How to get rid of "Can't transfer non file/directory" warning for socket in /etc

[catharsis]

I have a file in /etc/ that seems to be a symlink to a socket and throws a warning message when backing up. I am trying to exclude it to get rid of the warning message but haven't had any success.

The file:

# ls -l /etc/alternatives/php-fpm.sock
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 24 Apr 30 21:32 /etc/alternatives/php-fpm.sock -> /run/php/php7.4-fpm.sock

Backup process:

# rclone --exclude-from ~/exclude.txt --backup-dir=hostname:archive/etc/`date -I` -vL sync /etc hostname:backup/etc
2021/05/03 17:21:39 NOTICE: alternatives/php-fpm.sock: Can't transfer non file/directory
2021/05/03 17:21:53 INFO  : pcloud root 'backup/etc': Waiting for checks to finish
2021/05/03 17:21:53 INFO  : pcloud root 'backup/etc': Waiting for transfers to finish
2021/05/03 17:21:53 INFO  : Waiting for deletions to finish
2021/05/03 17:21:53 INFO  :
Transferred:             0 / 0 Bytes, -, 0 Bytes/s, ETA -
Errors:                 0
Checks:              2104 / 2104, 100%
Transferred:            0 / 0, -
Elapsed time:          0s

Contents of exclude file:

# cat ~/exclude.txt
cache/
_sfpg_data/
*~
php-fpm.sock
mtab
php7.4-fpm.sock

# rclone --version
rclone v1.50.2
- os/arch: linux/amd64
- go version: go1.13.6
# lsb_release -a
No LSB modules are available.
Distributor ID: Ubuntu
Description:    Ubuntu 20.04.2 LTS
Release:        20.04
Codename:       focal

Config file:

# cat ~/.config/rclone/rclone.conf
[hostname]
type = pcloud
token = {"access_token":"xxxxxxxxxxxxxx","token_type":"bearer","expiry":"0001-01-01T00:00:00Z"}

[asdffdsa (jojothehumanmonkey)]

hello and welcome to the forum,

i would assume that since php-fpm.sock is not a file or directory, rclone cannot apply a filter to it.
might try
--skip-links Don't warn about skipped symlinks.

that is a very old version of rclone, get the latest version here

[ncw (Nick Craig-Wood)]

@catharsis

I have a file in /etc/ that seems to be a symlink to a socket and throws a warning message when backing up. I am trying to exclude it to get rid of the warning message but haven't had any success.

Unfortunately the excludes work at a higher level to the directory listing which we will fix at some point!

So I don't think you can get rid of this warning message at the moment