rsync: failed to hard-link error message

[Brett Hamilton]

Thanks Wayne. Indeed, it looks like my Mac cannot hard link device files. 
I confirmed that CAN_HARDLINK_SPECIAL was already commented out in 
config.h, and I'm wondering if rsync should still be producing these 
errors? Also, I do in fact want to backup the device files in my 
snapshots. Makes it easy to fully restore a system from the backup.

Thanks!
--Brett



On Sat, 8 Jul 2006, Wayne Davison wrote:

> On Fri, Jul 07, 2006 at 02:43:27PM -0700, Brett Hamilton wrote:
> > rsync: failed to hard-link /Volumes/backups/vanguard/backup.0/dev/agpgart 
> > with dev/agpgart: Invalid argument (22) 
> 
> The message "Invalid argument" is from your OS, and it looks like it is
> being generated when trying to hard-link a device.  I'd suggest trying
> to hard-link a device manually to see if it works:
> 
>     ln /dev/audio /dev/audiotesting123
> 
> If that fails, make sure that the CAN_HARDLINK_SPECIAL define in
> config.h is not defined (just comment it out if it is, and rebuild).
> 
> > /Users/foo/bin/rsync -avH --link-dest=/Volumes/backups/vanguard/backup.0 \ 
> > --numeric-ids --exclude=/proc --delete -e ssh root at vanguard:/ backup.new
> 
> Another potential way to avoid the errors would be to add --exclude=/dev
> to your options (as long as you don't require the backing up of your
> device files).
> 
> ..wayne..
>