Superfluous error msgs: "failed to set times ..."

[Felix E. Klee]

At Sun, 12 Nov 2006 06:42:23 -0800,
Wayne Davison wrote:
> > AFAICS, these error messages are caused by rsync trying to change
> > the time (and permissions, ownership) of symbolic links, which
> > according to my knowledge is not possible on Ext2.
> 
> Since Linux lacks the lutimes() system function, rsync doesn't even
> try to set the modify time on a symlink there.

A simple test run:

$ mkdir /tmp/asd
$ cd /tmp/asd/
$ touch x
$ ln -s x y
$ cd ../
$ rsync -e "ssh -c blowfish" --progress -aHx --delete --numeric-ids asd \
  root at linkstation:/tmp/
root at linkstation.klee's password: 
building file list ... 
3 files to consider
asd/
asd/x
           0 100%    0.00kB/s    0:00:00  (1, 66.7% of 3)
rsync: failed to set times on "/tmp/asd/y": Function not implemented (89)
asd/y -> x

sent 142 bytes  received 54 bytes  8.71 bytes/sec
total size is 1  speedup is 0.01
rsync error: some files could not be transferred (code 23) at main.c(791)

> What OS are you running?

Linux on both ends:

* Client (a Pentium M powered PC):

  Linux t41 2.6.14.4 #3 Sat Mar 25 11:14:41 CET 2006 i686 unknown 
  unknown GNU/Linux

* Server (a Mipsel powered NAS called Buffalo LinkStation):

  Linux HD-HLAN3FD 2.4.20_mipsel_linkstation #88 2005ǯ 2·î 25Æü 
  ¶âÍËÆü 20:17:00 JST mips unknown

Correction: The file system on the server is Ext3, not Ext2 as mentioned
earlier.

> > Is there any way to get rid of these supposedly superfluous error
> > messages?
> 
> You could try something like the attached patch.

Thanks for the patch.  I haven't tried it yet.

-- 
Felix E. Klee