preserve owner when owner is the only change

[Wayne Davison]

On Mon, Jun 05, 2006 at 05:09:57PM +0200, Arnaud DUBARRY wrote:
> If I look at the owner of $PWD/backup.1/test-file (it's an exemple), 
> it's always link to backup.0/test-file, so the old owner is lost.
> 
> I'm using rsync  version 2.6.4  protocol version 29 (on debian sarge)

The only way rsync can decide to use a link-dest file that has a
different owner than the sender's file is when ownership is not being
preserved.  Since you said that you're using the -a option, then I'd
imagine that rsync isn't being run as root.

If that's not the case, then are you copying into a non-empty directory?
The only way to preserve all older attributes when using --link-dest is
to copy into a completely empty destination hierarchy.

..wayne..