How to specify "--link-dest" on server (rsyncd.conf)?

[hh.eu at gmx.de]

I didn't read all of your post, to be honest, so forgive me if this does
not help, but are you aware of rsnapshot <http://www.rsnapshot.org/> ?
It is very nice for snapshots and uses rsync 'behind the scenes'.

Search the list archives for info on this. In particular, this post
<http://lists.samba.org/archive/rsync/2007-December/019470.html> comes
to my mind which deals with a situation similar to yours (if I haven't
misread your description): rsync daemon on server, no changes on  
clients,
clients "push" backups to server, server handles snapshots.

-Moritz

Am 20.04.2008 um 19:02 schrieb Carl E. Thompson:

>
> Hello,
>
>     This is my first post to the list.
>
>     Is it possible to specify the --link-dest option server-side in  
> the
> rsyncd.conf file? What I'd like to do is implement incremental  
> snapshot
> backups without having to change the clients which all just do regular
> dumps to the rsync server. I'd like to specifiy this option on the
> server rather than on the client because I don't want to have to  
> change
> all of the clients and don't want to trust that all of the clients are
> configured correctly. So in essence I'd like the clients to think
> they're doing a regular backup to a "write-only" module in whatever  
> way
> they see fit but I'll have script magic on the server that makes it an
> incremental snapshot. I can accomplish this imperfectly by using  
> the "cp
> -al" hard link method but this is vulnerable to permission / owner /
> group problems that could easily compromise all of the snapshots. It
> seems to me the easiest way to do this would be if it were possible to
> specify the "--link-dest" option on the server side in the module
> configuration in the rsyncd.conf file. This would either override the
> option if specified on the client or error out.
>
>     Alternatively and best of all I could accomplish the same thing  
> with
> the "cp -al" method if there were an option to tell the server that
> permission / owner / group / other changes are never to be performed
> directly on an existing file but that a new file is always created via
> local copy and moved into place (such an option would of course  
> conflict
> with options like "--inplace"). This would be a valuable option to  
> have
> because it could help guarantee for a paranoid administrator that
> previously backed up and hard linked files won't be modified by  
> rsync in
> case of a configuration error or malicious client.
>
>      If there is no way to do either of these things with current
> versions of rsync how would I go about requesting this feature for a
> subsequent version?
>
> Thank you very much,
> Carl Thompson
>
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