Exclude symbolic link to a directory?

[Bryan K. Wright]

Hi folks,

	I have a subtle problem with rsync that I'm hoping has a simple
answer.  I have a directory tree (call it /local) that I synchronize
every night onto a group of about 100 machines.  This works great.
On a few of these machines, one of the subdirectories of /local
(call it /local/stuff) needs to be a symbolic link to a directory
on another device.  So, the situation looks like this:

Most machines:			A few machines:

/local				/local
    |-- stuff			    |-- stuff -> /elsewhere/stuff
           |-- things		    |
    |-- morestuff		    |-- morestuff
    `-- stillmorestuff		    `-- stillmorestuff

(obviously the trees are much larger than this, but you get the idea.)

	The master copy of /local contains the directory "stuff", not
a symbolic link.  The problem is, when I rsync /local on the few
machines that have a symbolic link, the link gets nuked and replaced
with a real directory (just like in the master copy).

	The script that does the rsync looks for a local include/exclude
list, so what I'd like to do is just tell rsync to exclude "stuff".
Unfortunately, I don't want to exclude the "things" that live under stuff.

	What I've tried is excluding "/local/stuff" and including 
"/local/stuff/*", but the stuff symlink still gets nuked.

	Is there any easy way to do what I want with rsync, without
having to re-write my rsync script?

					Thanks in advance,
					Bryan
-- 
===============================================================================
Bryan Wright                |"If you take cranberries and stew them like 
Physics Department          | applesauce, they taste much more like prunes 
University of Virginia      | than rhubarb does."  --  Groucho 
Charlottesville, VA  22901  |			
(434) 924-7218              |         bryan at virginia.edu
===============================================================================