rsync - Jul 2009 - Assistance With "Symlink Has No Referent" Message

Hi All,

I am using rsync to backup one server to another. I am connecting to the 
rsync daemon on the remote server and pulling to the backup server. When 
using SSH this error does not occur, but there are reasons why I have to 
use rsync directly.

The problem I am having is that some of the symlinks on the remote 
machine will not copy. I am attempting to copy their referent by using 
the -L option, but I always receive the subject error despite the fact 
that the referent does actually exist.

Sample remote side files:

drwxr-xr-x  8 adam web64 4096 Sep 24  2008 .
drwxr-xr-x 92 root      root  4096 Jun 10 13:32 ..
lrwxrwxrwx  1 root      root    38 Sep 24  2008 Maildir -> 
/home/www/web64/user/adam/Maildir

Rsync call from backup server:

/usr/bin/rsync  -Lrvz --copy-unsafe-links server.net::www /nfsmount/test

Error messages from backup server:

symlink has no referent: "/Maildir" (in www)
rsync error: some files could not be transferred (code 23) at 
main.c(1538) [generator=3.0.0]

Showing the referents do actually exist on the remote server:

# ls -al Maildir
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 38 Sep 24  2008 Maildir -> 
/home/www/web64/user/adam/Maildir

# ls Maildir/
cur            dovecot.index.cache  dovecot-uidlist  subscriptions
dovecot.index  dovecot.index.log    new              tmp

# ls -dal /home/www/web64/user/adam/Maildir
drwx------ 6 adam web64 4096 Jul 10 15:39 /home/www/web64/user/adam/Maildir

My rsyncd.conf file has uid = root and gid = nobody for this path.

I've played around with -l, -k, -K, and the --copy-links, 
--copy-unsafe-links, --copy-safe-links options and always get the same 
messages. I'm fairly convinced that I just need the -L option, but I 
can't get it to work for some reason.

Can someone point me in the right direction?

Thanks,

Jon

Jon Watson (jwatson at watsysgroup.com) wrote on 14 July 2009 17:17:
 >I am using rsync to backup one server to another. I am connecting to the 
 >rsync daemon on the remote server and pulling to the backup server. When 
 >using SSH this error does not occur, but there are reasons why I have to 
 >use rsync directly.

 >The problem I am having is that some of the symlinks on the remote 
 >machine will not copy. I am attempting to copy their referent by using 
 >the -L option, but I always receive the subject error despite the fact 
 >that the referent does actually exist.

 >My rsyncd.conf file has uid = root and gid = nobody for this path.

Even though the daemon runs as root, there may have been a chroot
before. In other words, the process that is launched by ssh may not
have the same view of the filesystem that the one coming from the
rsync daemon.

You might be able to do an experiment launching a daemon directly from
the command line as root listening in another port and see if this
instance finds the referent.