I am trying to use rsync to create a mirror of my Linux laptop (Ubuntu Dapper amd-64) onto a USB drive hanging on a Windows 2000 desktop over ethernet. The folder I want to rsync to is /laptop and the USB drive is mounted at /media/smb using the following: sudo mount -t smbfs -o username=jcj //Devil4/Linux_Backups /media/smb Mounting works fine -- the mount command shows the USB drive as mounted. I have been working on the rsync command for over a day. The following is what I am using at this point: sudo rsync -av --delete --exclude=/proc --exclude=/media / /media/smb/laptop This does copy the files to the /laptop folder on the USB drive. That is, Windows Explorer sees the files there, so I know I have copied the files there and not just to the /media/smb mount point. However, I get a lot of error messages like the following (chosen at random): rsync: mknod "/media/smb/laptop/dev/.static/dev/.static/dev/rfcomm74" failed: Operation not permitted (1) rsync: symlink "/media/smb/laptop/dev/.static/dev/.static/dev/sr0" -> "scd0" failed: Operation not permitted (1) When I say "a lot of error messages" I mean more error messages than files actually copied. I selected the above two because all the error messages related to mknod and symlink. I haven't been using Linux very long and I don't understand how to fix this. I have read the man page and I have googled all over, but can't find anything that explains what to do about these error messages. All I can find is that (1) means a syntax error, but that doesn't make any sense if it is a permissions problem. Can anyone help?
On 1/16/07, John Jason Jordan <johnxj@comcast.net> wrote:> I am trying to use rsync to create a mirror of my Linux laptop (Ubuntu > Dapper amd-64) onto a USB drive hanging on a Windows 2000 desktop over > ethernet.> rsync: mknod "/media/smb/laptop/dev/.static/dev/.static/dev/rfcomm74" failed: Operation not permitted (1) rsync: symlink > "/media/smb/laptop/dev/.static/dev/.static/dev/sr0" -> "scd0" failed: Operation not permitted (1)The trouble is that some aspects of your Linux laptop's filesystem, including device nodes and symlinks, cannot be represented on the USB drive through SMB. If this is a problem (e.g., if you want to be able to restore the entire laptop from the USB drive and have it work), I can think of two options you might try: (1) Attach the USB drive directly to the laptop, create a Linux filesystem on the drive (e.g., ext3 or reiserfs), and back up the laptop to that filesystem with rsync. (2) Store a tar file of the laptop into the SMB share, in which case all the Linux-specific metadata is contained in the tar file and no special help is needed from SMB: tar -zcf /media/smb/laptop.tar.gz --anchored --exclude=/proc --exclude=/media / Matt