From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Mon Mar 20 11:57:15 2006 Return-Path: X-Original-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 6C1C016A400 for ; Mon, 20 Mar 2006 11:57:15 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from xfb52@dial.pipex.com) Received: from asmtp-out6.blueyonder.co.uk (asmtp-out6.blueyonder.co.uk [195.188.213.65]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 5772843D69 for ; Mon, 20 Mar 2006 11:57:14 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from xfb52@dial.pipex.com) Received: from [82.41.229.4] (helo=[192.168.0.2]) by asmtp-out6.blueyonder.co.uk with esmtp (Exim 4.52) id 1FLJ0b-0007S6-KG; Mon, 20 Mar 2006 11:57:13 +0000 Message-ID: <441E9899.4070008@dial.pipex.com> Date: Mon, 20 Mar 2006 11:57:13 +0000 From: Alex Zbyslaw User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; FreeBSD i386; en-GB; rv:1.7.12) Gecko/20060305 X-Accept-Language: en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Pat Maddox References: <810a540e0603191605p3e74376csa12475dd14d36a3@mail.gmail.com> In-Reply-To: <810a540e0603191605p3e74376csa12475dd14d36a3@mail.gmail.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Cc: FreeBSD Questions Subject: Re: /home is symlinked to /usr/home - question about backups X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Mon, 20 Mar 2006 11:57:15 -0000 Pat Maddox wrote: >I got a dedicated server a while ago, and it came with /home symlinked >to /usr/home. I'm not entirely sure why, to tell you the truth, but >it's never posed a problem. However if I run rsync -avz to back up my >server, it creates something like this: > >/backup/march/19/home -> /usr/home > >So if I were to go to /backup/march/19 and rm -rf * wouldn't it go and >delete everything in /usr/home? That's obviously not my intended >result. I've read all the symlink options in man rsync but honestly >am not sure what it is that I need to do. Ideally I'd like to have >symlinks reference the relative file..so something like >/backup/march/19/home -> /backup/march/19/usr/home > >That way I don't lose all my stuff if I remove the file from backup. >Right now I'm just ignoring /home when I rsync, but it makes me kind >of worried that if I ever backup without ignoring /home and then >delete my backup I might lose my live data...I could really use some >info. > > > You could always make some dummy directories and symlinks and try it :-) But, no, it won't delete the real thing *unless you put a / on the end*. If you don't put the trailing slash then the symlink is deleted. If you put the trailing slash, then the symlink is dereferenced and the contents recursively deleted. If you did what you wanted with rsync, you wouldn't correctly recover symlinks. The rm man page says: The rm utility removes symbolic links, not the files referenced by the links. --Alex