1 kjw      group         11 May 20 15:45 symbolic.link.3 -> inky-void.3

$ rsync -vaz /var/tmp/rsync.test otherhost:/var/tmp
building file list ... done
rsync.test/
rsync.test/deeper/
stat(rsync.test/deeper/symbolic.link.3) : No such file or directory
rsync.test/deeper/symbolic.link.3 -> inky-void.3
rsync.test/hello.world
stat(rsync.test/symbolic.link) : No such file or directory
rsync.test/symbolic.link -> inky-void
stat(rsync.test/symbolic.link.2) : No such file or directory
rsync.test/symbolic.link.2 -> inky-void.2
rsync.test/
rsync.test/deeper/
wrote 278 bytes  read 36 bytes  209.33 bytes/sec
total size is 37  speedup is 0.12
rsync error: partial transfer (code 23) at main.c(578)
$ echo $?
23

$ rsh otherhost ls -lR /var/tmp/rsync.test
/var/tmp/rsync.test:
total 8
drwxr-xr-x   2 kjw      group        512 May 20 15:45 deeper
-rw-r--r--   1 kjw      group          6 May 20 15:29 hello.world
lrwxrwxrwx   1 kjw      group          9 May 20 15:48 symbolic.link -> inky-void
lrwxrwxrwx   1 kjw      group         11 May 20 15:48 symbolic.link.2 -> inky-void.2
 
/var/tmp/rsync.test/deeper:
total 2
lrwxrwxrwx   1 kjw      group         11 May 20 15:48 symbolic.link.3 -> inky-void.3


regards

|<evin

-- 
Kevin J Walters                      Morgan Stanley
kjw at ms.com, kjw at acm.org              20 Cabot Square
Tel: 020 7425 7886                   Canary Wharf
Fax: 020 7677 8504                   London E14 4QW