rsync - Jul 2002 - option --copy-unsafe-links

I presume the option --copy-unsafe-links really means to copy the file
contents a symlink points to, even outside the tree being copyed, rather
than make a symlink on the destination.

What I find is that if a symlink on the source is dangling, that is,
it points to nothing that exists, that symlink is not created at the
destination.

What I want is for all symlinks to be reproduced as symlinks exactly,
regardless of whether what they point to happens to exist at the moment
or not.  How can I get this?  The option --links is only working when
the symlink actually points to something (e.g. stat() succeeds).  But
if stat() fails, even though lstat() would succeed, the symlink is not
copied.

-- 
-----------------------------------------------------------------
| Phil Howard - KA9WGN |   Dallas   | http://linuxhomepage.com/ |
| phil-nospam@ipal.net | Texas, USA | http://phil.ipal.org/     |
-----------------------------------------------------------------

On Wed, Jul 03, 2002 at 04:35:44AM -0500, Phil Howard
wrote:
> I presume the option --copy-unsafe-links really means to copy the file
> contents a symlink points to, even outside the tree being copyed, rather
> than make a symlink on the destination.
> 
> What I find is that if a symlink on the source is dangling, that is,
> it points to nothing that exists, that symlink is not created at the
> destination.
> 
> What I want is for all symlinks to be reproduced as symlinks exactly,
> regardless of whether what they point to happens to exist at the moment
> or not.  How can I get this?  The option --links is only working when
> the symlink actually points to something (e.g. stat() succeeds).  But
> if stat() fails, even though lstat() would succeed, the symlink is not
> copied.

This is a late response, but I didn't see anybody else answer.  Did you
solve your problem?  The --links option is supposed to copy all links.
I suspect it has something to do with some other options you're using.
This copies a symlink going nowhere:

    mkdir s d
    ln -s /nowhere s
    rsync -rvl s/ d/

- Dave