rsync ownership oddity - bug or feature?

[Karl Auer]

On Thu, 2022-04-21 at 07:51 +1000, Karl Auer wrote:
> It all works exactly as expected except that afterwards, /destination
> is owned by fred:fred.
> 
> Why?!? And is there anything I can do in the rsync command to stop
> this behaviour?

Sigh. I read the man page (again) and found this:

'A trailing slash on the source changes this behavior to avoid creating
an additional directory level at the destination.  You can think of a
trailing / on a source as meaning "copy the contents of this directory"
as opposed to "copy the directory by name", but in both cases the
attributes of the containing directory are transferred to the
containing directory on the destination.'

I still find this behaviour wrong, but at least it's a known thing. I
imagine that since it's been that way forever, it is not going to
change any time soon.

Out of interest I tried this:

   rsync -a /source/* /destination

...and that worked without changing the ownership on /destination.
Unfortunately, this does not catch hidden files, so it's not really a
useful equivalent.

Regards, K.

-- 
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Karl Auer (kauer at biplane.com.au)
http://www.biplane.com.au/kauer

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