How to change permissions on a directory without meaning to... - include/exclude semantics

[Tim Small]

jw schultz wrote:

>Your attempt to exclude the root directory, if successful,
>would have prevented the whole transfer on the parent
>directory pathwalking principle.  So that is not the way to
>go.
>  
>
Yes - I assumed that this was probably some side-effect of the current
implementation - and it's not really so much of a problem, as long as it
is documented behaviour, because it doesn't seem to me to be intuitive
behaviour to joe bloggs...  I'd just re-read the include/exclude portion
of the manual page before I started this operation yesterday, to make
sure I was clear on it :-/.

>Using a source of "/." should give the same behavior as you
>are experiencing and "/./" the behavior you want.  Wayne may
>have some comments on this.
>
>My recommendation is to avoid the issue entirely.  If you
>are going to sync from root, don't make a directory with
>special permissions requirements the destination.  In other
>words, use a subdirectory of /tmp, not /tmp.  Changing the
>
Yes, in accordance with the law of sod, this is exactly what I did on
all the less critical, and non-production machines ;o).

>permissions of /tmp could have dire consequences ranging
>from breaking applications to adversly affecting security.
>  
>
I can vouch for this.

I've included a documentation patch, after having read Wayne's posting,
but you guys might want to tweak it a bit, or alter it's location, but
hopefully it'll save someone like me a red face ;o).

Cheers,

Tim.

-------------- next part --------------
--- rsync-2.5.6/rsync.1	2003-10-07 11:00:17.000000000 +0100
+++ rsync-2.5.6/rsync.1.old	2003-10-07 10:39:18.000000000 +0100
@@ -960,16 +960,6 @@
 each\&. To add multiple patterns use the --include-from and
 --exclude-from options or multiple --include and --exclude options\&. 
 .PP 
-Also note that it is currently impossible to exclude the source path
-from the list of files - as doing so with the current underlying
-implementation would mean that no files would be transfered at all\&.
-A subtle implication of this, is that if permission synchronisation is
-enabled, and you have specified that src/ be synchronised with dst/,
-then the permissions of dst/ will get updated with the permissions of
-src/, even if you have explicity attempted to exclude the destination
-path\&.  Beware especially when transfering into system directories
-such as /tmp/ - use a subdirectory instead\&.
-.PP
 The patterns can take several forms\&. The rules are:
 .PP 
 .IP o