rsync - Jun 2006 - preserve owner when owner is the only change

Hello,

I'm trying to make incremental backups with rsync (I'm reading 
http://www.mikerubel.org/computers/rsync_snapshots/ )
But I can't backup a file with old owner when the change on the file is 
only the owner (content is unchanged).

rsync -av -e ssh --link-dest=$PWD/backup.1/ --numeric-ids --delete 
root@myhost.mydomaine.org:/var/www backup.0

If I look at the owner of $PWD/backup.1/test-file (it's an exemple), 
it's always link to backup.0/test-file, so the old owner is lost.

I'm using rsync  version 2.6.4  protocol version 29 (on debian sarge)

Is it a normal behavior of rsync ?

Thank you by advance,

Arnaud Dubarry

On Mon, Jun 05, 2006 at 05:09:57PM +0200, Arnaud DUBARRY
wrote:
> If I look at the owner of $PWD/backup.1/test-file (it's an exemple), 
> it's always link to backup.0/test-file, so the old owner is lost.
> 
> I'm using rsync  version 2.6.4  protocol version 29 (on debian sarge)
The only way rsync can decide to use a link-dest file that has a
different owner than the sender's file is when ownership is not being
preserved.  Since you said that you're using the -a option, then I'd
imagine that rsync isn't being run as root.

If that's not the case, then are you copying into a non-empty directory?
The only way to preserve all older attributes when using --link-dest is
to copy into a completely empty destination hierarchy.

..wayne..