/home is symlinked to /usr/home - question about backups

[Alex Zbyslaw]

Pat Maddox wrote:

>I got a dedicated server a while ago, and it came with /home symlinked
>to /usr/home.  I'm not entirely sure why, to tell you the truth, but
>it's never posed a problem.  However if I run rsync -avz to back up my
>server, it creates something like this:
>
>/backup/march/19/home -> /usr/home
>
>So if I were to go to /backup/march/19 and rm -rf * wouldn't it go and
>delete everything in /usr/home?  That's obviously not my intended
>result.  I've read all the symlink options in man rsync but honestly
>am not sure what it is that I need to do.  Ideally I'd like to have
>symlinks reference the relative file..so something like
>/backup/march/19/home -> /backup/march/19/usr/home
>
>That way I don't lose all my stuff if I remove the file from backup. 
>Right now I'm just ignoring /home when I rsync, but it makes me kind
>of worried that if I ever backup without ignoring /home and then
>delete my backup I might lose my live data...I could really use some
>info.
>
>  
>
You could always make some dummy directories and symlinks and try it :-)

But, no, it won't delete the real thing *unless you put a / on the 
end*.  If you don't put the trailing slash then the symlink is deleted.  
If you put the trailing slash, then the symlink is dereferenced and the 
contents recursively deleted.

If you did what you wanted with rsync, you wouldn't correctly recover 
symlinks.

The rm man page says:

     The rm utility removes symbolic links, not the files referenced by the
     links.

--Alex