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Operation not supported when copying symlinks from a BSD system #1147
Description
This looks a bit like #173 resurfacing, but this only happened today with the new v3.5.2 release:
freebsd-14$ cd /var/tmp && touch foo; ln -s foo bar; ln -s nop baz
Trying to copy this file via rsync to a Linux machine:
debian-13$ ./rsync --recursive --links --perms 192.168.178.130:/var/tmp/ /var/tmp/test/
rsync: [generator] failed to set permissions on "/var/tmp/test/bar": Operation not supported (95)
rsync: [generator] failed to set permissions on "/var/tmp/test/baz": Operation not supported (95)
rsync error: some files/attrs were not transferred (see previous errors) (code 23) at main.c(1987) [generator=3.5.2-ga6b31adf]
debian-13$ ls -lgo /var/tmp/test/{foo,bar,baz}
lrwxrwxrwx 1 3 Nov 4 16:18 /var/tmp/test/bar -> foo
lrwxrwxrwx 1 3 Nov 4 16:18 /var/tmp/test/baz -> nop
-rw-r----- 1 0 Nov 4 16:18 /var/tmp/test/foo
This only happens when --perms is set, and only happens when trying to rsync symbolic links from a FreeBSD 14 or macOS 27 system. The local machine is running Debian 13.
As v3.5.1 did not show this behaviour, I started a git bisect session that pointed to:
first bad commit: [750012c34fe54418ffccd87f640247f6aabbacd9]
(Add fchmodat() as an option to set symlink Unix access permissions (#1108)
With that commit reverted, the error message is gone. CC @mtsapv, just in case.
Activity
steadytao commentedon Nov 4, 2026
Ah yes. Thank you for reporting this and my apologies. Will prepare a patch and ensure that #1122 is complete for the next release which will catch cases like this better.
mtsapv commentedon Nov 4, 2026
Interesting scenario. I'm looking at it "as we speak". Shouldn't take long to come up with an appropriate correction.
Not sure how we can (automatically) test for this since it involves two separate systems of different architectures. I'll keep giving that some thought as well.
steadytao commentedon Nov 4, 2026
One example is that a Linux receiver test can supply a non-0777 symlink mode through a protocol fixture. Unsupported symlink chmod should return the existing skipped-operation result without hiding permission failures or touching the target.
mtsapv commentedon Nov 4, 2026
OK. Thanks. Will look into that.
steadytao commentedon Nov 8, 2026
Reached out to package maintainers -- Confirmed merged into 3.5.2 for Arch + pkgsrc
steadytao commentedon Nov 9, 2026
PPAs updated. Build in ~10 minutes.