Preserve Windows Symlinks

[Edwin Bradford]

Yes I found --checksum is much slower so following your feedback I'll do
some more reading to see if I really need it thanks. Assuming I understand
correctly I did the following test and also replaced absolute symlink paths
with relative symlink paths which worked this time:

1. I deleted and recreated the Windows symlinks on the source volume using
relative paths.
2. I deleted and recreated the same symlinks directly on the destination
volume.
3. I ran the same rsync command with the --archive flag (preserve symlinks).

The result was the symlinks on the destination volume were preserved or at
least not destroyed by the subsequent sync. If this test is what you
intended then it shows rsync can preserve the symlink between NTFS volumes
but I would have to manually recreate the symlinks on the destination NTFS
volume once.

Have I understood correctly?


On Tue, 29 Dec 2020 at 13:53, Kevin Korb via rsync <rsync at lists.samba.org>
wrote:

> If you delete the link then restore it does it start working again when
> in the correct place?
>
> Also, don't use --checksum unless you are really certain you understand
> how terribly slow it is and how it doesn't actually accomplish much of
> anything (certainly not any kind of data verification).
>
> On 12/29/20 7:29 AM, Edwin Bradford via rsync wrote:
> > Is it possible to preserve Windows symlinks when backing up from NTFS to
> > NTFS volumes or any other for that matter?
> >
> > I am running rsync in Ubuntu in Windows Subsytem for Linux on Windows 10
> > backing up a local NTFS volume to an external NTFS volume (and also to a
> > remote Unix server).
> >
> > The source NTFS volume has symlinks created in Windows using:
> >
> >     mklink the\link the\file
> >     mklink /d the\link the\directory
> >
> > I am running rsync within a long shell script with the command:
> >
> >     rsync
> >     --verbose --archive --checksum --itemize-changes --human-readable
> >     --delete --delete-excluded --partial --progress --stats
> >     --exclude-from='ignore.txt'
> >     source/ destination
> >
> > The symlinks are copied to the external NTFS partition and have the same
> > name but no functionality. Windows doesn't recognise them as symlinks,
> > doesn't know what to do with them and there is no apparent difference
> > between symlinked directories and files.
> >
> > I tried creating the symlinks with relative paths on the source volume
> > but rsync generated an error and refused to complete. Using --copy-links
> > instead of --links (implicit in --archive) gives the expected behaviour
> > but I would prefer to preserve symlinks rather than replace them with
> > their linked contents.
> >
> > At this point I'm not sure if it's a limitation of rsync and NTFS
> > compatibility or whether I'm missing something.
> >
> > + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
> >
> > Email: edwinbradford at gmail.com <mailto:edwinbradford at gmail.com>
> >
> > Tel.: +44 (0)7981 873 771
> >
> > + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
> >
>
> --
> ~*-,._.,-*~'`^`'~*-,._.,-*~'`^`'~*-,._.,-*~'`^`'~*-,._.,-*~'`^`'~*-,._.,
>         Kevin Korb                      Phone:    (407) 252-6853
>         Systems Administrator           Internet:
>         FutureQuest, Inc.               Kevin at FutureQuest.net  (work)
>         Orlando, Florida                kmk at sanitarium.net (personal)
>         Web page:                       https://sanitarium.net/
>         PGP public key available on web site.
> ~*-,._.,-*~'`^`'~*-,._.,-*~'`^`'~*-,._.,-*~'`^`'~*-,._.,-*~'`^`'~*-,._.,
>
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