[lug] rsync to explore file system differences?

[stimits at comcast.net]

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> I would write a shell script around "diff --brief --text --recursive --new-file "$OLD_FS" "$NEW_FS""
> 
> Save that output into a variable then pipe into a "while read" loop, and you can do different things with each line depending on what the status is.

...
 
This would be perfect if diff understood symbolic links and device special files (in terms of hard files the diff output is nice...although I still need time stamps equal as well). I would still need a front end that understands hard/soft link, device special files, permissions, and time stamps. I'm not a system administrator so I don't pay a lot of attention to special backup and restore schemes, but it almost seems like I need a non-rsync backup and restore modified to not really backup and not really restore. If I invent something myself it won't be available on a "normal" desktop linux PC. I keep going back to rsync to figure out a way with that, but it's one of those cases where it isn't really sane to keep trying the same thing and hope the result changes.
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