Rsync: dealing with absolute symlinks

Question

Having read through the rsync manpage, I can't see any way for rsync to automagically transform absolute symlinks between machines, i.e

Server A
file -> /home/username/path/file

Server B
file -> /home/differentusername/path/file

Any ideas (bearing in mind that the rsync would only be run under /home/username/)?

I assume using relative symlinks is not an option? – andol Jul 25 '10 at 19:10 — andol, Jul 25 '10 at 19:10
I'll put it this way, I'd ideally like to do it without :) – Andrew Bolster Jul 25 '10 at 19:29 — Andrew Bolster, Jul 25 '10 at 19:29

score 3 · Accepted Answer · answered Jul 25 '10 at 21:28

Would this information lead to a solution?

From man rsync:

. . .

If you want to duplicate a server-side symlink, include both the symlink via its path, and referent directory via its real path.

. . .

It is also possible to limit the amount of path information that is sent as implied directories for each path you specify. With a modern rsync on the sending side (beginning with 2.6.7), you can insert a dot and a slash into the source path, like this:

rsync -avR /foo/./bar/baz.c remote:/tmp/

That would create /tmp/bar/baz.c on the remote machine. (Note that the dot must be followed by a slash, so “/foo/.” would not be abbreviated.)

. . .

[omitted some information regarding earlier versions of rsync]

Rsync: dealing with absolute symlinks

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