ACL and link-dest

[Andrew Gideon]

On Sun, 08 May 2011 18:21:23 +0200, AZ 9901 wrote:

[...]
> So why Rsync does not hard link them ?

If I understand what you're asking correctly, you've two files that are 
identical but for the ACLs which are different.  You're asking why these 
two files aren't hard-linked?

The answer is that the ACL - at least as far as file systems I've seen - 
is on the inode, not the directory entry which refers to an inode.  
Therefore, if you've two files hard-linked to one another, they must 
share the same ACL.

The act of changing the ACL requires rsync to make a second copy.

Happily, it seems that rsync is sufficiently smart to make the copy at 
the destination end of the copy.  That is, it doesn't bother to transfer 
the file since the file's content is already at the destination.  It 
merely creates the required new copy and then changes the new copy's ACL.

Does this help you?

	- Andrew