rsync --chmod affects the source permissions as well as destination permissions

[Graham Leggett]

On 05 May 2025, at 20:14, Derek Martin <demartin at akamai.com> wrote:

> If I understand correctly, I believe using --chmod without using
> --perms (or with --no-p) will do what you want.  Typical command lines
> often use -a which equates to -rlptgoD (i.e. it includes -p/--perms).
> So you either need to not use -a and instead use the remaining
> combination of options explicitly, or use --no-p.
> 
> See the man page, specifically the sections for --perms and -a.

When I stepped this through the debugger I found that this was not the case.

The flaw is on this line:

https://github.com/RsyncProject/rsync/blob/de4c5f7bb004d972045a2667f8d7a523386fc0e6/rsync.c#L579

The value of --chmod is being written to the fake xattrs, and this breaks the backups. The alternative is not to have --chmod, but this makes the backups inaccessible to the people needing to restore the backups.

The fix is here:

https://github.com/RsyncProject/rsync/pull/751

Regards,
Graham
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