On Wed, May 07, 2008 at 10:54:42AM +0100, Srdjan Todorovic wrote:
Hi,
2008/5/7 Chris G cl@isbd.net:
I currently use a mix of rsync and rdiff-backup to backup my home system.
*However* (and it's a big however) this has one huge hole in it, rdiff-backup does *not* copy the 'contents' of symbolic links. All it does (if you tell it to) is to copy the symbolic link leaving it on the resulting backup as a symbolic link which points at nothing.
Is there not a dereference symlink option?
No. I only discovered the problem when I lost a (trivial, fortunately) file that was 'down a symlink' and tried to recover it. I then checked the rdiff documentation pretty thoroughly and the only options it has to do with symlinks are to copy them or not to copy them.
Can anyone recommend anything?
Grab the sources, add dereference symlink option and then can even mail the patch to the authors. :)
Well, it's written in python, so that's a possibility I suppose.
I havn't looked at the sources, but I suspect that there is a function that deals with one file, doing all the diffing and revision control. All you'd really need to do is to pass targets of symlinks to the same function. Should be fairly easy to do I would guess.
Yes, I suppose so, I may take a look tonight when I get home.