symlink xxx -> .

[Eberhard Moenkeberg]

Hi,

On Fri, 6 Aug 2004, Ken Smith wrote:
> On Sat, Aug 07, 2004 at 12:39:38AM +0200, Eberhard Moenkeberg wrote:
 
> > what the hell is this:
> > 
> > emoenke at ftp:6 23:50:04 /mirr/bin > cd 
> > /pub/FreeBSD/releases/i386/5.2.1-RELEASE
> > emoenke at ftp:6 00:14:33 /ftp/pub/FreeBSD/releases/i386/5.2.1-RELEASE > dir
> > insgesamt 536
> > drwxr-xr-x   20 emoenke  ftp          4096 2004-02-25 09:04 .
> > drwxr-xr-x    8 emoenke  ftp          4096 2004-06-19 04:50 ..
> > lrwxrwxrwx    1 emoenke  ftp             1 2004-07-24 16:31 5.2.1-RELEASE -> .
> > drwxr-xr-x    2 emoenke  ftp          4096 2004-02-25 08:54 base
> > ...
> > 
> > It leads to lots of unwanted errors.
> > rsyncd is claiming:
> > 
> > 2004/08/06 00:53:42 [6722] readlink
> > "releases/i386/5.2.1-RELEASE/5.2.1-RELEASE/5.2.1-RELEASE/5.2.1-RELEASE/5.2.1-RELEASE/5.2.1-
> > RELEASE/5.2.1-RELEASE/5.2.1-RELEASE/5.2.1-RELEASE/5.2.1-RELEASE/5.2.1-RELEASE/5.2.1-RELEASE
> > /5.2.1-RELEASE/5.2.1-RELEASE/5.2.1-RELEASE/5.2.1-RELEASE/5.2.1-RELEASE/5.2.1-RELEASE/5.2.1-
> > RELEASE/5.2.1-RELEASE/5.2.1-RELEASE/5.2.1-RELEASE/5.2.1-RELEASE/5.2.1-RELEASE/5.2.1-RELEASE
> > /5.2.1-RELEASE/5.2.1-RELEASE/5.2.1-RELEASE/5.2.1-RELEASE/5.2.1-RELEASE/5.2.1-RELEASE/5.2.1-
> > RELEASE/5.2.1-RELEASE/5.2.1-RELEASE/5.2.1-RELEASE/5.2.1-RELEASE/5.2.1-RELEASE/5.2.1-RELEASE
> > /5.2.1-RELEASE/packages/Latest/nessus-devel.tbz" (in FreeBSD) failed: Too many levels of symbolic links
> > 
> > and it is producing lots of endless loops in other scenarios, too.
> 
> Umm.  The release directories have been set up that way for years now.
> I'm not sure what you're running for an rsyncd but it should know better
> than to try to follow symbolic links.  Mine always have anyway.  They
> know to report to the other end that it's a symbolic link and stops
> there.  Check the past release directories, they all have the same
> style symlink in place.  If your rsync is following symbolic links
> instead of stopping at them then it's actually going to cause a lot
> more problems, e.g. someone rsync-ing from you would wind up with
> the packages tree being copied as a separate thing in the location
> that last line you quote above shows.  The ports/ section of the site
> is full of *tons* of symlinks which would cause lots of problems if
> your rsyncd is following symlinks instead of handling them as symlinks.
> 
> > Please give your children a smaller sandbox to play, not the big one.
> 
> Thanks, I haven't been accused of being a child for years now.  Kinda
> refreshing.  :-)  [ I didn't put the symlink you're complaining about
> in place but I put some of the other similar ones there. :-].

I am sorry that I have "hit" you this way. It was not the appropriate 
reaction.
Meanwhile ls, find and rsync know to handle "-> ." symlinks properly
(it has been more difficult some years ago, at least with find and ls).

I guess the errors I see currently are caused by a user's option "rsync 
--copy-links", and the user had chosen  
FreeBSD/releases/i386/5.2.1-RELEASE/ as the starting point.

This single run produced 20572 log file lines "... failed: Too many levels 
of symbolic links", and finally:

[6722] rsync: writefd_unbuffered failed to write 4096 bytes: phase "send_file_entry": Connection reset 
rsync error: error in rsync protocol data stream (code 12) at io.c(836)


Cheers -e
-- 
Eberhard Moenkeberg (emoenke at gwdg.de, em at kki.org)