Re: [rdiff-backup-users] rdiff-backup follows symbolic links to other filesystems with --exclude-other-filesystems enabled

[David]

On 9/6/07, Matthew Flaschen <address@hidden> wrote:
> Matthew Flaschen wrote:
> > rdiff-backup follows symbolic links across filesystems with the
> > --exclude-other-filesystems option enabled.  I expected that this option
> > would cause rdiff-backup to copy a symbolic link that pointed to another
> > FS without following it.  However, rdiff-backup also follows such links.
>
> Can someone comment on this?  It semes to be a bug, but I may also be
> misunderstanding something.  I can provide more information if needed.

If the symlink is under the backup source, then in all cases it should
always be copied as a symlink and never followed. The only exception
to this should be if rdiff-backup doesn't see it as a symlink (eg: a
samba share, which happens to contain (on the server with the share)
multiple filesystems, and symlinks pointing between them).

Another possibility is that you're directly dereferencing a symlink as
the source of you backup.

eg: rdiff-backup /source/a/ /dest/ - where "a" is a symlink.

This behaviour (following symlinks, which it should never do to begin
with) is independant of the --exclude-other-filesystems setting, which
only relates to mountpoints under your backup source (it works by
comparing device numbers). Once again, if your source is a network
mount point, rdiff-backup won't be able to tell which parts of the
mount belong to different filesystems on the source host. It all looks
like a single filesystem.

Please give more information. Preferably setup the simplest possible
test case which displays the behavior you're talking about, and post
details (what filesystems and mountpoints are involved, and where the
symlinks were, what version of rdiff-backup you're using and your
kernel version).

Also try testing with the "--exclude-symbolic-links" option and see
what happens.

David.