Restoring Cygwin Backups with Symbolic Links

Restoring Cygwin Backups with Symbolic Links

[Dan Plassche]

Hello,

I use GNU tar from Gnuwin32 to backup my Cygwin installation on
Windows 7, but restoring breaks symbolic links. The same problem
appears with bsdtar from gnuwin using a posix archive format.

The restored link files contain the destination if you open them in an
editor, but no they longer appear as symbolic links to the filesystem
(e.g. with ls -l). For example, /etc/alternatives becomes a set of
text files.

The only solutions I've found are to either dereference the links with
tar -h or to reinstall all previously installed packages using the
Cygwin installer. The installer is able to pickup what I have
installed, so I can just click the global reinstall, but I feel like
there must be a better way.

I'd appreciate suggestions for alternatives or pointers to fixing the
issue with tar.


Thanks,

Dan Plassche

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Re: Restoring Cygwin Backups with Symbolic Links

[LRN]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

On 07.09.2013 19:34, Dan Plassche wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> I use GNU tar from Gnuwin32 to backup my Cygwin installation on
> Windows 7, but restoring breaks symbolic links. The same problem
> appears with bsdtar from gnuwin using a posix archive format.
> 
> The restored link files contain the destination if you open them in an
> editor, but no they longer appear as symbolic links to the filesystem
> (e.g. with ls -l). For example, /etc/alternatives becomes a set of
> text files.
> 
> The only solutions I've found are to either dereference the links with
> tar -h or to reinstall all previously installed packages using the
> Cygwin installer. The installer is able to pickup what I have
> installed, so I can just click the global reinstall, but I feel like
> there must be a better way.
> 
> I'd appreciate suggestions for alternatives or pointers to fixing the
> issue with tar.

Use Cygwin tar to make backups and use Cygwin tar to restore them.
Which means that you have to keep a minimal Cygwin tar installation
(cygwin dll, tar, probably a compression program and their dependencies)
around.

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