[Discuss] Dropbox does not respect Linux hard or symbolic links

[Jerry Feldman]

The web sites don't show really good good info
It appears that Dropbox stores hard linked files as separate files. This
kills snapshot-type of backups like rsnapshot.
For instance (on my desktop)
-rw-rw-r-- 2 gaf gaf 692088 May  1 11:20 GetStarted.pdf
-rw-rw-r-- 2 gaf gaf 692088 May  1 11:20 Get Started with Dropbox.pdf
lrwxrwxrwx    1 gaf gaf      28 Jun 12 10:59 GetSymlink.pdf -> Get Started
with Dropbox.pdf

On my laptop after a dropbox sync
-rw-rw-r--. 1 gaf gaf 692088 May  1 11:20 GetStarted.pdf
-rw-rw-r--. 1 gaf gaf 692088 May  1 11:20 Get Started with Dropbox.pdf
-rw-rw-r--. 1 gaf gaf 692088 May  1 11:20 GetSymlink.pdf

I suspect that many online cloud-based storage solutions will do a similar
thing. For my purpose, it just changes how I handle offsite backups since
my automatic backup to a local HD works fine.




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Jerry Feldman <gaf.linux at gmail.com>
Boston Linux and Unix
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