rsync and symbolic links

[Matt McCutchen]

On 6/29/06, Victor Shoup <shoup at cs.nyu.edu> wrote:
> Is this a known issue?
> rsync does not always preserve dates and permissions on symbolic links,
> and while the -i option indicates it is trying to bring things in
> sync, it does not.

Hm.  Some operating systems (such as BSD) support setting symlink
permissions and dates by providing lchmod and lutimes calls, while
others (such as Linux) do not.  When rsync is configured, it checks
for these calls.  If they are available, rsync tries to preserve
permissions and dates on symlinks it receives; otherwise, it should
ignore differences in symlink permissions and dates when -i is given.

What version of rsync is exhibiting the wrong behavior?  On what
operating system?  What is the full command line?  When you configure
rsync, does it say "yes" or "no" for lchmod and lutimes?

On a tangent, those who would like support for lchmod and lutimes in
Linux might try my custom kernel and glibc, which are available at
http://www.kepreon.com/~matt/kernel/index.html .

Matt