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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 '16 at 06:48
  • @AndreaCorbellini - seems that you are right ( http://superuser.com/questions/483442/including-files-in-a-symlink-directory-when-backing-up-with-duplicity ). 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 (http://askubuntu.com/questions/753391/how-can-i-check-why-diff-command-failed), so I wanted to be sure before backup will be needed. – reducing activity Apr 15 '16 at 06:52
  • You can answer your own question. You are the person who did the research :) – Andrea Corbellini Apr 15 '16 at 06:54

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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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