Fwd: strange strange problem! (please help!!)

[David Hoffman]

On Sat, 22 Jan 2005 11:37:54 -0800 (PST), Globe Trotter
<itsme_410 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> 
> --- David Hoffman <dhoffman2004 at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> > Is it possible that you might have some symlinks in your "me"
> > directory and when you are copying files you might be actually copying
> > more than the 21Gb you think are there?
> >
> 
> Not that I know of. Is it possible to figure this out? There is a backup which
> is created every night via rsync, but it is on a separate mounted HDD and
> nothing points to that. A third rsync creates an incremental hourly backup on
> to another optical device which is usb and mounted, but again, no links.
> Moreoever, the cron jobs are run by root, not me the user.
> 

I'm honestly not sure how you would find out. I am guessing about this
theory, but here's what I'm thinking. Your original filespace...
"/usr/local/me" could theoretically contain a symlink. Let's say for
example, there is a symlink called "data" that points to some space on
a different filesystem.

Then when you run your du -sm on /usr/local/me, it might not tell you
the REAL space used if you were to copy, but instead only count
several bytes for the symlink.

What happens if you go back to the original system and create a tar
archive of your /usr/local/me space? How large is the archive? Can you
copy the archive to your new system and expand it?