rsync'ing a directory with nothing but symlinks

[Gerardo Herzig]

Bill Campbell wrote:
> On Wed, Feb 17, 2010, Gerardo Herzig wrote:
>> Hi all. This looks like a common question. I want to backup a dir, in
>> which i put some symlinks, so it looks like
>>
>> machinegun:/tmp/daily_backup # ls -la
>> total 8
>> drwxr-xr-x  2 root root 4096 2010-02-17 17:41 .
>> drwxrwxrwt 19 root root 4096 2010-02-17 17:30 ..
>> lrwxrwxrwx  1 root root   16 2010-02-17 17:41 cgi-bin -> /srv/www/cgi-bin
>> lrwxrwxrwx  1 root root    4 2010-02-17 17:17 etc -> /etc
>>
>> This is the rsyncd.conf
>> [backup]
>> path = /tmp/daily_backup
>> comment = Dir for backupear
>> auth users = backup
>> hosts allow = 10.10.8.105
>> secrets file = /etc/rsyncd.secrets
>> read only = true
>>
>>
>> So, when i try to rsync from 10.10.8.105:
>> gherzig at 10.10.8.105:/tmp/bkp> rsync -avz  --copy-links
>> backup at machinegun::backup .
>> receiving file list ... symlink has no referent: "/cgi-bin" (in backup)
>> rsync: readlink_stat("/etc" (in backup)) failed: Too many levels of
>> symbolic links (40)
> 
> Set ``use chroot = yes'' in your module definition above.  This
> keeps symlinks intact, and doesn't have any interaction with the
> host system.
> 
> I normally use the options ``--delete-excluded -aHrxF'' which
> preserves hard links, and uses .rsync-filter files to exclude
> things like pid files and other cruft that shouldn't be copied.
> 
> Bill
Thanks for the answer Bill, but i need the opposite. I want that the
symbolic links
machinegun:/tmp/daily_backup # ls -la
total 8
drwxr-xr-x  2 root root 4096 2010-02-17 17:41 .
drwxrwxrwt 19 root root 4096 2010-02-17 17:30 ..
lrwxrwxrwx  1 root root   16 2010-02-17 17:41 cgi-bin -> /srv/www/cgi-bin
lrwxrwxrwx  1 root root    4 2010-02-17 17:17 etc -> /etc

to be treated as directories, that is, i want to copt /srv/www/cgi-bin
and /etc from machinegun, with no success.

Gerardo