question about --link-dest and the rsync protocol

Anthony LaTorre tlatorre9 at gmail.com
Sun Jan 12 02:52:09 UTC 2025


Hi all,

I'm trying to figure out why a script works when using SSH but not
when using the rsync protocol. When I run the following command:

rsync -aPh --link-dest=/user/snapshots/rsync_test/last
/home/user/rsync_test
root at readynas.internal:/user/snapshots/rsync_test/Jan_11_2025

it works perfectly, correctly recognizing the link-dest parameter.
However, when I try to run the same command using the rsync protocol:

$ rsync -aPh --link-dest=/user/snapshots/rsync_test/last
/home/user/rsync_test
rsync://admin@readynas.internal/snapshots/user/Jan_11_2025
Password:
sending incremental file list
--link-dest arg does not exist: /user/snapshots/rsync_test/last

I have tried several permutations of using relative/absolute paths to
the last file, but nothing seems to work. The only thing slightly
unusual is the mismatch in versions between rsync. On my client
machine I have:

$ rsync --version
rsync version 3.3.0 protocol version 31

while on the ReadyNAS I have

$ rsync --version
rsync version 3.0.9 protocol version 30

I have looked over the man page description of --link-dest here:
https://download.samba.org/pub/rsync/rsync.1#opt--link-dest, but I
don't see any mention of anything special when using the rsync
protocol.

Is there something I'm missing?

Thanks,

Tony



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