rsync - Oct 2005 - rsync deleting directories when synchronizing

We have an odd problem with the rsync 2.6.6.  When we issue
rsync -vvrLxHpogDtSP server::image/ /

it deletes certain directories.

We're sync'ing to / because we don't know ahead of time which files
will
appear on the server.  For example, some init scripts get populated into 
the rsync module, appearing ultimately as 
server::image/etc/init.d/script, but we don't know ahead of time which 
scripts will show up.

When we issue the above commands, rsync removes the /etc/init.d 
directory altogether, and recreates it with only the scripts in the 
module, thereby removing all of our existing init scripts.  [We have 
checked, and the inode number for /etc/init.d changes.]  This is not the 
desired behavior - what we want to do is add the contents of the module 
to our existing files, without removing any of them.

When we simplify the command line down to
rsync -r server::images/ /
it still clobbers /etc/init.d.

For reference, this is under Fedora Core 3, Linux kernel 2.6.9-1.681_FC3.

Does anyone have any idea why rsync is clobbering our files?

Thanks!

Liam

On Thu, Oct 20, 2005 at 02:56:42PM -0400, Liam Steacker
wrote:
> When we issue the above commands, rsync removes the /etc/init.d
> directory altogether, and recreates it with only the scripts in the
> module, thereby removing all of our existing init scripts.
What probably happened was that /etc/init.d was a symlink (e.g. on Red
Hat /etc/init.d is a symlink to rc.d/init.d).  If this is a directory on
the source system, rsync will remove the symlink and replaced it with
the directory.

You have two solutions:  The best solution is to use the same symlinked
directory structure in your modules as in your destination dirs.
Alternately, you could use the --keep-dirlinks option to tell rsync to
treat a symlink to a directory as if it were an actual directory.

..wayne..

Wayne Davison wrote:
>On Thu, Oct 20, 2005 at 02:56:42PM -0400, Liam Steacker wrote:
>  
>
>>When we issue the above commands, rsync removes the /etc/init.d
>>directory altogether, and recreates it with only the scripts in the
>>module, thereby removing all of our existing init scripts.
>>    
>>
>
>What probably happened was that /etc/init.d was a symlink (e.g. on Red
>Hat /etc/init.d is a symlink to rc.d/init.d).  If this is a directory on
>the source system, rsync will remove the symlink and replaced it with
>the directory.
>
>You have two solutions:  The best solution is to use the same symlinked
>directory structure in your modules as in your destination dirs.
>Alternately, you could use the --keep-dirlinks option to tell rsync to
>treat a symlink to a directory as if it were an actual directory.
>
>..wayne..
>  
>
Wayne you are once again spot on, thank you very much.
>
>  
>