return status and non-regular files?

[jw schultz]

On Thu, May 15, 2003 at 02:56:45PM -0700, Marc Sarrel wrote:
> Recently, I ran rsync and got the following message:
> 
> skipping non-regular file "981005_plteph-de405s.bsp"
> 
> It turns out that the file in question is really a degenerate link 
> that points back to itself.
> 
> lrwxr-xr-x   1 18450    other         24 May  9 20:38 
> 981005_plteph-de405s.bsp -> 981005_PLTEPH-DE405S.bsp

That doesn't point to itself, it points to a presumably
non-existant file with a slightly different name.

> The confusing this is that although rsync printed what looks like an 
> error, it still returned a status of zero (i.e. success).

Not an error.  Merely a notice. 

> My question is:  what should rsync do in such a case?  The options I see 
> are:
> 
> 1) create the degenerate link on the remote machine (with or without 
> a warning) and return a status of zero.
> 
> 2) don't create the degenerate link on the remote machine, print an 
> error message and return a status other than zero.

Rsync did exacly what you told it to do.  I reviewed your
command-line below and i see no --links option.  You have
instructed it to copy unsafe links and skip safe ones.

> rsync --verbose --checksum --recursive --copy-unsafe-links --times 
> --rsh=ssh --rsync-path=/usr/local/bin/rsync --delete --timeout=30 
> --ignore-times --compress /source/directory 
> user at machine:/destination/directory

-- 
________________________________________________________________
	J.W. Schultz            Pegasystems Technologies
	email address:		jw at pegasys.ws

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