-l, --links
When symlinks are encountered, recreate the symlink on the destination.
-L, --copy-links
When symlinks are encountered, the item that they point to (the referent) is copied, rather than the symlink. In older versions of rsync, this option also had the side-effect of telling the receiving side to follow symlinks, such as symlinks to directories. In a modern rsync such as this one, you'll need to specify --keep-dirlinks (-K) to get this extra behavior. The only exception is when sending files to an rsync that is too old to understand -K -- in that case, the -L option will still have the side-effect of -K on that older receiving rsync.
--copy-unsafe-links
This tells rsync to copy the referent of symbolic links that point outside the copied tree. Absolute symlinks are also treated like ordinary files, and so are any symlinks in the source path itself when --relative is used. This option has no additional effect if --copy-links was also specified.
--safe-links
This tells rsync to ignore any symbolic links which point outside the copied tree. All absolute symlinks are also ignored. Using this option in conjunction with --relative may give unexpected results.
-k, --copy-dirlinks
This option causes the sending side to treat a symlink to a directory as though it were a real directory. This is useful if you don't want symlinks to non-directories to be affected, as they would be using --copy-links.
Without this option, if the sending side has replaced a directory with a
symlink to a directory, the receiving side will delete anything that is in the way of the new symlink, including a directory hierarchy (as long as --force or --delete is in effect).
See also --keep-dirlinks for an analogous option for the receiving
side.
-K, --keep-dirlinks
This option causes the receiving side to treat a symlink to a directory as though it were a real directory, but only if it matches a real directory from the sender. Without this option, the receiver's symlink would be deleted and replaced with a real directory.
For example, suppose you transfer a directory lqfoorq that contains a file
lqfilerq, but lqfoorq is a symlink to directory lqbarrq on the receiver. Without --keep-dirlinks, the receiver deletes symlink lqfoorq, recreates it as a directory, and receives the file into the new directory. With --keep-dirlinks, the receiver keeps the symlink and lqfilerq ends up in lqbarrq.
One note of caution: if you use --keep-dirlinks, you must trust all
the symlinks in the copy! If it is possible for an untrusted user to create their own symlink to any directory, the user could then (on a subsequent copy) replace the symlink with a real directory and affect the content of whatever directory the symlink references. For backup copies, you are better off using something like a bind mount instead of a symlink to modify your receiving hierarchy.
See also --copy-dirlinks for an analogous option for the sending side.
-H, --hard-links
This tells rsync to look for hard-linked files in the transfer and link together the corresponding files on the receiving side. Without this option, hard-linked files in the transfer are treated as though they were separate files.
When you are updating a non-empty destination, this option only ensures
that files that are hard-linked together on the source are hard-linked together on the destination. It does NOT currently endeavor to break already existing hard links on the destination that do not exist between the source files. Note, however, that if one or more extra-linked files have content changes, they will become unlinked when updated (assuming you are not using the --inplace option).
Note that rsync can only detect hard links between files that are inside
the transfer set. If rsync updates a file that has extra hard-link connections to files outside the transfer, that linkage will be broken. If you are tempted to use the --inplace option to avoid this breakage, be very careful that you know how your files are being updated so that you are certain that no unintended changes happen due to lingering hard links (and see the --inplace option for more caveats).
If incremental recursion is active (see --recursive), rsync may transfer
a missing hard-linked file before it finds that another link for that contents exists elsewhere in the hierarchy. This does not affect the accuracy of the transfer, just its efficiency. One way to avoid this is to disable incremental recursion using the --no-inc-recursive option.
