How do I restore using --fake-super?

Graham Leggett minfrin at sharp.fm
Tue Apr 8 09:28:32 UTC 2025


On 08 Apr 2025, at 10:04, Paul Slootman via rsync <rsync at lists.samba.org> wrote:

>> I have a backup that was created with --fake-super that I need to restore to a fresh partition on the same machine as the backup (source and destination on the same machine).
>> 
>> The docs describe how --fake-super is used to make the backup, but none of the docs describe how you do the reverse and restore.
> 
> The manpage says:
> 
>    --fake-super             store/recover privileged attrs using xattrs
> 
> so I would assume that also use --fake-super during restore?

Unfortunately all combinations of --fake-super that I have used so far have had the effect of backing up the backup, not restoring the backup.

To be explicit, my source backup directory has the user.rsync.%stat attribute as expected indicating a correct backup. My destination directory also has the user.rsync.%stat directory, indicating that I have just backed up my backup, I have not restored my backup.

Can anyone confirm the correct restore command line option, as opposed to the backup command line option? Or to put this another way, how do I "do then undo", and not "do twice"?

Regards,
Graham
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