Anything specific to keep in mind restoring from rsync ?

[Warren Block]

On Fri, 25 Aug 2017, Manish Jain wrote:

>
>
> On 08/25/17 06:02, Polytropon wrote:
>> On Fri, 25 Aug 2017 00:13:38 +0000, Manish Jain wrote:
>>> But I am inclined to ask one question here : does FreeBSD actually have
>>> any system-installed hard links (other than . and ..) ?
>>
>> Several. A good example is the content of /rescue
>
>
> So I learn from you/WB that I goofed up  : - )
>
> My /rescue indeed now has all files therein as separate files (unique
> inodes). If the system has any more hard links, then my box would be
> hosting them as separate files.
>
> Is it okay if I keep using this box as-is-now (no hard links) ? The box
> runs fantastically well.

I don't know what problems that might cause down the line.  Another 
option would be to use rsync to re-sync at least the known problem 
directories.  Some time back, I wrote a script to do a "slow mirror" of 
filesystems on an SSD to a hard disk.  Here are the rsync options that 
seemed to get everything, as far as I could tell:

   -axHAXS --delete --fileflags --force-change

Be careful, of course, with a backup first.  --delete deletes files on 
the target that are not present on the source.  Using that and running 
rsync from the original /rescue to the new target one ought to fix the 
problem.  Like:

   rsync -axHAXS --delete --fileflags --force-change original/rescue/ /rescue/

Note the magic trailing slashes on the directories, meaning "do what I 
want".

The last two options should be able to overwrite files with the schg 
flag set.  A couple of years back, I submitted a bug report for rsync, 
and for a few happy months it was fixed.  Then it broke again and has 
been that way ever since.  So the few files in /usr/bin with that flag 
will show errors and possibly stop the copy (I forget now).