--links vs. --copy-links vs. nothing

What is the problem you are having with rclone?

I'm not quite sure that I understand the difference between using --links flag, --copy-links flag or no flag at all.

I am currently using rclone to migrate large volumes from one NAS to another. In order to do that, I installed and Ubuntu 22.04 jumpbox where both volumes are mounted (the 'old' and the 'new').

Since the 'old' volume contains symlinks, I'm not quite sure if that know which flags to use.

From the documentation, I believe that the --links option is since it will create special files instead of the links.

I'm currently using the --copy-links because "it sounds like the right thing to do". However, I'm gettings quite a lot of notices:

Can't follow symlink without -L/--copy-links

Which is confusing since I'm using the --copy-links flag.

Now, I'm wondering if I should not simply not use any flag and discard the notices.

Thanks in advance for any clarification on the possible options! :slight_smile:

Run the command 'rclone version' and share the full output of the command.

# rclone --version
rclone v1.62.2
- os/version: ubuntu 22.04 (64 bit)
- os/kernel: 5.15.0-27-generic (x86_64)
- os/type: linux
- os/arch: amd64
- go/version: go1.20.2
- go/linking: static
- go/tags: none

Which cloud storage system are you using? (eg Google Drive)

I'm syncing from one local folder to another local folder (both are mounted nfs exports)

The command you were trying to run (eg rclone copy /tmp remote:tmp)

rclone sync --copy-links --progress --transfers 64 --filter "- .snapshot/**" /mnt/old-scratch/ /mnt/new-scratch/

For copying local to local then using --links will preserve the symlinks which is probably what you want.

This follows the symlinks and will likely duplicate data.

That doesn't sound right! Can you make a reproduction of that in a simple test case for me?

This topic was automatically closed 30 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.