Windows Trouble with --link-dest set: "file not found" when rsync tries to create hard link

[Paul Johnson]

I have great luck running rsync from one linux system to another, or
from a windows system (with cwRsync) to a linux system.

But when I try to do an rsync backup from one directory on a Windows
system to another, it fails.  The cwRsync says its version is 2.6.9.

Here's my Rsync command, boiled down to its simplest:


rsync -rlptgD -vvv --delete --delete-excluded --modify-window=2
--numeric-ids  --link-dest=/cygdrive/c/crapbackup/backup4
/cygdrive/c/BackupSource/ /cygdrive/c/crapbackup/backup5/

I run this over and over, incrementing backup4 to backup5 for
link-dest and backup5 to backup6 on the target dir.

I can watch the new backups being created, I can see the files going
over.  The hard links are never created, however. After wrestling with
this a lot, I started reading your email archives and learned of
various problems over time, but not one quite like this.  Here's the
error part in the verbose output:

recv_generator(putty.exe,5)
rsync: link "/cygdrive/c/crapbackup/backup5/putty.exe" =>
/cygdrive/c/crapbackup/backup4/putty.exe failed: No such file or
directory (2)
send_files(5, /cygdrive/c/BackupSource/putty.exe)
set modtime of putty.exe to (1201715055) Wed Jan 30 11:44:15 2008


But the file in backup4 DOES EXIST.


C:\Documents and Settings\pauljohn\My Documents>dir
c:\crapbackup\backup4\putty.exe
dir c:\crapbackup\backup4\putty.exe
 Volume in drive C has no label.
 Volume Serial Number is 8003-3493

 Directory of c:\crapbackup\backup4

01/30/2008  11:44 AM           454,656 putty.exe
               1 File(s)        454,656 bytes
               0 Dir(s)  27,704,442,880 bytes free

C:\Documents and Settings\pauljohn\My Documents>dir
c:\crapbackup\backup5\putty.exe
dir c:\crapbackup\backup5\putty.exe
 Volume in drive C has no label.
 Volume Serial Number is 8003-3493

 Directory of c:\crapbackup\backup5

01/30/2008  11:44 AM           454,656 putty.exe
               1 File(s)        454,656 bytes
               0 Dir(s)  27,704,442,880 bytes free



-- 
Paul E. Johnson
Professor, Political Science
1541 Lilac Lane, Room 504
University of Kansas