rsync - Aug 2019 - implied-dirs tail component being chown'd

I use rsync in a fairly complex scripted situation and am trying to figure out
how to avoid changing ownership/permissions just on the directories specified on
the command line (but operate normally for everything underneath).

I've been using --relative --no-implied-dirs with some success in other
situations, but here it still seems to try to chown the last path component of
the implied-dirs, even when the /./ separator is appended.   When I use verbose,
I see that rsync does a chdir() to the implied dir on the receiving end, but
then also tries to chown('.') which I don't expect it to be doing. 
I expected rsync to not try to change permissions or ownership on everything
before the /./ separator.


E.g.   backing up and restoring my Windows home directory which is owned by
SYSTEM:SYSTEM with everything underneath owned by me:me  to a remote Linux
server with everything owned by me:me:

rsync -a --super --relative --no-implied-dirs  "--filter=.
HomeWin.rfilter"   /cygdrive/c/Users/me/./   myserver:/WinBACKUP/Users/me/

where HomeWin.rfilter is anchored at a Windows home directory and contains
something like:
+ /Pictures/
- /*

This ends up failing to chown SYSTEM:SYSTEM /WinBACKUP/Users/me (permission
denied; no such user/group).


I have a usable workaround which is just to chown me:me /cygdrive/c/Users/me,
but it would be nice to figure out a proper solution without risking Windows
issues.

Any help, ideas would be appreciated.

Thanks,
	-- Chris

Hi.

On Tue, 27 Aug 2019 14:56:25 -0700 Chris Roehrig via rsync wrote:
> rsync -a --super --relative --no-implied-dirs  "--filter=.
HomeWin.rfilter"   /cygdrive/c/Users/me/./   myserver:/WinBACKUP/Users/me/
If you are connecting to myserver as you (not root), simply
suppressing the --super option should work.

Otherwise (with a recent version of rsync) add: --chown me:me

-- 
francis

Thanks Francis,
	Neither of those really do what I'd like:   to properly sync/preserve
ownership/attributes for files below the root of the transfer (which are not
necessarily me:me -- I use groups for sharing between users), but to leave the
root attributes untouched, and to use filters anchored at the root.

Upon re-reading the man page, I see I misunderstood how /./ and
--no-implied-dirs works.   I thought I could use them to solve this problem, but
it doesn't look like it.

From my perspective it seems like a mis-match between where filters are anchored
("exclude the root") and where attributes are touched ("include
the root").

This is a situation I encounter a fair bit.   On Windows and Mac there are a lot
of user directories that are system-owned or have special system ACLs, xattrs,
etc:   $HOME,  Downloads, Desktop, Library, etc,
and I would like rsync to avoid touching those ownership/attributes, but also to
use filters that are anchored at the root of those (so that they can be applied
globally to any user).

E.g.
backup:
rsync -a  ". HomeDir.rfilter"    /Users/<someuser>/./  
server:BACKUPDIR/Users/<someuser>/
restore:
rsync -a  ". HomeDir.rfilter" 
server:BACKUPDIR/Users/<someuser>/./   /Users/<someuser>/

where HomeDir.rfilter is anchored at a user's home directory (and therefore
applies to any user) and attributes to the left of the /./ remain untouched
(which was my misunderstanding -- it doesn't work that way).


I hope this illustrates the issue I'm trying to solve.    I had thought this
might be a somewhat common problem, but it doesn't seem like there is a good
solution to this.   The easiest workaround for me so far is just to overwrite
the Mac/Windows system-owned attributes and make them owned by
<someuser>:<someuser>, but it's not ideal.

-- Chris


On Tue Aug 27 2019, at 11:31 PM, Francis.Montagnac at inria.fr wrote:
> 
> Hi.
> 
> On Tue, 27 Aug 2019 14:56:25 -0700 Chris Roehrig via rsync wrote:
> 
>> rsync -a --super --relative --no-implied-dirs  "--filter=.
HomeWin.rfilter"   /cygdrive/c/Users/me/./   myserver:/WinBACKUP/Users/me/
> 
> If you are connecting to myserver as you (not root), simply
> suppressing the --super option should work.
> 
> Otherwise (with a recent version of rsync) add: --chown me:me
> 
> -- 
> francis