Rsync 3.0.0pre4 errors with ACLs and Xattrs between OSX and Linux

[Paul Ortman]

Wayne Davison wrote:
 > On Tue, Oct 30, 2007 at 06:42:04PM -0400, Paul Ortman wrote:
 >> It's my understanding that as of 3.0 rsync supports OS X ACLs and
 >> extended attributes, and that it should be possible to backup a
 >> tree from an OS X system that contains files and folders with
 >> ACLs and extended attributes to a Linux host filesystem that has
 >> both "user_xattrs" and "acl" enabled on the destination file
 >> system.
 >
 > No, OS X ACLs are not standard POSIX ACLs, and cannot be directly
 > sent to an incompatible host.  You can instead tell the receiving
 > host to use --fake-super, which will store/retrieve the ACL
 > information as an xattr (among other things).  This incompatible
 > ACL data is the cause of this error:

Such good information... Is there a authoritative documentation
section (wiki, faq, etc) where I could post this information?  Maybe
my google-foo is just bad, but I can't seem to find that information
out easily, and I'd love to point others to a central documentation
place.  Please excuse me if this should be really obvious...

I'll add the "fake super = yes" value to my sample receiving conf
file and do some more testing.  Looks like I'll also try targeting
an XFS volume at the same time.

 >> recv_acl_access: value out of range: 7d3001
 >
 > That number is nonsensical to a POSIX ACL system, such as Linux.

Makes sense, given above.

 > The next error you cite is a limitation of your file system
 > (probably ext3) in how large the extended attribute data can be:
 >
 >> rsync: rsync_xal_set:
 >> lsetxattr(".file_with_xattrs.EGbmPN","user.com.apple.ResourceFork")
 >> failed: Argument list too long (7)
 >
 > If lsetxattr() is complaining, there's nothing rsync can do about
 > it (not without outside assistance).

The drive was ext3 formatted.  So this also makes sense.

 > A helpful user here, Wesley Terpstra, posted a solution that uses
 > an LD_PRELOAD library to redirect the ResourceFork xattr data into
 > a DB.  Look for the posting with the subject "Linux backup server
 > LD_PRELOAD".  (I haven't tried it, but the code looked good.)
 >
 > Another solution is to choose a different filesystem, such as (I
 > believe, but double-check to be sure) xfs.

XFS seems like a reasonable option for me, I'll try it out tomorrow
at work.  I'll also take a look at the LD_PRELOAD option tomorrow.

Again, thanks for the help/clarification.

Paul