Rsync link-dest - unsure if its creating hard links

Question

This is my first attempt at a shell script. I'm simply trying to make incremental copies of certain folders from a server to another server using Rsync, but using the link-dest option to create hardlinks to unmodified files. When I check the folder structure file sizes as they exist in the folder 'Editshare_Backups' I see that they appear to be just as large as each other. I am using du -sh * inside the 'Editshare_Backups' folder as I was under the impression that du doesn't count a second hard link when calculating size.

I used stat -f %l on a specific file inside the first full backup and it shows only 1 hard link.

What other options are there for checking whether hard links have been made?

Code from my shell script is:

#!/opt/bin/bash

#Rsync Editshare Database Backups Script

#Todays date
TODAY=`date -I`

#Yesterdays date
PREVIOUS_DAY=`date -I`

#The source directory:

SRC1="/RAIDS/RAID_2"
SRC2="/etc" 
SRC3="/var/lib"

#The target directory:
TRG="/volume1/Editshare_Backups/$TODAY"

#The link destination directory:
LNK="/volume1/Editshare_Backups/$PREVIOUS_DAY"

#The rsync options:
OPT="-avh -e ssh --delete --progress --link-dest=$LNK"

#Log file:
LOG="/volume1/Editshare_Backups/Logs/Log_$TODAY.log"

#Execute the backup
rsync $OPT [email protected]:$SRC1 :$SRC2 :$SRC3 $TRG >> $LOG 2>&1

Answer 1

The best way to know if rsync is hardlinking simply view the disk usage from something like gparted and see if its creating large backups. it shouldn't and the --link-dest option does what it says. A hard link will appear to the rest of the system and many programs as a dulpicate copy of that data when its only a link to the same blocks of data on the actual disk.