Unintuitive backwards-incompatible behaviour with rsync -a --link-dest --size-only

Wayne Davison wayned at samba.org
Fri Mar 18 01:05:41 MDT 2011


>
> On Sat, Mar 12, 2011 at 11:30, Bryan Hoyt | Brush Technology <
bryan at brush.co.nz> wrote:

> Is this because --size-only doesn't affect the behaviour of --link-dest,
> but only the transfer comparison?
>

Exactly.  It is just telling rsync to tweak its "quick check" algorithm for
files that don't need to be transfered.  It doesn't specify that you don't
want to preserve the modify time of any file that gets copied.

I've worked around this issue by specifying "--no-times" on the rsync
> command line.
>

Which is the correct solution.  Without disabling time preservation, rsync
will not hard-link an incoming file with one that doesn't have the same
modify time because it could not change (preserve) the modify time on the
resulting file without affecting the file in the link-dest hierarchy.  This
same rule applies for all preserved attributes (groups, ownership,
permissions, etc.).  This is a bug-fix from earlier rsync versions that got
this wrong.

..wayne..
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