Symlink file syncing issue

Joel Watson rsync at joelmwatson.com
Sun Nov 7 21:51:40 GMT 2004


Hi!

I've been attempting to use rsync to sync a set of files between my 
laptop and my desktop. I've tried using google to search the archives, 
but didn't find anything that addressed this issue exactly... First of 
all, here are the details of how I have things set up.

Server acting as the intermediary:
OS: Mac OS X Server 10.3
rsync: 2.6.2

Laptop:
OS: Mac OS X 10.3.6
rsync: 2.6.2

Desktop:
OS: Mac OS X 10.3.6
rsync: 2.6.3

On both machines I have a folder located at ~/Sync. This folder 
contains symlinks to the files I want sync'd:

lrwxr-xr-x   1 username  staff     54  7 Nov 00:24 AddressBook -> 
/Users/username/Library/Application Support/AddressBook
lrwxr-xr-x   1 username  staff     52  7 Nov 00:25 Adium 2.0 -> 
/Users/username/Library/Application Support/Adium 2.0
lrwxr-xr-x   1 username  staff     45  7 Nov 00:25 Bookmarks.plist -> 
/Users/username/Library/Safari/Bookmarks.plist
lrwxr-xr-x   1 username  staff     32  7 Nov 00:25 Calendars -> 
/Users/username/Library/Calendars
lrwxr-xr-x   1 username  staff     39  7 Nov 00:04 StickiesDatabase -> 
/Users/username/Library/StickiesDatabase
-rw-r--r--   1 username  staff  14142  7 Nov 00:05 Sync_From_Log.txt
-rw-r--r--   1 username  staff   1945  7 Nov 00:26 Sync_To_Log.txt

AddressBook, Adium 2.0, and Calendars are all directories. 
Bookmarks.plist and StickiesDatabase are files.

The command I'm using to sync to the server:

	rsync -avzL -e ssh --exclude ".DS_Store" /Users/username/Sync 
username at the.server.address:~/

This works perfectly and does exactly what I want.


The command I'm using to sync from the server:

	rsync -avzL -e ssh --exclude ".DS_Store" 
username at the.server.address:~/Sync /Users/username/

This works as expected for the folders (the symlinks remain intact at 
~/Sync on the local machine and the linked locations are updated), but 
the symlinks to files are simply replaced with the copies from the 
server rather than the linked locations being replaced. For the life of 
me, I can't figure out why individual file symlinks are treated 
differently from folder symlinks. What I'm suspecting right now is that 
it has something to do with the -L option, but I couldn't seem to find 
anything detailing this specific situation online or in the man file. 
Any help would be greatly appreciated. I've spent many a long hour 
trying to work this out to no avail. Thanks!

-Joel

"Smiting his breast, he reproached his heart with word.
Endure, heart; you have endured worse before." - Odyssey, XX 17-18



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