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Currently duplicity supports (...) symbolic links (...) but not hard links.

http://www.nongnu.org/duplicity/duplicity.1.html

It is not clarified but most likely it means that soft links are followed. For obvious reasons I want to avoid backuping ~/Desktop/temporary_symbolic_link_to_hard_drive_with_gbs_of_data and other symbolic-link related problems.

How can I disable following symbolic links by duplicity (like --no-dereference option in diff command)?

I know that I can use --exclude option but it requires generating backup command by script detecting symbolic links but it would be overcomplicated and fragile.

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  • I think that "supports symbolic links" means "symbolic links are backed up", not "symbolic links are followed" (which would be really strange, in my opinion)
    – Andrea Corbellini
    Apr 15, 2016 at 6:48
  • @AndreaCorbellini - seems that you are right ( superuser.com/questions/483442/… ). I will accept the first answer linking to official documentation confirming this. "which would be really strange, in my opinion" - I agree, but my problem with diff was caused by unexpected following symlinks (askubuntu.com/questions/753391/…), so I wanted to be sure before backup will be needed.
    – reducing activity
    Apr 15, 2016 at 6:52
  • You can answer your own question. You are the person who did the research :)
    – Andrea Corbellini
    Apr 15, 2016 at 6:54

1 Answer 1

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Duplicity now supports this (in version v0.7.11 and up) via the --copy-links option. See the duplicity man page.

Note that this a later version of duplicity than standard Ubuntu trusty or xenial packages. You need to install duplicity from upstream e.g. ppa:duplicity-team/ppa

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