Re: [PATCH] Re: symlink fs_abilities (was Re: [rdiff-backup-users] [PATCH]Log symlink creation)

[Gordon Rowell]

roland wrote:
> nice patch - and it WORKS!
>
> tested with a loopback mountet vfat filesystem.

Great - thanks for the feedback and testing.

> [...]
> you mean, it only detects if symlinks are supported by catching the 
> error - but symlinks shouldn`t backup/restore correctly ?

No. This patch purely tests whether we can create symlinks. The next 
patch (today, I hope) will guard the symlink calls so we don't 
throw/catch the OSError. This will mean that we don't log 
SpecialFileError for symlinks on such filesystems - they are backed 
up/restored, so there's no need to log an error. I like my backup logs 
to be clean :-) (and so do my customers). An error log implies a 
failure, and as we've discovered, there is no failure.

> that`s not what is see - because i did a small backup/restore test and 
> i was able to restore a backed up symlink from that vfat filesystem.
>
> wondering why symlinks seem to work and this error has been 
> undiscovered for so long

It appears that they do work correctly, even on filesystems which don't 
support them. However, throwing (and logging) and error is 
misleading/wrong, so I think we should guard the operation and silently 
do the right thing.

Gordon