rsync
(1)
Name
rsync - copying
tool
Synopsis
Local: rsync [OPTION...] SRC... [DEST]
Access via remote shell:
Pull: rsync [OPTION...] [USER@]HOST:SRC... [DEST]
Push: rsync [OPTION...] SRC... [USER@]HOST:DEST
Access via rsync daemon:
Pull: rsync [OPTION...] [USER@]HOST::SRC... [DEST]
rsync [OPTION...] rsync://[USER@]HOST[:PORT]/SRC... [DEST]
Push: rsync [OPTION...] SRC... [USER@]HOST::DEST
rsync [OPTION...] SRC... rsync://[USER@]HOST[:PORT]/DEST
Usages with just one SRC arg and no DEST arg will list the
source files instead of copying.
Description
User Commands rsync(1)
NAME
rsync - a fast, versatile, remote (and local) file-copying
tool
SYNOPSIS
Local: rsync [OPTION...] SRC... [DEST]
Access via remote shell:
Pull: rsync [OPTION...] [USER@]HOST:SRC... [DEST]
Push: rsync [OPTION...] SRC... [USER@]HOST:DEST
Access via rsync daemon:
Pull: rsync [OPTION...] [USER@]HOST::SRC... [DEST]
rsync [OPTION...] rsync://[USER@]HOST[:PORT]/SRC... [DEST]
Push: rsync [OPTION...] SRC... [USER@]HOST::DEST
rsync [OPTION...] SRC... rsync://[USER@]HOST[:PORT]/DEST
Usages with just one SRC arg and no DEST arg will list the
source files instead of copying.
DESCRIPTION
Rsync is a fast and extraordinarily versatile file copying
tool. It can copy locally, to/from another host over any
remote shell, or to/from a remote rsync daemon. It offers a
large number of options that control every aspect of its
behavior and permit very flexible specification of the set
of files to be copied. It is famous for its delta-transfer
algorithm, which reduces the amount of data sent over the
network by sending only the differences between the source
files and the existing files in the destination. Rsync is
widely used for backups and mirroring and as an improved
copy command for everyday use.
Rsync finds files that need to be transferred using a "quick
check" algorithm (by default) that looks for files that have
changed in size or in last-modified time. Any changes in
the other preserved attributes (as requested by options) are
made on the destination file directly when the quick check
indicates that the file's data does not need to be updated.
Some of the additional features of rsync are:
o support for copying links, devices, owners, groups, and
permissions
o exclude and exclude-from options similar to GNU tar
o a CVS exclude mode for ignoring the same files that CVS
would ignore
o can use any transparent remote shell, including ssh or
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rsh
o does not require super-user privileges
o pipelining of file transfers to minimize latency costs
o support for anonymous or authenticated rsync daemons
(ideal for mirroring)
GENERAL
Rsync copies files either to or from a remote host, or
locally on the current host (it does not support copying
files between two remote hosts).
There are two different ways for rsync to contact a remote
system: using a remote-shell program as the transport (such
as ssh or rsh) or contacting an rsync daemon directly via
TCP. The remote-shell transport is used whenever the source
or destination path contains a single colon (:) separator
after a host specification. Contacting an rsync daemon
directly happens when the source or destination path con-
tains a double colon (::) separator after a host specifica-
tion, OR when an rsync:// URL is specified (see also the
"USING RSYNC-DAEMON FEATURES VIA A REMOTE-SHELL CONNECTION"
section for an exception to this latter rule).
As a special case, if a single source arg is specified with-
out a destination, the files are listed in an output format
similar to "ls -l".
As expected, if neither the source or destination path spec-
ify a remote host, the copy occurs locally (see also the
--list-only option).
Rsync refers to the local side as the "client" and the
remote side as the "server". Don't confuse "server" with an
rsync daemon -- a daemon is always a server, but a server
can be either a daemon or a remote-shell spawned process.
SETUP
See the file README for installation instructions.
Once installed, you can use rsync to any machine that you
can access via a remote shell (as well as some that you can
access using the rsync daemon-mode protocol). For remote
transfers, a modern rsync uses ssh for its communications,
but it may have been configured to use a different remote
shell by default, such as rsh or remsh.
You can also specify any remote shell you like, either by
using the -e command line option, or by setting the
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RSYNC_RSH environment variable.
Note that rsync must be installed on both the source and
destination machines.
USAGE
You use rsync in the same way you use rcp. You must specify
a source and a destination, one of which may be remote.
Perhaps the best way to explain the syntax is with some
examples:
rsync -t *.c foo:src/
This would transfer all files matching the pattern *.c from
the current directory to the directory src on the machine
foo. If any of the files already exist on the remote system
then the rsync remote-update protocol is used to update the
file by sending only the differences. See the tech report
for details.
rsync -avz foo:src/bar /data/tmp
This would recursively transfer all files from the directory
src/bar on the machine foo into the /data/tmp/bar directory
on the local machine. The files are transferred in "archive"
mode, which ensures that symbolic links, devices,
attributes, permissions, ownerships, etc. are preserved in
the transfer. Additionally, compression will be used to
reduce the size of data portions of the transfer.
rsync -avz foo:src/bar/ /data/tmp
A trailing slash on the source changes this behavior to
avoid creating an additional directory level at the destina-
tion. You can think of a trailing / on a source as meaning
"copy the contents of this directory" as opposed to "copy
the directory by name", but in both cases the attributes of
the containing directory are transferred to the containing
directory on the destination. In other words, each of the
following commands copies the files in the same way, includ-
ing their setting of the attributes of /dest/foo:
rsync -av /src/foo /dest
rsync -av /src/foo/ /dest/foo
Note also that host and module references don't require a
trailing slash to copy the contents of the default
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directory. For example, both of these copy the remote
directory's contents into "/dest":
rsync -av host: /dest
rsync -av host::module /dest
You can also use rsync in local-only mode, where both the
source and destination don't have a ':' in the name. In this
case it behaves like an improved copy command.
Finally, you can list all the (listable) modules available
from a particular rsync daemon by leaving off the module
name:
rsync somehost.mydomain.com::
See the following section for more details.
ADVANCED USAGE
The syntax for requesting multiple files from a remote host
is done by specifying additional remote-host args in the
same style as the first, or with the hostname omitted. For
instance, all these work:
rsync -av host:file1 :file2 host:file{3,4} /dest/
rsync -av host::modname/file{1,2} host::modname/file3
/dest/
rsync -av host::modname/file1 ::modname/file{3,4}
Older versions of rsync required using quoted spaces in the
SRC, like these examples:
rsync -av host:'dir1/file1 dir2/file2' /dest
rsync host::'modname/dir1/file1 modname/dir2/file2'
/dest
This word-splitting still works (by default) in the latest
rsync, but is not as easy to use as the first method.
If you need to transfer a filename that contains whitespace,
you can either specify the --protect-args (-s) option, or
you'll need to escape the whitespace in a way that the
remote shell will understand. For instance:
rsync -av host:'file\ name\ with\ spaces' /dest
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CONNECTING TO AN RSYNC DAEMON
It is also possible to use rsync without a remote shell as
the transport. In this case you will directly connect to a
remote rsync daemon, typically using TCP port 873. (This
obviously requires the daemon to be running on the remote
system, so refer to the STARTING AN RSYNC DAEMON TO ACCEPT
CONNECTIONS section below for information on that.)
Using rsync in this way is the same as using it with a
remote shell except that:
o you either use a double colon :: instead of a single
colon to separate the hostname from the path, or you
use an rsync:// URL.
o the first word of the "path" is actually a module name.
o the remote daemon may print a message of the day when
you connect.
o if you specify no path name on the remote daemon then
the list of accessible paths on the daemon will be
shown.
o if you specify no local destination then a listing of
the specified files on the remote daemon is provided.
o you must not specify the --rsh (-e) option.
An example that copies all the files in a remote module
named "src":
rsync -av host::src /dest
Some modules on the remote daemon may require authentica-
tion. If so, you will receive a password prompt when you
connect. You can avoid the password prompt by setting the
environment variable RSYNC_PASSWORD to the password you want
to use or using the --password-file option. This may be use-
ful when scripting rsync.
WARNING: On some systems environment variables are visible
to all users. On those systems using --password-file is rec-
ommended.
You may establish the connection via a web proxy by setting
the environment variable RSYNC_PROXY to a hostname:port pair
pointing to your web proxy. Note that your web proxy's con-
figuration must support proxy connections to port 873.
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You may also establish a daemon connection using a program
as a proxy by setting the environment variable RSYNC_CON-
NECT_PROG to the commands you wish to run in place of making
a direct socket connection. The string may contain the
escape "%H" to represent the hostname specified in the rsync
command (so use "%%" if you need a single "%" in your
string). For example:
export RSYNC_CONNECT_PROG='ssh proxyhost nc %H 873'
rsync -av targethost1::module/src/ /dest/
rsync -av rsync:://targethost2/module/src/ /dest/
The command specified above uses ssh to run nc (netcat) on a
proxyhost, which forwards all data to port 873 (the rsync
daemon) on the targethost (%H).
USING RSYNC-DAEMON FEATURES VIA A REMOTE-SHELL CONNECTION
It is sometimes useful to use various features of an rsync
daemon (such as named modules) without actually allowing any
new socket connections into a system (other than what is
already required to allow remote-shell access). Rsync sup-
ports connecting to a host using a remote shell and then
spawning a single-use "daemon" server that expects to read
its config file in the home dir of the remote user. This
can be useful if you want to encrypt a daemon-style trans-
fer's data, but since the daemon is started up fresh by the
remote user, you may not be able to use features such as
chroot or change the uid used by the daemon. (For another
way to encrypt a daemon transfer, consider using ssh to tun-
nel a local port to a remote machine and configure a normal
rsync daemon on that remote host to only allow connections
from "localhost".)
From the user's perspective, a daemon transfer via a
remote-shell connection uses nearly the same command-line
syntax as a normal rsync-daemon transfer, with the only
exception being that you must explicitly set the remote
shell program on the command-line with the --rsh=COMMAND
option. (Setting the RSYNC_RSH in the environment will not
turn on this functionality.) For example:
rsync -av --rsh=ssh host::module /dest
If you need to specify a different remote-shell user, keep
in mind that the user@ prefix in front of the host is speci-
fying the rsync-user value (for a module that requires
user-based authentication). This means that you must give
the '-l user' option to ssh when specifying the
remote-shell, as in this example that uses the short version
of the --rsh option:
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rsync -av -e "ssh -l ssh-user" rsync-user@host::module /dest
The "ssh-user" will be used at the ssh level; the
"rsync-user" will be used to log-in to the "module".
STARTING AN RSYNC DAEMON TO ACCEPT CONNECTIONS
WARNING: Daemon mode does not participate in the core
Solaris security policies, including Authentication, limit
of privileges, Audit and Audit of any subprocessing.
In order to connect to an rsync daemon, the remote system
needs to have a daemon already running (or it needs to have
configured something like inetd to spawn an rsync daemon for
incoming connections on a particular port). For full infor-
mation on how to start a daemon that will handling incoming
socket connections, see the rsyncd.conf(5) man page -- that
is the config file for the daemon, and it contains the full
details for how to run the daemon (including stand-alone and
inetd configurations).
If you're using one of the remote-shell transports for the
transfer, there is no need to manually start an rsync dae-
mon.
SORTED TRANSFER ORDER
Rsync always sorts the specified filenames into its internal
transfer list. This handles the merging together of the
contents of identically named directories, makes it easy to
remove duplicate filenames, and may confuse someone when the
files are transferred in a different order than what was
given on the command-line.
If you need a particular file to be transferred prior to
another, either separate the files into different rsync
calls, or consider using --delay-updates (which doesn't
affect the sorted transfer order, but does make the final
file-updating phase happen much more rapidly).
EXAMPLES
Here are some examples of how I use rsync.
To backup my wife's home directory, which consists of large
MS Word files and mail folders, I use a cron job that runs
rsync -Cavz . arvidsjaur:backup
each night over a PPP connection to a duplicate directory on
my machine "arvidsjaur".
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To synchronize my samba source trees I use the following
Makefile targets:
get:
rsync -avuzb --exclude '*~' samba:samba/ .
put:
rsync -Cavuzb . samba:samba/
sync: get put
this allows me to sync with a CVS directory at the other end
of the connection. I then do CVS operations on the remote
machine, which saves a lot of time as the remote CVS proto-
col isn't very efficient.
I mirror a directory between my "old" and "new" ftp sites
with the command:
rsync -az -e ssh --delete ~ftp/pub/samba nim-
bus:"~ftp/pub/tridge"
This is launched from cron every few hours.
OPTIONS SUMMARY
Here is a short summary of the options available in rsync.
Please refer to the detailed description below for a com-
plete description.
-v, --verbose increase verbosity
--info=FLAGS fine-grained informational verbosity
--debug=FLAGS fine-grained debug verbosity
--msgs2stderr special output handling for debugging
-q, --quiet suppress non-error messages
--no-motd suppress daemon-mode MOTD (see caveat)
-c, --checksum skip based on checksum, not mod-time & size
-a, --archive archive mode; equals -rlptgoD (no -H,-A,-X)
--no-OPTION turn off an implied OPTION (e.g. --no-D)
-r, --recursive recurse into directories
-R, --relative use relative path names
--no-implied-dirs don't send implied dirs with --relative
-b, --backup make backups (see --suffix & --backup-dir)
--backup-dir=DIR make backups into hierarchy based in DIR
--suffix=SUFFIX backup suffix (default ~ w/o --backup-dir)
-u, --update skip files that are newer on the receiver
--inplace update destination files in-place
--append append data onto shorter files
--append-verify --append w/old data in file checksum
-d, --dirs transfer directories without recursing
-l, --links copy symlinks as symlinks
-L, --copy-links transform symlink into referent file/dir
--copy-unsafe-links only "unsafe" symlinks are transformed
--safe-links ignore symlinks that point outside the tree
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--munge-links munge symlinks to make them safer
-k, --copy-dirlinks transform symlink to dir into referent dir
-K, --keep-dirlinks treat symlinked dir on receiver as dir
-H, --hard-links preserve hard links
-p, --perms preserve permissions
-E, --executability preserve executability
--chmod=CHMOD affect file and/or directory permissions
-A, --acls preserve ACLs (implies -p)
-X, --xattrs preserve extended attributes
-o, --owner preserve owner (super-user only)
-g, --group preserve group
--devices preserve device files (super-user only)
--specials preserve special files
-D same as --devices --specials
-t, --times preserve modification times
-O, --omit-dir-times omit directories from --times
-J, --omit-link-times omit symlinks from --times
--super receiver attempts super-user activities
--fake-super store/recover privileged attrs using xattrs
-S, --sparse handle sparse files efficiently
--preallocate allocate dest files before writing
-n, --dry-run perform a trial run with no changes made
-W, --whole-file copy files whole (w/o delta-xfer algorithm)
-x, --one-file-system don't cross filesystem boundaries
-B, --block-size=SIZE force a fixed checksum block-size
-e, --rsh=COMMAND specify the remote shell to use
--rsync-path=PROGRAM specify the rsync to run on remote machine
--existing skip creating new files on receiver
--ignore-existing skip updating files that exist on receiver
--remove-source-files sender removes synchronized files (non-dir)
--del an alias for --delete-during
--delete delete extraneous files from dest dirs
--delete-before receiver deletes before xfer, not during
--delete-during receiver deletes during the transfer
--delete-delay find deletions during, delete after
--delete-after receiver deletes after transfer, not during
--delete-excluded also delete excluded files from dest dirs
--ignore-missing-args ignore missing source args without error
--delete-missing-args delete missing source args from destination
--ignore-errors delete even if there are I/O errors
--force force deletion of dirs even if not empty
--max-delete=NUM don't delete more than NUM files
--max-size=SIZE don't transfer any file larger than SIZE
--min-size=SIZE don't transfer any file smaller than SIZE
--partial keep partially transferred files
--partial-dir=DIR put a partially transferred file into DIR
--delay-updates put all updated files into place at end
-m, --prune-empty-dirs prune empty directory chains from file-list
--numeric-ids don't map uid/gid values by user/group name
--usermap=STRING custom username mapping
--groupmap=STRING custom groupname mapping
--chown=USER:GROUP simple username/groupname mapping
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--timeout=SECONDS set I/O timeout in seconds
--contimeout=SECONDS set daemon connection timeout in seconds
-I, --ignore-times don't skip files that match size and time
--size-only skip files that match in size
--modify-window=NUM compare mod-times with reduced accuracy
-T, --temp-dir=DIR create temporary files in directory DIR
-y, --fuzzy find similar file for basis if no dest file
--compare-dest=DIR also compare received files relative to DIR
--copy-dest=DIR ... and include copies of unchanged files
--link-dest=DIR hardlink to files in DIR when unchanged
-z, --compress compress file data during the transfer
--compress-level=NUM explicitly set compression level
--skip-compress=LIST skip compressing files with suffix in LIST
-C, --cvs-exclude auto-ignore files in the same way CVS does
-f, --filter=RULE add a file-filtering RULE
-F same as --filter='dir-merge /.rsync-filter'
repeated: --filter='- .rsync-filter'
--exclude=PATTERN exclude files matching PATTERN
--exclude-from=FILE read exclude patterns from FILE
--include=PATTERN don't exclude files matching PATTERN
--include-from=FILE read include patterns from FILE
--files-from=FILE read list of source-file names from FILE
-0, --from0 all *from/filter files are delimited by 0s
-s, --protect-args no space-splitting; wildcard chars only
--address=ADDRESS bind address for outgoing socket to daemon
--port=PORT specify double-colon alternate port number
--sockopts=OPTIONS specify custom TCP options
--blocking-io use blocking I/O for the remote shell
--outbuf=N|L|B set out buffering to None, Line, or Block
--stats give some file-transfer stats
-8, --8-bit-output leave high-bit chars unescaped in output
-h, --human-readable output numbers in a human-readable format
--progress show progress during transfer
-P same as --partial --progress
-i, --itemize-changes output a change-summary for all updates
-M, --remote-option=OPTION send OPTION to the remote side only
--out-format=FORMAT output updates using the specified FORMAT
--log-file=FILE log what we're doing to the specified FILE
--log-file-format=FMT log updates using the specified FMT
--password-file=FILE read daemon-access password from FILE
--list-only list the files instead of copying them
--bwlimit=RATE limit socket I/O bandwidth
--write-batch=FILE write a batched update to FILE
--only-write-batch=FILE like --write-batch but w/o updating dest
--read-batch=FILE read a batched update from FILE
--protocol=NUM force an older protocol version to be used
--iconv=CONVERT_SPEC request charset conversion of filenames
--checksum-seed=NUM set block/file checksum seed (advanced)
-4, --ipv4 prefer IPv4
-6, --ipv6 prefer IPv6
--version print version number
(-h) --help show this help (see below for -h comment)
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Rsync can also be run as a daemon, in which case the follow-
ing options are accepted:
--daemon run as an rsync daemon
--address=ADDRESS bind to the specified address
--bwlimit=RATE limit socket I/O bandwidth
--config=FILE specify alternate rsyncd.conf file
-M, --dparam=OVERRIDE override global daemon config parameter
--no-detach do not detach from the parent
--port=PORT listen on alternate port number
--log-file=FILE override the "log file" setting
--log-file-format=FMT override the "log format" setting
--sockopts=OPTIONS specify custom TCP options
-v, --verbose increase verbosity
-4, --ipv4 prefer IPv4
-6, --ipv6 prefer IPv6
-h, --help show this help (if used after --daemon)
OPTIONS
Rsync accepts both long (double-dash + word) and short (sin-
gle-dash + letter) options. The full list of the available
options are described below. If an option can be specified
in more than one way, the choices are comma-separated. Some
options only have a long variant, not a short. If the
option takes a parameter, the parameter is only listed after
the long variant, even though it must also be specified for
the short. When specifying a parameter, you can either use
the form --option=param or replace the '=' with whitespace.
The parameter may need to be quoted in some manner for it to
survive the shell's command-line parsing. Keep in mind that
a leading tilde (~) in a filename is substituted by your
shell, so --option=~/foo will not change the tilde into your
home directory (remove the '=' for that).
--help
Print a short help page describing the options avail-
able in rsync and exit. For backward-compatibility
with older versions of rsync, the help will also be
output if you use the -h option without any other args.
--version
print the rsync version number and exit.
-v, --verbose
This option increases the amount of information you are
given during the transfer. By default, rsync works
silently. A single -v will give you information about
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what files are being transferred and a brief summary at
the end. Two -v options will give you information on
what files are being skipped and slightly more informa-
tion at the end. More than two -v options should only
be used if you are debugging rsync.
In a modern rsync, the -v option is equivalent to the
setting of groups of --info and --debug options. You
can choose to use these newer options in addition to,
or in place of using --verbose, as any fine-grained
settings override the implied settings of -v. Both
--info and --debug have a way to ask for help that
tells you exactly what flags are set for each increase
in verbosity.
--info=FLAGS
This option lets you have fine-grained control over the
information output you want to see. An individual flag
name may be followed by a level number, with 0 meaning
to silence that output, 1 being the default output
level, and higher numbers increasing the output of that
flag (for those that support higher levels). Use
--info=help to see all the available flag names, what
they output, and what flag names are added for each
increase in the verbose level. Some examples:
rsync -a --info=progress2 src/ dest/
rsync -avv --info=stats2,misc1,flist0 src/ dest/
Note that --info=name's output is affected by the
--out-format and --itemize-changes (-i) options. See
those options for more information on what is output
and when.
This option was added to 3.1.0, so an older rsync on
the server side might reject your attempts at
fine-grained control (if one or more flags needed to be
send to the server and the server was too old to under-
stand them).
--debug=FLAGS
This option lets you have fine-grained control over the
debug output you want to see. An individual flag name
may be followed by a level number, with 0 meaning to
silence that output, 1 being the default output level,
and higher numbers increasing the output of that flag
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(for those that support higher levels). Use
--debug=help to see all the available flag names, what
they output, and what flag names are added for each
increase in the verbose level. Some examples:
rsync -avvv --debug=none src/ dest/
rsync -avA --del --debug=del2,acl src/ dest/
Note that some debug messages will only be output when
--msgs2stderr is specified, especially those pertaining
to I/O and buffer debugging.
This option was added to 3.1.0, so an older rsync on
the server side might reject your attempts at
fine-grained control (if one or more flags needed to be
send to the server and the server was too old to under-
stand them).
--msgs2stderr
This option changes rsync to send all its output
directly to stderr rather than to send messages to the
client side via the protocol (which normally outputs
info messages via stdout). This is mainly intended for
debugging in order to avoid changing the data sent via
the protocol, since the extra protocol data can change
what is being tested. Keep in mind that a daemon con-
nection does not have a stderr channel to send messages
back to the client side, so if you are doing any dae-
mon-transfer debugging using this option, you should
start up a daemon using --no-detach so that you can see
the stderr output on the daemon side.
This option has the side-effect of making stderr output
get line-buffered so that the merging of the output of
3 programs happens in a more readable manner.
-q, --quiet
This option decreases the amount of information you are
given during the transfer, notably suppressing informa-
tion messages from the remote server. This option is
useful when invoking rsync from cron.
--no-motd
This option affects the information that is output by
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the client at the start of a daemon transfer. This
suppresses the message-of-the-day (MOTD) text, but it
also affects the list of modules that the daemon sends
in response to the "rsync host::" request (due to a
limitation in the rsync protocol), so omit this option
if you want to request the list of modules from the
daemon.
-I, --ignore-times
Normally rsync will skip any files that are already the
same size and have the same modification timestamp.
This option turns off this "quick check" behavior,
causing all files to be updated.
--size-only
This modifies rsync's "quick check" algorithm for find-
ing files that need to be transferred, changing it from
the default of transferring files with either a changed
size or a changed last-modified time to just looking
for files that have changed in size. This is useful
when starting to use rsync after using another mirror-
ing system which may not preserve timestamps exactly.
--modify-window
When comparing two timestamps, rsync treats the time-
stamps as being equal if they differ by no more than
the modify-window value. This is normally 0 (for an
exact match), but you may find it useful to set this to
a larger value in some situations. In particular, when
transferring to or from an MS Windows FAT filesystem
(which represents times with a 2-second resolution),
--modify-window=1 is useful (allowing times to differ
by up to 1 second).
-c, --checksum
This changes the way rsync checks if the files have
been changed and are in need of a transfer. Without
this option, rsync uses a "quick check" that (by
default) checks if each file's size and time of last
modification match between the sender and receiver.
This option changes this to compare a 128-bit checksum
for each file that has a matching size. Generating the
checksums means that both sides will expend a lot of
disk I/O reading all the data in the files in the
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transfer (and this is prior to any reading that will be
done to transfer changed files), so this can slow
things down significantly.
The sending side generates its checksums while it is
doing the file-system scan that builds the list of the
available files. The receiver generates its checksums
when it is scanning for changed files, and will check-
sum any file that has the same size as the correspond-
ing sender's file: files with either a changed size or
a changed checksum are selected for transfer.
Note that rsync always verifies that each transferred
file was correctly reconstructed on the receiving side
by checking a whole-file checksum that is generated as
the file is transferred, but that automatic
after-the-transfer verification has nothing to do with
this option's before-the-transfer "Does this file need
to be updated?" check.
For protocol 30 and beyond (first supported in 3.0.0),
the checksum used is MD5. For older protocols, the
checksum used is MD4.
-a, --archive
This is equivalent to -rlptgoD. It is a quick way of
saying you want recursion and want to preserve almost
everything (with -H being a notable omission). The
only exception to the above equivalence is when
--files-from is specified, in which case -r is not
implied.
Note that -a does not preserve hardlinks, because find-
ing multiply-linked files is expensive. You must sepa-
rately specify -H.
--no-OPTION
You may turn off one or more implied options by prefix-
ing the option name with "no-". Not all options may be
prefixed with a "no-": only options that are implied by
other options (e.g. --no-D, --no-perms) or have differ-
ent defaults in various circumstances (e.g.
--no-whole-file, --no-blocking-io, --no-dirs). You may
specify either the short or the long option name after
the "no-" prefix (e.g. --no-R is the same as --no-rela-
tive).
For example: if you want to use -a (--archive) but
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don't want -o (--owner), instead of converting -a into
-rlptgD, you could specify -a --no-o (or -a
--no-owner).
The order of the options is important: if you specify
--no-r -a, the -r option would end up being turned on,
the opposite of -a --no-r. Note also that the
side-effects of the --files-from option are NOT posi-
tional, as it affects the default state of several
options and slightly changes the meaning of -a (see the
--files-from option for more details).
-r, --recursive
This tells rsync to copy directories recursively. See
also --dirs (-d).
Beginning with rsync 3.0.0, the recursive algorithm
used is now an incremental scan that uses much less
memory than before and begins the transfer after the
scanning of the first few directories have been com-
pleted. This incremental scan only affects our recur-
sion algorithm, and does not change a non-recursive
transfer. It is also only possible when both ends of
the transfer are at least version 3.0.0.
Some options require rsync to know the full file list,
so these options disable the incremental recursion
mode. These include: --delete-before, --delete-after,
--prune-empty-dirs, and --delay-updates. Because of
this, the default delete mode when you specify --delete
is now --delete-during when both ends of the connection
are at least 3.0.0 (use --del or --delete-during to
request this improved deletion mode explicitly). See
also the --delete-delay option that is a better choice
than using --delete-after.
Incremental recursion can be disabled using the
--no-inc-recursive option or its shorter --no-i-r
alias.
-R, --relative
Use relative paths. This means that the full path names
specified on the command line are sent to the server
rather than just the last parts of the filenames. This
is particularly useful when you want to send several
different directories at the same time. For example, if
you used this command:
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rsync -av /foo/bar/baz.c remote:/tmp/
... this would create a file named baz.c in /tmp/ on
the remote machine. If instead you used
rsync -avR /foo/bar/baz.c remote:/tmp/
then a file named /tmp/foo/bar/baz.c would be created
on the remote machine, preserving its full path. These
extra path elements are called "implied directories"
(i.e. the "foo" and the "foo/bar" directories in the
above example).
Beginning with rsync 3.0.0, rsync always sends these
implied directories as real directories in the file
list, even if a path element is really a symlink on the
sending side. This prevents some really unexpected
behaviors when copying the full path of a file that you
didn't realize had a symlink in its path. If you want
to duplicate a server-side symlink, include both the
symlink via its path, and referent directory via its
real path. If you're dealing with an older rsync on
the sending side, you may need to use the
--no-implied-dirs option.
It is also possible to limit the amount of path infor-
mation that is sent as implied directories for each
path you specify. With a modern rsync on the sending
side (beginning with 2.6.7), you can insert a dot and a
slash into the source path, like this:
rsync -avR /foo/./bar/baz.c remote:/tmp/
That would create /tmp/bar/baz.c on the remote machine.
(Note that the dot must be followed by a slash, so
"/foo/." would not be abbreviated.) For older rsync
versions, you would need to use a chdir to limit the
source path. For example, when pushing files:
(cd /foo; rsync -avR bar/baz.c remote:/tmp/)
(Note that the parens put the two commands into a
sub-shell, so that the "cd" command doesn't remain in
effect for future commands.) If you're pulling files
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from an older rsync, use this idiom (but only for a
non-daemon transfer):
rsync -avR --rsync-path="cd /foo; rsync" \
remote:bar/baz.c /tmp/
--no-implied-dirs
This option affects the default behavior of the --rela-
tive option. When it is specified, the attributes of
the implied directories from the source names are not
included in the transfer. This means that the corre-
sponding path elements on the destination system are
left unchanged if they exist, and any missing implied
directories are created with default attributes. This
even allows these implied path elements to have big
differences, such as being a symlink to a directory on
the receiving side.
For instance, if a command-line arg or a files-from
entry told rsync to transfer the file "path/foo/file",
the directories "path" and "path/foo" are implied when
--relative is used. If "path/foo" is a symlink to
"bar" on the destination system, the receiving rsync
would ordinarily delete "path/foo", recreate it as a
directory, and receive the file into the new directory.
With --no-implied-dirs, the receiving rsync updates
"path/foo/file" using the existing path elements, which
means that the file ends up being created in
"path/bar". Another way to accomplish this link
preservation is to use the --keep-dirlinks option
(which will also affect symlinks to directories in the
rest of the transfer).
When pulling files from an rsync older than 3.0.0, you
may need to use this option if the sending side has a
symlink in the path you request and you wish the
implied directories to be transferred as normal direc-
tories.
-b, --backup
With this option, preexisting destination files are
renamed as each file is transferred or deleted. You
can control where the backup file goes and what (if
any) suffix gets appended using the --backup-dir and
--suffix options.
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Note that if you don't specify --backup-dir, (1) the
--omit-dir-times option will be implied, and (2) if
--delete is also in effect (without --delete-excluded),
rsync will add a "protect" filter-rule for the backup
suffix to the end of all your existing excludes (e.g.
-f "P *~"). This will prevent previously backed-up
files from being deleted. Note that if you are supply-
ing your own filter rules, you may need to manually
insert your own exclude/protect rule somewhere higher
up in the list so that it has a high enough priority to
be effective (e.g., if your rules specify a trailing
inclusion/exclusion of '*', the auto-added rule would
never be reached).
--backup-dir=DIR
In combination with the --backup option, this tells
rsync to store all backups in the specified directory
on the receiving side. This can be used for incremen-
tal backups. You can additionally specify a backup
suffix using the --suffix option (otherwise the files
backed up in the specified directory will keep their
original filenames).
Note that if you specify a relative path, the backup
directory will be relative to the destination direc-
tory, so you probably want to specify either an abso-
lute path or a path that starts with "../". If an
rsync daemon is the receiver, the backup dir cannot go
outside the module's path hierarchy, so take extra care
not to delete it or copy into it.
--suffix=SUFFIX
This option allows you to override the default backup
suffix used with the --backup (-b) option. The default
suffix is a ~ if no --backup-dir was specified, other-
wise it is an empty string.
-u, --update
This forces rsync to skip any files which exist on the
destination and have a modified time that is newer than
the source file. (If an existing destination file has
a modification time equal to the source file's, it will
be updated if the sizes are different.)
Note that this does not affect the copying of symlinks
or other special files. Also, a difference of file
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format between the sender and receiver is always con-
sidered to be important enough for an update, no matter
what date is on the objects. In other words, if the
source has a directory where the destination has a
file, the transfer would occur regardless of the time-
stamps.
This option is a transfer rule, not an exclude, so it
doesn't affect the data that goes into the file-lists,
and thus it doesn't affect deletions. It just limits
the files that the receiver requests to be transferred.
--inplace
This option changes how rsync transfers a file when its
data needs to be updated: instead of the default method
of creating a new copy of the file and moving it into
place when it is complete, rsync instead writes the
updated data directly to the destination file.
This has several effects:
o Hard links are not broken. This means the new
data will be visible through other hard links to
the destination file. Moreover, attempts to copy
differing source files onto a multiply-linked des-
tination file will result in a "tug of war" with
the destination data changing back and forth.
o In-use binaries cannot be updated (either the OS
will prevent this from happening, or binaries that
attempt to swap-in their data will misbehave or
crash).
o The file's data will be in an inconsistent state
during the transfer and will be left that way if
the transfer is interrupted or if an update fails.
o A file that rsync cannot write to cannot be
updated. While a super user can update any file, a
normal user needs to be granted write permission
for the open of the file for writing to be suc-
cessful.
o The efficiency of rsync's delta-transfer algorithm
may be reduced if some data in the destination
file is overwritten before it can be copied to a
position later in the file. This does not apply
if you use --backup, since rsync is smart enough
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to use the backup file as the basis file for the
transfer.
WARNING: you should not use this option to update files
that are being accessed by others, so be careful when
choosing to use this for a copy.
This option is useful for transferring large files with
block-based changes or appended data, and also on sys-
tems that are disk bound, not network bound. It can
also help keep a copy-on-write filesystem snapshot from
diverging the entire contents of a file that only has
minor changes.
The option implies --partial (since an interrupted
transfer does not delete the file), but conflicts with
--partial-dir and --delay-updates. Prior to rsync
2.6.4 --inplace was also incompatible with --com-
pare-dest and --link-dest.
--append
This causes rsync to update a file by appending data
onto the end of the file, which presumes that the data
that already exists on the receiving side is identical
with the start of the file on the sending side. If a
file needs to be transferred and its size on the
receiver is the same or longer than the size on the
sender, the file is skipped. This does not interfere
with the updating of a file's non-content attributes
(e.g. permissions, ownership, etc.) when the file does
not need to be transferred, nor does it affect the
updating of any non-regular files. Implies --inplace,
but does not conflict with --sparse (since it is always
extending a file's length).
--append-verify
This works just like the --append option, but the
existing data on the receiving side is included in the
full-file checksum verification step, which will cause
a file to be resent if the final verification step
fails (rsync uses a normal, non-appending --inplace
transfer for the resend).
Note: prior to rsync 3.0.0, the --append option worked
like --append-verify, so if you are interacting with an
older rsync (or the transfer is using a protocol prior
to 30), specifying either append option will initiate
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an --append-verify transfer.
-d, --dirs
Tell the sending side to include any directories that
are encountered. Unlike --recursive, a directory's
contents are not copied unless the directory name spec-
ified is "." or ends with a trailing slash (e.g. ".",
"dir/.", "dir/", etc.). Without this option or the
--recursive option, rsync will skip all directories it
encounters (and output a message to that effect for
each one). If you specify both --dirs and --recursive,
--recursive takes precedence.
The --dirs option is implied by the --files-from option
or the --list-only option (including an implied
--list-only usage) if --recursive wasn't specified (so
that directories are seen in the listing). Specify
--no-dirs (or --no-d) if you want to turn this off.
There is also a backward-compatibility helper option,
--old-dirs (or --old-d) that tells rsync to use a hack
of "-r --exclude='/*/*'" to get an older rsync to list
a single directory without recursing.
-l, --links
When symlinks are encountered, recreate the symlink on
the destination.
-L, --copy-links
When symlinks are encountered, the item that they point
to (the referent) is copied, rather than the symlink.
In older versions of rsync, this option also had the
side-effect of telling the receiving side to follow
symlinks, such as symlinks to directories. In a modern
rsync such as this one, you'll need to specify
--keep-dirlinks (-K) to get this extra behavior. The
only exception is when sending files to an rsync that
is too old to understand -K -- in that case, the -L
option will still have the side-effect of -K on that
older receiving rsync.
--copy-unsafe-links
This tells rsync to copy the referent of symbolic links
that point outside the copied tree. Absolute symlinks
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are also treated like ordinary files, and so are any
symlinks in the source path itself when --relative is
used. This option has no additional effect if
--copy-links was also specified.
--safe-links
This tells rsync to ignore any symbolic links which
point outside the copied tree. All absolute symlinks
are also ignored. Using this option in conjunction with
--relative may give unexpected results.
--munge-links
This option tells rsync to (1) modify all symlinks on
the receiving side in a way that makes them unusable
but recoverable (see below), or (2) to unmunge symlinks
on the sending side that had been stored in a munged
state. This is useful if you don't quite trust the
source of the data to not try to slip in a symlink to a
unexpected place.
The way rsync disables the use of symlinks is to prefix
each one with the string "/rsyncd-munged/". This pre-
vents the links from being used as long as that direc-
tory does not exist. When this option is enabled,
rsync will refuse to run if that path is a directory or
a symlink to a directory.
The option only affects the client side of the trans-
fer, so if you need it to affect the server, specify it
via --remote-option. (Note that in a local transfer,
the client side is the sender.)
This option has no affect on a daemon, since the daemon
configures whether it wants munged symlinks via its
"munge symlinks" parameter. See also the "munge-sym-
links" perl script in the support directory of the
source code.
-k, --copy-dirlinks
This option causes the sending side to treat a symlink
to a directory as though it were a real directory.
This is useful if you don't want symlinks to non-direc-
tories to be affected, as they would be using
--copy-links.
Without this option, if the sending side has replaced a
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directory with a symlink to a directory, the receiving
side will delete anything that is in the way of the new
symlink, including a directory hierarchy (as long as
--force or --delete is in effect).
See also --keep-dirlinks for an analogous option for
the receiving side.
--copy-dirlinks applies to all symlinks to directories
in the source. If you want to follow only a few speci-
fied symlinks, a trick you can use is to pass them as
additional source args with a trailing slash, using
--relative to make the paths match up right. For exam-
ple:
rsync -r --relative src/./ src/./follow-me/ dest/
This works because rsync calls lstat(2) on the source
arg as given, and the trailing slash makes lstat(2)
follow the symlink, giving rise to a directory in the
file-list which overrides the symlink found during the
scan of "src/./".
-K, --keep-dirlinks
This option causes the receiving side to treat a sym-
link to a directory as though it were a real directory,
but only if it matches a real directory from the
sender. Without this option, the receiver's symlink
would be deleted and replaced with a real directory.
For example, suppose you transfer a directory "foo"
that contains a file "file", but "foo" is a symlink to
directory "bar" on the receiver. Without
--keep-dirlinks, the receiver deletes symlink "foo",
recreates it as a directory, and receives the file into
the new directory. With --keep-dirlinks, the receiver
keeps the symlink and "file" ends up in "bar".
One note of caution: if you use --keep-dirlinks, you
must trust all the symlinks in the copy! If it is pos-
sible for an untrusted user to create their own symlink
to any directory, the user could then (on a subsequent
copy) replace the symlink with a real directory and
affect the content of whatever directory the symlink
references. For backup copies, you are better off
using something like a bind mount instead of a symlink
to modify your receiving hierarchy.
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See also --copy-dirlinks for an analogous option for
the sending side.
-H, --hard-links
This tells rsync to look for hard-linked files in the
source and link together the corresponding files on the
destination. Without this option, hard-linked files in
the source are treated as though they were separate
files.
This option does NOT necessarily ensure that the pat-
tern of hard links on the destination exactly matches
that on the source. Cases in which the destination may
end up with extra hard links include the following:
o If the destination contains extraneous hard-links
(more linking than what is present in the source
file list), the copying algorithm will not break
them explicitly. However, if one or more of the
paths have content differences, the normal
file-update process will break those extra links
(unless you are using the --inplace option).
o If you specify a --link-dest directory that con-
tains hard links, the linking of the destination
files against the --link-dest files can cause some
paths in the destination to become linked together
due to the --link-dest associations.
Note that rsync can only detect hard links between
files that are inside the transfer set. If rsync
updates a file that has extra hard-link connections to
files outside the transfer, that linkage will be bro-
ken. If you are tempted to use the --inplace option to
avoid this breakage, be very careful that you know how
your files are being updated so that you are certain
that no unintended changes happen due to lingering hard
links (and see the --inplace option for more caveats).
If incremental recursion is active (see --recursive),
rsync may transfer a missing hard-linked file before it
finds that another link for that contents exists else-
where in the hierarchy. This does not affect the accu-
racy of the transfer (i.e. which files are hard-linked
together), just its efficiency (i.e. copying the data
for a new, early copy of a hard-linked file that could
have been found later in the transfer in another member
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of the hard-linked set of files). One way to avoid
this inefficiency is to disable incremental recursion
using the --no-inc-recursive option.
-p, --perms
This option causes the receiving rsync to set the des-
tination permissions to be the same as the source per-
missions. (See also the --chmod option for a way to
modify what rsync considers to be the source permis-
sions.)
When this option is off, permissions are set as fol-
lows:
o Existing files (including updated files) retain
their existing permissions, though the --exe-
cutability option might change just the execute
permission for the file.
o New files get their "normal" permission bits set
to the source file's permissions masked with the
receiving directory's default permissions (either
the receiving process's umask, or the permissions
specified via the destination directory's default
ACL), and their special permission bits disabled
except in the case where a new directory inherits
a setgid bit from its parent directory.
Thus, when --perms and --executability are both dis-
abled, rsync's behavior is the same as that of other
file-copy utilities, such as cp(1) and tar(1).
In summary: to give destination files (both old and
new) the source permissions, use --perms. To give new
files the destination-default permissions (while leav-
ing existing files unchanged), make sure that the
--perms option is off and use --chmod=ugo=rwX (which
ensures that all non-masked bits get enabled). If
you'd care to make this latter behavior easier to type,
you could define a popt alias for it, such as putting
this line in the file ~/.popt (the following defines
the -Z option, and includes --no-g to use the default
group of the destination dir):
rsync alias -Z --no-p --no-g --chmod=ugo=rwX
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You could then use this new option in a command such as
this one:
rsync -avZ src/ dest/
(Caveat: make sure that -a does not follow -Z, or it
will re-enable the two "--no-*" options mentioned
above.)
The preservation of the destination's setgid bit on
newly-created directories when --perms is off was added
in rsync 2.6.7. Older rsync versions erroneously pre-
served the three special permission bits for newly-cre-
ated files when --perms was off, while overriding the
destination's setgid bit setting on a newly-created
directory. Default ACL observance was added to the ACL
patch for rsync 2.6.7, so older (or non-ACL-enabled)
rsyncs use the umask even if default ACLs are present.
(Keep in mind that it is the version of the receiving
rsync that affects these behaviors.)
-E, --executability
This option causes rsync to preserve the executability
(or non-executability) of regular files when --perms is
not enabled. A regular file is considered to be exe-
cutable if at least one executability differs from that
of the corresponding source file, rsync modifies the
destination file's permissions as follows:
o To make a file non-executable, rsync turns off all
its 'x' permissions.
o To make a file executable, rsync turns on each 'x'
permission that has a corresponding 'r' permission
enabled.
If --perms is enabled, this option is ignored.
-A, --acls
This option causes rsync to update the destination ACLs
to be the same as the source ACLs. The option also
implies --perms.
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The source and destination systems must have compatible
ACL entries for this option to work properly. See the
--fake-super option for a way to backup and restore
ACLs that are not compatible.
-X, --xattrs
This option causes rsync to update the destination
extended attributes to be the same as the source ones.
For systems that support extended-attribute namespaces,
a copy being done by a super-user copies all namespaces
except system.*. A normal user only copies the user.*
namespace. To be able to backup and restore non-user
namespaces as a normal user, see the --fake-super
option.
Note that this option does not copy rsyncs special
xattr values (e.g. those used by --fake-super) unless
you repeat the option (e.g. -XX). This "copy all xat-
trs" mode cannot be used with --fake-super.
--chmod
This option tells rsync to apply one or more comma-sep-
arated "chmod" modes to the permission of the files in
the transfer. The resulting value is treated as though
it were the permissions that the sending side supplied
for the file, which means that this option can seem to
have no effect on existing files if --perms is not
enabled.
In addition to the normal parsing rules specified in
the chmod(1) manpage, you can specify an item that
should only apply to a directory by prefixing it with a
'D', or specify an item that should only apply to a
file by prefixing it with a 'F'. For example, the fol-
lowing will ensure that all directories get marked
set-gid, that no files are other-writable, that both
are user-writable and group-writable, and that both
have consistent executability across all bits:
--chmod=Dg+s,ug+w,Fo-w,+X
Using octal mode numbers is also allowed:
--chmod=D2775,F664
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It is also legal to specify multiple --chmod options,
as each additional option is just appended to the list
of changes to make.
See the --perms and --executability options for how the
resulting permission value can be applied to the files
in the transfer.
-o, --owner
This option causes rsync to set the owner of the desti-
nation file to be the same as the source file, but only
if the receiving rsync is being run as the super-user
(see also the --super and --fake-super options). With-
out this option, the owner of new and/or transferred
files are set to the invoking user on the receiving
side.
The preservation of ownership will associate matching
names by default, but may fall back to using the ID
number in some circumstances (see also the
--numeric-ids option for a full discussion).
-g, --group
This option causes rsync to set the group of the desti-
nation file to be the same as the source file. If the
receiving program is not running as the super-user (or
if --no-super was specified), only groups that the
invoking user on the receiving side is a member of will
be preserved. Without this option, the group is set to
the default group of the invoking user on the receiving
side.
The preservation of group information will associate
matching names by default, but may fall back to using
the ID number in some circumstances (see also the
--numeric-ids option for a full discussion).
--devices
This option causes rsync to transfer character and
block device files to the remote system to recreate
these devices. This option has no effect if the
receiving rsync is not run as the super-user (see also
the --super and --fake-super options).
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--specials
This option causes rsync to transfer special files such
as named sockets and fifos.
-D The -D option is equivalent to --devices --specials.
-t, --times
This tells rsync to transfer modification times along
with the files and update them on the remote system.
Note that if this option is not used, the optimization
that excludes files that have not been modified cannot
be effective; in other words, a missing -t or -a will
cause the next transfer to behave as if it used -I,
causing all files to be updated (though rsync's
delta-transfer algorithm will make the update fairly
efficient if the files haven't actually changed, you're
much better off using -t).
-O, --omit-dir-times
This tells rsync to omit directories when it is pre-
serving modification times (see --times). If NFS is
sharing the directories on the receiving side, it is a
good idea to use -O. This option is inferred if you
use --backup without --backup-dir.
-J, --omit-link-times
This tells rsync to omit symlinks when it is preserving
modification times (see --times).
--super
This tells the receiving side to attempt super-user
activities even if the receiving rsync wasn't run by
the super-user. These activities include: preserving
users via the --owner option, preserving all groups
(not just the current user's groups) via the --groups
option, and copying devices via the --devices option.
This is useful for systems that allow such activities
without being the super-user, and also for ensuring
that you will get errors if the receiving side isn't
being run as the super-user. To turn off super-user
activities, the super-user can use --no-super.
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--fake-super
When this option is enabled, rsync simulates super-user
activities by saving/restoring the privileged
attributes via special extended attributes that are
attached to each file (as needed). This includes the
file's owner and group (if it is not the default), the
file's device info (device & special files are created
as empty text files), and any permission bits that we
won't allow to be set on the real file (e.g. the real
file gets u-s,g-s,o-t for safety) or that would limit
the owner's access (since the real super-user can
always access/change a file, the files we create can
always be accessed/changed by the creating user). This
option also handles ACLs (if --acls was specified) and
non-user extended attributes (if --xattrs was speci-
fied).
This is a good way to backup data without using a
super-user, and to store ACLs from incompatible sys-
tems.
The --fake-super option only affects the side where the
option is used. To affect the remote side of a
remote-shell connection, use the --remote-option (-M)
option:
rsync -av -M--fake-super /src/ host:/dest/
For a local copy, this option affects both the source
and the destination. If you wish a local copy to
enable this option just for the destination files,
specify -M--fake-super. If you wish a local copy to
enable this option just for the source files, combine
--fake-super with -M--super.
This option is overridden by both --super and
--no-super.
See also the "fake super" setting in the daemon's
rsyncd.conf file.
-S, --sparse
Try to handle sparse files efficiently so they take up
less space on the destination. Conflicts with
--inplace because it's not possible to overwrite data
in a sparse fashion.
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--preallocate
This tells the receiver to allocate each destination
file to its eventual size before writing data to the
file. Rsync will only use the real filesystem-level
preallocation support provided by Linux's fallocate(2)
system call or Cygwin's posix_fallocate(3), not the
slow glibc implementation that writes a zero byte into
each block.
Without this option, larger files may not be entirely
contiguous on the filesystem, but with this option
rsync will probably copy more slowly. If the destina-
tion is not an extent-supporting filesystem (such as
ext4, xfs, NTFS, etc.), this option may have no posi-
tive effect at all.
-n, --dry-run
This makes rsync perform a trial run that doesn't make
any changes (and produces mostly the same output as a
real run). It is most commonly used in combination
with the -v, --verbose and/or -i, --itemize-changes
options to see what an rsync command is going to do
before one actually runs it.
The output of --itemize-changes is supposed to be
exactly the same on a dry run and a subsequent real run
(barring intentional trickery and system call fail-
ures); if it isn't, that's a bug. Other output should
be mostly unchanged, but may differ in some areas.
Notably, a dry run does not send the actual data for
file transfers, so --progress has no effect, the "bytes
sent", "bytes received", "literal data", and "matched
data" statistics are too small, and the "speedup" value
is equivalent to a run where no file transfers were
needed.
-W, --whole-file
With this option rsync's delta-transfer algorithm is
not used and the whole file is sent as-is instead. The
transfer may be faster if this option is used when the
bandwidth between the source and destination machines
is higher than the bandwidth to disk (especially when
the "disk" is actually a networked filesystem). This
is the default when both the source and destination are
specified as local paths, but only if no batch-writing
option is in effect.
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-x, --one-file-system
This tells rsync to avoid crossing a filesystem bound-
ary when recursing. This does not limit the user's
ability to specify items to copy from multiple filesys-
tems, just rsync's recursion through the hierarchy of
each directory that the user specified, and also the
analogous recursion on the receiving side during dele-
tion. Also keep in mind that rsync treats a "bind"
mount to the same device as being on the same filesys-
tem.
If this option is repeated, rsync omits all mount-point
directories from the copy. Otherwise, it includes an
empty directory at each mount-point it encounters
(using the attributes of the mounted directory because
those of the underlying mount-point directory are inac-
cessible).
If rsync has been told to collapse symlinks (via
--copy-links or --copy-unsafe-links), a symlink to a
directory on another device is treated like a
mount-point. Symlinks to non-directories are unaf-
fected by this option.
--existing, --ignore-non-existing
This tells rsync to skip creating files (including
directories) that do not exist yet on the destination.
If this option is combined with the --ignore-existing
option, no files will be updated (which can be useful
if all you want to do is delete extraneous files).
This option is a transfer rule, not an exclude, so it
doesn't affect the data that goes into the file-lists,
and thus it doesn't affect deletions. It just limits
the files that the receiver requests to be transferred.
--ignore-existing
This tells rsync to skip updating files that already
exist on the destination (this does not ignore existing
directories, or nothing would get done). See also
--existing.
This option is a transfer rule, not an exclude, so it
doesn't affect the data that goes into the file-lists,
and thus it doesn't affect deletions. It just limits
the files that the receiver requests to be transferred.
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This option can be useful for those doing backups using
the --link-dest option when they need to continue a
backup run that got interrupted. Since a --link-dest
run is copied into a new directory hierarchy (when it
is used properly), using --ignore existing will ensure
that the already-handled files don't get tweaked (which
avoids a change in permissions on the hard-linked
files). This does mean that this option is only look-
ing at the existing files in the destination hierarchy
itself.
--remove-source-files
This tells rsync to remove from the sending side the
files (meaning non-directories) that are a part of the
transfer and have been successfully duplicated on the
receiving side.
Note that you should only use this option on source
files that are quiescent. If you are using this to
move files that show up in a particular directory over
to another host, make sure that the finished files get
renamed into the source directory, not directly written
into it, so that rsync can't possibly transfer a file
that is not yet fully written. If you can't first
write the files into a different directory, you should
use a naming idiom that lets rsync avoid transferring
files that are not yet finished (e.g. name the file
"foo.new" when it is written, rename it to "foo" when
it is done, and then use the option --exclude='*.new'
for the rsync transfer).
Starting with 3.1.0, rsync will skip the sender-side
removal (and output an error) if the file's size or
modify time has not stayed unchanged.
--delete
This tells rsync to delete extraneous files from the
receiving side (ones that aren't on the sending side),
but only for the directories that are being synchro-
nized. You must have asked rsync to send the whole
directory (e.g. "dir" or "dir/") without using a wild-
card for the directory's contents (e.g. "dir/*") since
the wildcard is expanded by the shell and rsync thus
gets a request to transfer individual files, not the
files' parent directory. Files that are excluded from
the transfer are also excluded from being deleted
unless you use the --delete-excluded option or mark the
rules as only matching on the sending side (see the
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include/exclude modifiers in the FILTER RULES section).
Prior to rsync 2.6.7, this option would have no effect
unless --recursive was enabled. Beginning with 2.6.7,
deletions will also occur when --dirs (-d) is enabled,
but only for directories whose contents are being
copied.
This option can be dangerous if used incorrectly! It
is a very good idea to first try a run using the
--dry-run option (-n) to see what files are going to be
deleted.
If the sending side detects any I/O errors, then the
deletion of any files at the destination will be auto-
matically disabled. This is to prevent temporary
filesystem failures (such as NFS errors) on the sending
side from causing a massive deletion of files on the
destination. You can override this with the
--ignore-errors option.
The --delete option may be combined with one of the
--delete-WHEN options without conflict, as well as
--delete-excluded. However, if none of the
--delete-WHEN options are specified, rsync will choose
the --delete-during algorithm when talking to rsync
3.0.0 or newer, and the --delete-before algorithm when
talking to an older rsync. See also --delete-delay and
--delete-after.
--delete-before
Request that the file-deletions on the receiving side
be done before the transfer starts. See --delete
(which is implied) for more details on file-deletion.
Deleting before the transfer is helpful if the filesys-
tem is tight for space and removing extraneous files
would help to make the transfer possible. However, it
does introduce a delay before the start of the trans-
fer, and this delay might cause the transfer to timeout
(if --timeout was specified). It also forces rsync to
use the old, non-incremental recursion algorithm that
requires rsync to scan all the files in the transfer
into memory at once (see --recursive).
--delete-during, --del
Request that the file-deletions on the receiving side
be done incrementally as the transfer happens. The
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per-directory delete scan is done right before each
directory is checked for updates, so it behaves like a
more efficient --delete-before, including doing the
deletions prior to any per-directory filter files being
updated. This option was first added in rsync version
2.6.4. See --delete (which is implied) for more
details on file-deletion.
--delete-delay
Request that the file-deletions on the receiving side
be computed during the transfer (like --delete-during),
and then removed after the transfer completes. This is
useful when combined with --delay-updates and/or
--fuzzy, and is more efficient than using
--delete-after (but can behave differently, since
--delete-after computes the deletions in a separate
pass after all updates are done). If the number of
removed files overflows an internal buffer, a temporary
file will be created on the receiving side to hold the
names (it is removed while open, so you shouldn't see
it during the transfer). If the creation of the tempo-
rary file fails, rsync will try to fall back to using
--delete-after (which it cannot do if --recursive is
doing an incremental scan). See --delete (which is
implied) for more details on file-deletion.
--delete-after
Request that the file-deletions on the receiving side
be done after the transfer has completed. This is use-
ful if you are sending new per-directory merge files as
a part of the transfer and you want their exclusions to
take effect for the delete phase of the current trans-
fer. It also forces rsync to use the old, non-incre-
mental recursion algorithm that requires rsync to scan
all the files in the transfer into memory at once (see
--recursive). See --delete (which is implied) for more
details on file-deletion.
--delete-excluded
In addition to deleting the files on the receiving side
that are not on the sending side, this tells rsync to
also delete any files on the receiving side that are
excluded (see --exclude). See the FILTER RULES section
for a way to make individual exclusions behave this way
on the receiver, and for a way to protect files from
--delete-excluded. See --delete (which is implied) for
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more details on file-deletion.
--ignore-missing-args
When rsync is first processing the explicitly requested
source files (e.g. command-line arguments or
--files-from entries), it is normally an error if the
file cannot be found. This option suppresses that
error, and does not try to transfer the file. This
does not affect subsequent vanished-file errors if a
file was initially found to be present and later is no
longer there.
--delete-missing-args
This option takes the behavior of (the implied)
--ignore-missing-args option a step farther: each
missing arg will become a deletion request of the cor-
responding destination file on the receiving side
(should it exist). If the destination file is a
non-empty directory, it will only be successfully
deleted if --force or --delete are in effect. Other
than that, this option is independent of any other type
of delete processing.
The missing source files are represented by special
file-list entries which display as a "*missing" entry
in the --list-only output.
--ignore-errors
Tells --delete to go ahead and delete files even when
there are I/O errors.
--force
This option tells rsync to delete a non-empty directory
when it is to be replaced by a non-directory. This is
only relevant if deletions are not active (see --delete
for details).
Note for older rsync versions: --force used to still be
required when using --delete-after, and it used to be
non-functional unless the --recursive option was also
enabled.
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--max-delete=NUM
This tells rsync not to delete more than NUM files or
directories. If that limit is exceeded, all further
deletions are skipped through the end of the transfer.
At the end, rsync outputs a warning (including a count
of the skipped deletions) and exits with an error code
of 25 (unless some more important error condition also
occurred).
Beginning with version 3.0.0, you may specify
--max-delete=0 to be warned about any extraneous files
in the destination without removing any of them. Older
clients interpreted this as "unlimited", so if you
don't know what version the client is, you can use the
less obvious --max-delete=-1 as a backward-compatible
way to specify that no deletions be allowed (though
really old versions didn't warn when the limit was
exceeded).
--max-size=SIZE
This tells rsync to avoid transferring any file that is
larger than the specified SIZE. The SIZE value can be
suffixed with a string to indicate a size multiplier,
and may be a fractional value (e.g. "--max-size=1.5m").
This option is a transfer rule, not an exclude, so it
doesn't affect the data that goes into the file-lists,
and thus it doesn't affect deletions. It just limits
the files that the receiver requests to be transferred.
The suffixes are as follows: "K" (or "KiB") is a
kibibyte (1024), "M" (or "MiB") is a mebibyte
(1024*1024), and "G" (or "GiB") is a gibibyte
(1024*1024*1024). If you want the multiplier to be
1000 instead of 1024, use "KB", "MB", or "GB". (Note:
lower-case is also accepted for all values.) Finally,
if the suffix ends in either "+1" or "-1", the value
will be offset by one byte in the indicated direction.
Examples: --max-size=1.5mb-1 is 1499999 bytes, and
--max-size=2g+1 is 2147483649 bytes.
Note that rsync versions prior to 3.1.0 did not allow
--max-size=0.
--min-size=SIZE
This tells rsync to avoid transferring any file that is
smaller than the specified SIZE, which can help in not
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transferring small, junk files. See the --max-size
option for a description of SIZE and other information.
Note that rsync versions prior to 3.1.0 did not allow
--min-size=0.
-B, --block-size=BLOCKSIZE
This forces the block size used in rsync's delta-trans-
fer algorithm to a fixed value. It is normally
selected based on the size of each file being updated.
See the technical report for details.
-e, --rsh=COMMAND
This option allows you to choose an alternative remote
shell program to use for communication between the
local and remote copies of rsync. Typically, rsync is
configured to use ssh by default, but you may prefer to
use rsh on a local network.
If this option is used with [user@]host::module/path,
then the remote shell COMMAND will be used to run an
rsync daemon on the remote host, and all data will be
transmitted through that remote shell connection,
rather than through a direct socket connection to a
running rsync daemon on the remote host. See the sec-
tion "USING RSYNC-DAEMON FEATURES VIA A REMOTE-SHELL
CONNECTION" above.
Command-line arguments are permitted in COMMAND pro-
vided that COMMAND is presented to rsync as a single
argument. You must use spaces (not tabs or other
whitespace) to separate the command and args from each
other, and you can use single- and/or double-quotes to
preserve spaces in an argument (but not backslashes).
Note that doubling a single-quote inside a sin-
gle-quoted string gives you a single-quote; likewise
for double-quotes (though you need to pay attention to
which quotes your shell is parsing and which quotes
rsync is parsing). Some examples:
-e 'ssh -p 2234'
-e 'ssh -o "ProxyCommand nohup ssh firewall nc -w1
%h %p"'
(Note that ssh users can alternately customize
site-specific connect options in their .ssh/config
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file.)
You can also choose the remote shell program using the
RSYNC_RSH environment variable, which accepts the same
range of values as -e.
See also the --blocking-io option which is affected by
this option.
--rsync-path=PROGRAM
Use this to specify what program is to be run on the
remote machine to start-up rsync. Often used when
rsync is not in the default remote-shell's path (e.g.
--rsync-path=/usr/local/bin/rsync). Note that PROGRAM
is run with the help of a shell, so it can be any pro-
gram, script, or command sequence you'd care to run, so
long as it does not corrupt the standard-in & stan-
dard-out that rsync is using to communicate.
One tricky example is to set a different default direc-
tory on the remote machine for use with the --relative
option. For instance:
rsync -avR --rsync-path="cd /a/b && rsync" host:c/d
/e/
-M, --remote-option=OPTION
This option is used for more advanced situations where
you want certain effects to be limited to one side of
the transfer only. For instance, if you want to pass
--log-file=FILE and --fake-super to the remote system,
specify it like this:
rsync -av -M --log-file=foo -M--fake-super src/
dest/
If you want to have an option affect only the local
side of a transfer when it normally affects both sides,
send its negation to the remote side. Like this:
rsync -av -x -M--no-x src/ dest/
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Be cautious using this, as it is possible to toggle an
option that will cause rsync to have a different idea
about what data to expect next over the socket, and
that will make it fail in a cryptic fashion.
Note that it is best to use a separate --remote-option
for each option you want to pass. This makes your use-
age compatible with the --protect-args option. If that
option is off, any spaces in your remote options will
be split by the remote shell unless you take steps to
protect them.
When performing a local transfer, the "local" side is
the sender and the "remote" side is the receiver.
Note some versions of the popt option-parsing library
have a bug in them that prevents you from using an
adjacent arg with an equal in it next to a short option
letter (e.g. -M--log-file=/tmp/foo. If this bug
affects your version of popt, you can use the version
of popt that is included with rsync.
-C, --cvs-exclude
This is a useful shorthand for excluding a broad range
of files that you often don't want to transfer between
systems. It uses a similar algorithm to CVS to deter-
mine if a file should be ignored.
The exclude list is initialized to exclude the follow-
ing items (these initial items are marked as perishable
-- see the FILTER RULES section):
RCS SCCS CVS CVS.adm RCSLOG cvslog.* tags TAGS
.make.state .nse_depinfo *~ #* .#* ,* _$* *$ *.old
*.bak *.BAK *.orig *.rej .del-* *.a *.olb *.o
*.obj *.so *.exe *.Z *.elc *.ln core .svn/ .git/
.hg/ .bzr/
then, files listed in a $HOME/.cvsignore are added to
the list and any files listed in the CVSIGNORE environ-
ment variable (all cvsignore names are delimited by
whitespace).
Finally, any file is ignored if it is in the same
directory as a .cvsignore file and matches one of the
patterns listed therein. Unlike rsync's filter/exclude
files, these patterns are split on whitespace. See the
cvs(1) manual for more information.
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If you're combining -C with your own --filter rules,
you should note that these CVS excludes are appended at
the end of your own rules, regardless of where the -C
was placed on the command-line. This makes them a
lower priority than any rules you specified explicitly.
If you want to control where these CVS excludes get
inserted into your filter rules, you should omit the -C
as a command-line option and use a combination of
--filter=:C and --filter=-C (either on your com-
mand-line or by putting the ":C" and "-C" rules into a
filter file with your other rules). The first option
turns on the per-directory scanning for the .cvsignore
file. The second option does a one-time import of the
CVS excludes mentioned above.
-f, --filter=RULE
This option allows you to add rules to selectively
exclude certain files from the list of files to be
transferred. This is most useful in combination with a
recursive transfer.
You may use as many --filter options on the command
line as you like to build up the list of files to
exclude. If the filter contains whitespace, be sure to
quote it so that the shell gives the rule to rsync as a
single argument. The text below also mentions that you
can use an underscore to replace the space that sepa-
rates a rule from its arg.
See the FILTER RULES section for detailed information
on this option.
-F The -F option is a shorthand for adding two --filter
rules to your command. The first time it is used is a
shorthand for this rule:
--filter='dir-merge /.rsync-filter'
This tells rsync to look for per-directory .rsync-fil-
ter files that have been sprinkled through the hierar-
chy and use their rules to filter the files in the
transfer. If -F is repeated, it is a shorthand for
this rule:
--filter='exclude .rsync-filter'
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This filters out the .rsync-filter files themselves
from the transfer.
See the FILTER RULES section for detailed information
on how these options work.
--exclude=PATTERN
This option is a simplified form of the --filter option
that defaults to an exclude rule and does not allow the
full rule-parsing syntax of normal filter rules.
See the FILTER RULES section for detailed information
on this option.
--exclude-from=FILE
This option is related to the --exclude option, but it
specifies a FILE that contains exclude patterns (one
per line). Blank lines in the file and lines starting
with ';' or '#' are ignored. If FILE is -, the list
will be read from standard input.
--include=PATTERN
This option is a simplified form of the --filter option
that defaults to an include rule and does not allow the
full rule-parsing syntax of normal filter rules.
See the FILTER RULES section for detailed information
on this option.
--include-from=FILE
This option is related to the --include option, but it
specifies a FILE that contains include patterns (one
per line). Blank lines in the file and lines starting
with ';' or '#' are ignored. If FILE is -, the list
will be read from standard input.
--files-from=FILE
Using this option allows you to specify the exact list
of files to transfer (as read from the specified FILE
or - for standard input). It also tweaks the default
behavior of rsync to make transferring just the speci-
fied files and directories easier:
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o The --relative (-R) option is implied, which pre-
serves the path information that is specified for
each item in the file (use --no-relative or --no-R
if you want to turn that off).
o The --dirs (-d) option is implied, which will cre-
ate directories specified in the list on the des-
tination rather than noisily skipping them (use
--no-dirs or --no-d if you want to turn that off).
o The --archive (-a) option's behavior does not
imply --recursive (-r), so specify it explicitly,
if you want it.
o These side-effects change the default state of
rsync, so the position of the --files-from option
on the command-line has no bearing on how other
options are parsed (e.g. -a works the same before
or after --files-from, as does --no-R and all
other options).
The filenames that are read from the FILE are all rela-
tive to the source dir -- any leading slashes are
removed and no ".." references are allowed to go higher
than the source dir. For example, take this command:
rsync -a --files-from=/tmp/foo /usr remote:/backup
If /tmp/foo contains the string "bin" (or even "/bin"),
the /usr/bin directory will be created as /backup/bin
on the remote host. If it contains "bin/" (note the
trailing slash), the immediate contents of the direc-
tory would also be sent (without needing to be explic-
itly mentioned in the file -- this began in version
2.6.4). In both cases, if the -r option was enabled,
that dir's entire hierarchy would also be transferred
(keep in mind that -r needs to be specified explicitly
with --files-from, since it is not implied by -a).
Also note that the effect of the (enabled by default)
--relative option is to duplicate only the path info
that is read from the file -- it does not force the
duplication of the source-spec path (/usr in this
case).
In addition, the --files-from file can be read from the
remote host instead of the local host if you specify a
"host:" in front of the file (the host must match one
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end of the transfer). As a short-cut, you can specify
just a prefix of ":" to mean "use the remote end of the
transfer". For example:
rsync -a --files-from=:/path/file-list src:/
/tmp/copy
This would copy all the files specified in the
/path/file-list file that was located on the remote
"src" host.
If the --iconv and --protect-args options are specified
and the --files-from filenames are being sent from one
host to another, the filenames will be translated from
the sending host's charset to the receiving host's
charset.
NOTE: sorting the list of files in the --files-from
input helps rsync to be more efficient, as it will
avoid re-visiting the path elements that are shared
between adjacent entries. If the input is not sorted,
some path elements (implied directories) may end up
being scanned multiple times, and rsync will eventually
unduplicate them after they get turned into file-list
elements.
-0, --from0
This tells rsync that the rules/filenames it reads from
a file are terminated by a null ('\0') character, not a
NL, CR, or CR+LF. This affects --exclude-from,
--include-from, --files-from, and any merged files
specified in a --filter rule. It does not affect
--cvs-exclude (since all names read from a .cvsignore
file are split on whitespace).
-s, --protect-args
This option sends all filenames and most options to the
remote rsync without allowing the remote shell to
interpret them. This means that spaces are not split
in names, and any non-wildcard special characters are
not translated (such as ~, $, ;, &, etc.). Wildcards
are expanded on the remote host by rsync (instead of
the shell doing it).
If you use this option with --iconv, the args related
to the remote side will also be translated from the
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local to the remote character-set. The translation
happens before wild-cards are expanded. See also the
--files-from option.
You may also control this option via the RSYNC_PRO-
TECT_ARGS environment variable. If this variable has a
non-zero value, this option will be enabled by default,
otherwise it will be disabled by default. Either state
is overridden by a manually specified positive or nega-
tive version of this option (note that --no-s and
--no-protect-args are the negative versions). Since
this option was first introduced in 3.0.0, you'll need
to make sure it's disabled if you ever need to interact
with a remote rsync that is older than that.
Rsync can also be configured (at build time) to have
this option enabled by default (with is overridden by
both the environment and the command-line). This
option will eventually become a new default setting at
some as-yet-undetermined point in the future.
-T, --temp-dir=DIR
This option instructs rsync to use DIR as a scratch
directory when creating temporary copies of the files
transferred on the receiving side. The default behav-
ior is to create each temporary file in the same direc-
tory as the associated destination file.
This option is most often used when the receiving disk
partition does not have enough free space to hold a
copy of the largest file in the transfer. In this case
(i.e. when the scratch directory is on a different disk
partition), rsync will not be able to rename each
received temporary file over the top of the associated
destination file, but instead must copy it into place.
Rsync does this by copying the file over the top of the
destination file, which means that the destination file
will contain truncated data during this copy. If this
were not done this way (even if the destination file
were first removed, the data locally copied to a tempo-
rary file in the destination directory, and then
renamed into place) it would be possible for the old
file to continue taking up disk space (if someone had
it open), and thus there might not be enough room to
fit the new version on the disk at the same time.
If you are using this option for reasons other than a
shortage of disk space, you may wish to combine it with
the --delay-updates option, which will ensure that all
copied files get put into subdirectories in the
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destination hierarchy, awaiting the end of the trans-
fer. If you don't have enough room to duplicate all
the arriving files on the destination partition,
another way to tell rsync that you aren't overly con-
cerned about disk space is to use the --partial-dir
option with a relative path; because this tells rsync
that it is OK to stash off a copy of a single file in a
subdir in the destination hierarchy, rsync will use the
partial-dir as a staging area to bring over the copied
file, and then rename it into place from there. (Speci-
fying a --partial-dir with an absolute path does not
have this side-effect.)
-y, --fuzzy
This option tells rsync that it should look for a basis
file for any destination file that is missing. The
current algorithm looks in the same directory as the
destination file for either a file that has an identi-
cal size and modified-time, or a similarly-named file.
If found, rsync uses the fuzzy basis file to try to
speed up the transfer.
If the option is repeated, the fuzzy scan will also be
done in any matching alternate destination directories
that are specified via --compare-dest, --copy-dest, or
--link-dest.
Note that the use of the --delete option might get rid
of any potential fuzzy-match files, so either use
--delete-after or specify some filename exclusions if
you need to prevent this.
--compare-dest=DIR
This option instructs rsync to use DIR on the destina-
tion machine as an additional hierarchy to compare des-
tination files against doing transfers (if the files
are missing in the destination directory). If a file
is found in DIR that is identical to the sender's file,
the file will NOT be transferred to the destination
directory. This is useful for creating a sparse backup
of just files that have changed from an earlier backup.
This option is typically used to copy into an empty (or
newly created) directory.
Beginning in version 2.6.4, multiple --compare-dest
directories may be provided, which will cause rsync to
search the list in the order specified for an exact
match. If a match is found that differs only in
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attributes, a local copy is made and the attributes
updated. If a match is not found, a basis file from
one of the DIRs will be selected to try to speed up the
transfer.
If DIR is a relative path, it is relative to the desti-
nation directory. See also --copy-dest and
--link-dest.
NOTE: beginning with version 3.1.0, rsync will remove a
file from a non-empty destination hierarchy if an exact
match is found in one of the compare-dest hierarchies
(making the end result more closely match a fresh
copy).
--copy-dest=DIR
This option behaves like --compare-dest, but rsync will
also copy unchanged files found in DIR to the destina-
tion directory using a local copy. This is useful for
doing transfers to a new destination while leaving
existing files intact, and then doing a flash-cutover
when all files have been successfully transferred.
Multiple --copy-dest directories may be provided, which
will cause rsync to search the list in the order speci-
fied for an unchanged file. If a match is not found, a
basis file from one of the DIRs will be selected to try
to speed up the transfer.
If DIR is a relative path, it is relative to the desti-
nation directory. See also --compare-dest and
--link-dest.
--link-dest=DIR
This option behaves like --copy-dest, but unchanged
files are hard linked from DIR to the destination
directory. The files must be identical in all pre-
served attributes (e.g. permissions, possibly owner-
ship) in order for the files to be linked together. An
example:
rsync -av --link-dest=$PWD/prior_dir host:src_dir/
new_dir/
If file's aren't linking, double-check their
attributes. Also check if some attributes are getting
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forced outside of rsync's control, such a mount option
that squishes root to a single user, or mounts a remov-
able drive with generic ownership (such as OS X's
"Ignore ownership on this volume" option).
Beginning in version 2.6.4, multiple --link-dest direc-
tories may be provided, which will cause rsync to
search the list in the order specified for an exact
match. If a match is found that differs only in
attributes, a local copy is made and the attributes
updated. If a match is not found, a basis file from
one of the DIRs will be selected to try to speed up the
transfer.
This option works best when copying into an empty des-
tination hierarchy, as existing files may get their
attributes tweaked, and that can affect alternate des-
tination files via hard-links. Also, itemizing of
changes can get a bit muddled. Note that prior to ver-
sion 3.1.0, an alternate-directory exact match would
never be found (nor linked into the destination) when a
destination file already exists.
Note that if you combine this option with
--ignore-times, rsync will not link any files together
because it only links identical files together as a
substitute for transferring the file, never as an addi-
tional check after the file is updated.
If DIR is a relative path, it is relative to the desti-
nation directory. See also --compare-dest and
--copy-dest.
Note that rsync versions prior to 2.6.1 had a bug that
could prevent --link-dest from working properly for a
non-super-user when -o was specified (or implied by
-a). You can work-around this bug by avoiding the -o
option when sending to an old rsync.
-z, --compress
With this option, rsync compresses the file data as it
is sent to the destination machine, which reduces the
amount of data being transmitted -- something that is
useful over a slow connection.
Note that this option typically achieves better com-
pression ratios than can be achieved by using a com-
pressing remote shell or a compressing transport
because it takes advantage of the implicit information
in the matching data blocks that are not explicitly
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sent over the connection.
See the --skip-compress option for the default list of
file suffixes that will not be compressed.
--compress-level=NUM
Explicitly set the compression level to use (see --com-
press) instead of letting it default. If NUM is
non-zero, the --compress option is implied.
--skip-compress=LIST
Override the list of file suffixes that will not be
compressed. The LIST should be one or more file suf-
fixes (without the dot) separated by slashes (/).
You may specify an empty string to indicate that no
file should be skipped.
Simple character-class matching is supported: each must
consist of a list of letters inside the square brackets
(e.g. no special classes, such as "[:alpha:]", are sup-
ported, and '-' has no special meaning).
The characters asterisk (*) and question-mark (?) have
no special meaning.
Here's an example that specifies 6 suffixes to skip
(since 1 of the 5 rules matches 2 suffixes):
--skip-compress=gz/jpg/mp[34]/7z/bz2
The default list of suffixes that will not be com-
pressed is this (in this version of rsync):
7z ace avi bz2 deb gpg gz iso jpeg jpg lz lzma lzo mov
mp3 mp4 ogg png rar rpm rzip tbz tgz tlz txz xz z zip
This list will be replaced by your --skip-compress list
in all but one situation: a copy from a daemon rsync
will add your skipped suffixes to its list of non-com-
pressing files (and its list may be configured to a
different default).
--numeric-ids
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With this option rsync will transfer numeric group and
user IDs rather than using user and group names and
mapping them at both ends.
By default rsync will use the username and groupname to
determine what ownership to give files. The special uid
0 and the special group 0 are never mapped via
user/group names even if the --numeric-ids option is
not specified.
If a user or group has no name on the source system or
it has no match on the destination system, then the
numeric ID from the source system is used instead. See
also the comments on the "use chroot" setting in the
rsyncd.conf manpage for information on how the chroot
setting affects rsync's ability to look up the names of
the users and groups and what you can do about it.
--usermap=STRING, --groupmap=STRING
These options allow you to specify users and groups
that should be mapped to other values by the receiving
side. The STRING is one or more FROM:TO pairs of val-
ues separated by commas. Any matching FROM value from
the sender is replaced with a TO value from the
receiver. You may specify usernames or user IDs for
the FROM and TO values, and the FROM value may also be
a wild-card string, which will be matched against the
sender's names (wild-cards do NOT match against ID num-
bers, though see below for why a '*' matches every-
thing). You may instead specify a range of ID numbers
via an inclusive range: LOW-HIGH. For example:
--usermap=0-99:nobody,wayne:admin,*:normal --groupmap=usr:1,1:usr
The first match in the list is the one that is used.
You should specify all your user mappings using a sin-
gle --usermap option, and/or all your group mappings
using a single --groupmap option.
Note that the sender's name for the 0 user and group
are not transmitted to the receiver, so you should
either match these values using a 0, or use the names
in effect on the receiving side (typically "root").
All other FROM names match those in use on the sending
side. All TO names match those in use on the receiving
side.
Any IDs that do not have a name on the sending side are
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treated as having an empty name for the purpose of
matching. This allows them to be matched via a "*" or
using an empty name. For instance:
--usermap=:nobody --groupmap=*:nobody
When the --numeric-ids option is used, the sender does
not send any names, so all the IDs are treated as hav-
ing an empty name. This means that you will need to
specify numeric FROM values if you want to map these
nameless IDs to different values.
For the --usermap option to have any effect, the -o
(--owner) option must be used (or implied), and the
receiver will need to be running as a super-user (see
also the --fake-super option). For the --groupmap
option to have any effect, the -g (--groups) option
must be used (or implied), and the receiver will need
to have permissions to set that group.
--chown=USER:GROUP
This option forces all files to be owned by USER with
group GROUP. This is a simpler interface than using
--usermap and --groupmap directly, but it is imple-
mented using those options internally, so you cannot
mix them. If either the USER or GROUP is empty, no
mapping for the omitted user/group will occur. If
GROUP is empty, the trailing colon may be omitted, but
if USER is empty, a leading colon must be supplied.
If you specify "--chown=foo:bar, this is exactly the
same as specifying "--usermap=*:foo --groupmap=*:bar",
only easier.
--timeout=TIMEOUT
This option allows you to set a maximum I/O timeout in
seconds. If no data is transferred for the specified
time then rsync will exit. The default is 0, which
means no timeout.
--contimeout
This option allows you to set the amount of time that
rsync will wait for its connection to an rsync daemon
to succeed. If the timeout is reached, rsync exits
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with an error.
--address
By default rsync will bind to the wildcard address when
connecting to an rsync daemon. The --address option
allows you to specify a specific IP address (or host-
name) to bind to. See also this option in the --daemon
mode section.
--port=PORT
This specifies an alternate TCP port number to use
rather than the default of 873. This is only needed if
you are using the double-colon (::) syntax to connect
with an rsync daemon (since the URL syntax has a way to
specify the port as a part of the URL). See also this
option in the --daemon mode section.
--sockopts
This option can provide endless fun for people who like
to tune their systems to the utmost degree. You can set
all sorts of socket options which may make transfers
faster (or slower!). Read the man page for the setsock-
opt() system call for details on some of the options
you may be able to set. By default no special socket
options are set. This only affects direct socket con-
nections to a remote rsync daemon. This option also
exists in the --daemon mode section.
--blocking-io
This tells rsync to use blocking I/O when launching a
remote shell transport. If the remote shell is either
rsh or remsh, rsync defaults to using blocking I/O,
otherwise it defaults to using non-blocking I/O. (Note
that ssh prefers non-blocking I/O.)
--outbuf=MODE
This sets the output buffering mode. The mode can be
None (aka Unbuffered), Line, or Block (aka Full). You
may specify as little as a single letter for the mode,
and use upper or lower case.
The main use of this option is to change Full buffering
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to Line buffering when rsync's output is going to a
file or pipe.
-i, --itemize-changes
Requests a simple itemized list of the changes that are
being made to each file, including attribute changes.
This is exactly the same as specifying --out-format='%i
%n%L'. If you repeat the option, unchanged files will
also be output, but only if the receiving rsync is at
least version 2.6.7 (you can use -vv with older ver-
sions of rsync, but that also turns on the output of
other verbose messages).
The "%i" escape has a cryptic output that is 11 letters
long. The general format is like the string YXcst-
poguax, where Y is replaced by the type of update being
done, X is replaced by the file-type, and the other
letters represent attributes that may be output if they
are being modified.
The update types that replace the Y are as follows:
o A < means that a file is being transferred to the
remote host (sent).
o A > means that a file is being transferred to the
local host (received).
o A c means that a local change/creation is occur-
ring for the item (such as the creation of a
directory or the changing of a symlink, etc.).
o A h means that the item is a hard link to another
item (requires --hard-links).
o A . means that the item is not being updated
(though it might have attributes that are being
modified).
o A * means that the rest of the itemized-output
area contains a message (e.g. "deleting").
The file-types that replace the X are: f for a file, a
d for a directory, an L for a symlink, a D for a
device, and a S for a special file (e.g. named sockets
and fifos).
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The other letters in the string above are the actual
letters that will be output if the associated attribute
for the item is being updated or a "." for no change.
Three exceptions to this are: (1) a newly created item
replaces each letter with a "+", (2) an identical item
replaces the dots with spaces, and (3) an unknown
attribute replaces each letter with a "?" (this can
happen when talking to an older rsync).
The attribute that is associated with each letter is as
follows:
o A c means either that a regular file has a differ-
ent checksum (requires --checksum) or that a sym-
link, device, or special file has a changed value.
Note that if you are sending files to an rsync
prior to 3.0.1, this change flag will be present
only for checksum-differing regular files.
o A s means the size of a regular file is different
and will be updated by the file transfer.
o A t means the modification time is different and
is being updated to the sender's value (requires
--times). An alternate value of T means that the
modification time will be set to the transfer
time, which happens when a file/symlink/device is
updated without --times and when a symlink is
changed and the receiver can't set its time.
(Note: when using an rsync 3.0.0 client, you might
see the s flag combined with t instead of the
proper T flag for this time-setting failure.)
o A p means the permissions are different and are
being updated to the sender's value (requires
--perms).
o An o means the owner is different and is being
updated to the sender's value (requires --owner
and super-user privileges).
o A g means the group is different and is being
updated to the sender's value (requires --group
and the authority to set the group).
o The u slot is reserved for future use.
o The a means that the ACL information changed.
o The x means that the extended attribute
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information changed.
One other output is possible: when deleting files, the
"%i" will output the string "*deleting" for each item
that is being removed (assuming that you are talking to
a recent enough rsync that it logs deletions instead of
outputting them as a verbose message).
--out-format=FORMAT
This allows you to specify exactly what the rsync
client outputs to the user on a per-update basis. The
format is a text string containing embedded sin-
gle-character escape sequences prefixed with a percent
(%) character. A default format of "%n%L" is assumed
if either --info=name or -v is specified (this tells
you just the name of the file and, if the item is a
link, where it points). For a full list of the possi-
ble escape characters, see the "log format" setting in
the rsyncd.conf manpage.
Specifying the --out-format option implies the
--info=name option, which will mention each file, dir,
etc. that gets updated in a significant way (a trans-
ferred file, a recreated symlink/device, or a touched
directory). In addition, if the itemize-changes escape
(%i) is included in the string (e.g. if the --item-
ize-changes option was used), the logging of names
increases to mention any item that is changed in any
way (as long as the receiving side is at least 2.6.4).
See the --itemize-changes option for a description of
the output of "%i".
Rsync will output the out-format string prior to a
file's transfer unless one of the transfer-statistic
escapes is requested, in which case the logging is done
at the end of the file's transfer. When this late log-
ging is in effect and --progress is also specified,
rsync will also output the name of the file being
transferred prior to its progress information (fol-
lowed, of course, by the out-format output).
--log-file=FILE
This option causes rsync to log what it is doing to a
file. This is similar to the logging that a daemon
does, but can be requested for the client side and/or
the server side of a non-daemon transfer. If specified
as a client option, transfer logging will be enabled
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with a default format of "%i %n%L". See the
--log-file-format option if you wish to override this.
Here's a example command that requests the remote side
to log what is happening:
rsync -av --remote-option=--log-file=/tmp/rlog src/ dest/
This is very useful if you need to debug why a connec-
tion is closing unexpectedly.
--log-file-format=FORMAT
This allows you to specify exactly what per-update log-
ging is put into the file specified by the --log-file
option (which must also be specified for this option to
have any effect). If you specify an empty string,
updated files will not be mentioned in the log file.
For a list of the possible escape characters, see the
"log format" setting in the rsyncd.conf manpage.
The default FORMAT used if --log-file is specified and
this option is not is '%i %n%L'.
--stats
This tells rsync to print a verbose set of statistics
on the file transfer, allowing you to tell how effec-
tive rsync's delta-transfer algorithm is for your data.
This option is equivalent to --info=stats2 if combined
with 0 or 1 -v options, or --info=stats3 if combined
with 2 or more -v options.
The current statistics are as follows:
o Number of files is the count of all "files" (in
the generic sense), which includes directories,
symlinks, etc. The total count will be followed
by a list of counts by filetype (if the total is
non-zero). For example: "(reg: 5, dir: 3, link:
2, dev: 1, special: 1)" lists the totals for regu-
lar files, directories, symlinks, devices, and
special files. If any of value is 0, it is com-
pletely omitted from the list.
o Number of created files is the count of how many
"files" (generic sense) were created (as opposed
to updated). The total count will be followed by
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a list of counts by filetype (if the total is
non-zero).
o Number of deleted files is the count of how many
"files" (generic sense) were created (as opposed
to updated). The total count will be followed by
a list of counts by filetype (if the total is
non-zero). Note that this line is only output if
deletions are in effect, and only if protocol 31
is being used (the default for rsync 3.1.x).
o Number of regular files transferred is the count
of normal files that were updated via rsync's
delta-transfer algorithm, which does not include
dirs, symlinks, etc. Note that rsync 3.1.0 added
the word "regular" into this heading.
o Total file size is the total sum of all file sizes
in the transfer. This does not count any size for
directories or special files, but does include the
size of symlinks.
o Total transferred file size is the total sum of
all files sizes for just the transferred files.
o Literal data is how much unmatched file-update
data we had to send to the receiver for it to
recreate the updated files.
o Matched data is how much data the receiver got
locally when recreating the updated files.
o File list size is how big the file-list data was
when the sender sent it to the receiver. This is
smaller than the in-memory size for the file list
due to some compressing of duplicated data when
rsync sends the list.
o File list generation time is the number of seconds
that the sender spent creating the file list.
This requires a modern rsync on the sending side
for this to be present.
o File list transfer time is the number of seconds
that the sender spent sending the file list to the
receiver.
o Total bytes sent is the count of all the bytes
that rsync sent from the client side to the server
side.
o Total bytes received is the count of all
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non-message bytes that rsync received by the
client side from the server side. "Non-message"
bytes means that we don't count the bytes for a
verbose message that the server sent to us, which
makes the stats more consistent.
-8, --8-bit-output
This tells rsync to leave all high-bit characters
unescaped in the output instead of trying to test them
to see if they're valid in the current locale and
escaping the invalid ones. All control characters (but
never tabs) are always escaped, regardless of this
option's setting.
The escape idiom that started in 2.6.7 is to output a
literal backslash (\) and a hash (#), followed by
exactly 3 octal digits. For example, a newline would
output as "\#012". A literal backslash that is in a
filename is not escaped unless it is followed by a hash
and 3 digits (0-9).
-h, --human-readable
Output numbers in a more human-readable format. There
are 3 possible levels: (1) output numbers with a sepa-
rator between each set of 3 digits (either a comma or a
period, depending on if the decimal point is repre-
sented by a period or a comma); (2) output numbers in
units of 1000 (with a character suffix for larger units
-- see below); (3) output numbers in units of 1024.
The default is human-readable level 1. Each -h option
increases the level by one. You can take the level
down to 0 (to output numbers as pure digits) by specif-
ing the --no-human-readable (--no-h) option.
The unit letters that are appended in levels 2 and 3
are: K (kilo), M (mega), G (giga), or T (tera). For
example, a 1234567-byte file would output as 1.23M in
level-2 (assuming that a period is your local decimal
point).
Backward compatibility note: versions of rsync prior
to 3.1.0 do not support human-readable level 1, and
they default to level 0. Thus, specifying one or two
-h options will behave in a comparable manner in old
and new versions as long as you didn't specify a --no-h
option prior to one or more -h options. See the
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--list-only option for one difference.
--partial
By default, rsync will delete any partially transferred
file if the transfer is interrupted. In some circum-
stances it is more desirable to keep partially trans-
ferred files. Using the --partial option tells rsync to
keep the partial file which should make a subsequent
transfer of the rest of the file much faster.
--partial-dir=DIR
A better way to keep partial files than the --partial
option is to specify a DIR that will be used to hold
the partial data (instead of writing it out to the des-
tination file). On the next transfer, rsync will use a
file found in this dir as data to speed up the resump-
tion of the transfer and then delete it after it has
served its purpose.
Note that if --whole-file is specified (or implied),
any partial-dir file that is found for a file that is
being updated will simply be removed (since rsync is
sending files without using rsync's delta-transfer
algorithm).
Rsync will create the DIR if it is missing (just the
last dir -- not the whole path). This makes it easy to
use a relative path (such as "--partial-dir=.rsync-par-
tial") to have rsync create the partial-directory in
the destination file's directory when needed, and then
remove it again when the partial file is deleted.
If the partial-dir value is not an absolute path, rsync
will add an exclude rule at the end of all your exist-
ing excludes. This will prevent the sending of any
partial-dir files that may exist on the sending side,
and will also prevent the untimely deletion of par-
tial-dir items on the receiving side. An example: the
above --partial-dir option would add the equivalent of
"-f '-p .rsync-partial/'" at the end of any other fil-
ter rules.
If you are supplying your own exclude rules, you may
need to add your own exclude/hide/protect rule for the
partial-dir because (1) the auto-added rule may be
ineffective at the end of your other rules, or (2) you
may wish to override rsync's exclude choice. For
instance, if you want to make rsync clean-up any
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left-over partial-dirs that may be lying around, you
should specify --delete-after and add a "risk" filter
rule, e.g. -f 'R .rsync-partial/'. (Avoid using
--delete-before or --delete-during unless you don't
need rsync to use any of the left-over partial-dir data
during the current run.)
IMPORTANT: the --partial-dir should not be writable by
other users or it is a security risk. E.g. AVOID
"/tmp".
You can also set the partial-dir value the RSYNC_PAR-
TIAL_DIR environment variable. Setting this in the
environment does not force --partial to be enabled, but
rather it affects where partial files go when --partial
is specified. For instance, instead of using --par-
tial-dir=.rsync-tmp along with --progress, you could
set RSYNC_PARTIAL_DIR=.rsync-tmp in your environment
and then just use the -P option to turn on the use of
the .rsync-tmp dir for partial transfers. The only
times that the --partial option does not look for this
environment value are (1) when --inplace was specified
(since --inplace conflicts with --partial-dir), and (2)
when --delay-updates was specified (see below).
For the purposes of the daemon-config's "refuse
options" setting, --partial-dir does not imply --par-
tial. This is so that a refusal of the --partial
option can be used to disallow the overwriting of des-
tination files with a partial transfer, while still
allowing the safer idiom provided by --partial-dir.
--delay-updates
This option puts the temporary file from each updated
file into a holding directory until the end of the
transfer, at which time all the files are renamed into
place in rapid succession. This attempts to make the
updating of the files a little more atomic. By default
the files are placed into a directory named ".~tmp~" in
each file's destination directory, but if you've speci-
fied the --partial-dir option, that directory will be
used instead. See the comments in the --partial-dir
section for a discussion of how this ".~tmp~" dir will
be excluded from the transfer, and what you can do if
you want rsync to cleanup old ".~tmp~" dirs that might
be lying around. Conflicts with --inplace and
--append.
This option uses more memory on the receiving side (one
bit per file transferred) and also requires enough free
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disk space on the receiving side to hold an additional
copy of all the updated files. Note also that you
should not use an absolute path to --partial-dir unless
(1) there is no chance of any of the files in the
transfer having the same name (since all the updated
files will be put into a single directory if the path
is absolute) and (2) there are no mount points in the
hierarchy (since the delayed updates will fail if they
can't be renamed into place).
See also the "atomic-rsync" perl script in the "sup-
port" subdir for an update algorithm that is even more
atomic (it uses --link-dest and a parallel hierarchy of
files).
-m, --prune-empty-dirs
This option tells the receiving rsync to get rid of
empty directories from the file-list, including nested
directories that have no non-directory children. This
is useful for avoiding the creation of a bunch of use-
less directories when the sending rsync is recursively
scanning a hierarchy of files using
include/exclude/filter rules.
Note that the use of transfer rules, such as the
--min-size option, does not affect what goes into the
file list, and thus does not leave directories empty,
even if none of the files in a directory match the
transfer rule.
Because the file-list is actually being pruned, this
option also affects what directories get deleted when a
delete is active. However, keep in mind that excluded
files and directories can prevent existing items from
being deleted due to an exclude both hiding source
files and protecting destination files. See the per-
ishable filter-rule option for how to avoid this.
You can prevent the pruning of certain empty directo-
ries from the file-list by using a global "protect"
filter. For instance, this option would ensure that
the directory "emptydir" was kept in the file-list:
--filter 'protect emptydir/'
Here's an example that copies all .pdf files in a hier-
archy, only creating the necessary destination directo-
ries to hold the .pdf files, and ensures that any
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superfluous files and directories in the destination
are removed (note the hide filter of non-directories
being used instead of an exclude):
rsync -avm --del --include='*.pdf' -f 'hide,! */' src/
dest
If you didn't want to remove superfluous destination
files, the more time-honored options of "--include='*/'
--exclude='*'" would work fine in place of the
hide-filter (if that is more natural to you).
--progress
This option tells rsync to print information showing
the progress of the transfer. This gives a bored user
something to watch. With a modern rsync this is the
same as specifying --info=flist2,name,progress, but any
user-supplied settings for those info flags takes
precedence (e.g. "--info=flist0 --progress").
While rsync is transferring a regular file, it updates
a progress line that looks like this:
782448 63% 110.64kB/s 0:00:04
In this example, the receiver has reconstructed 782448
bytes or 63% of the sender's file, which is being
reconstructed at a rate of 110.64 kilobytes per second,
and the transfer will finish in 4 seconds if the cur-
rent rate is maintained until the end.
These statistics can be misleading if rsync's
delta-transfer algorithm is in use. For example, if
the sender's file consists of the basis file followed
by additional data, the reported rate will probably
drop dramatically when the receiver gets to the literal
data, and the transfer will probably take much longer
to finish than the receiver estimated as it was finish-
ing the matched part of the file.
When the file transfer finishes, rsync replaces the
progress line with a summary line that looks like this:
1,238,099 100% 146.38kB/s 0:00:08 (xfr#5, to-chk=169/396)
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In this example, the file was 1,238,099 bytes long in
total, the average rate of transfer for the whole file
was 146.38 kilobytes per second over the 8 seconds that
it took to complete, it was the 5th transfer of a regu-
lar file during the current rsync session, and there
are 169 more files for the receiver to check (to see if
they are up-to-date or not) remaining out of the 396
total files in the file-list.
In an incremental recursion scan, rsync won't know the
total number of files in the file-list until it reaches
the ends of the scan, but since it starts to transfer
files during the scan, it will display a line with the
text "ir-chk" (for incremental recursion check) instead
of "to-chk" until the point that it knows the full size
of the list, at which point it will switch to using
"to-chk". Thus, seeing "ir-chk" lets you know that the
total count of files in the file list is still going to
increase (and each time it does, the count of files
left to check will increase by the number of the files
added to the list).
-P The -P option is equivalent to --partial --progress.
Its purpose is to make it much easier to specify these
two options for a long transfer that may be inter-
rupted.
There is also a --info=progress2 option that outputs
statistics based on the whole transfer, rather than
individual files. Use this flag without outputting a
filename (e.g. avoid -v or specify --info=name0 if you
want to see how the transfer is doing without scrolling
the screen with a lot of names. (You don't need to
specify the --progress option in order to use
--info=progress2.)
--password-file=FILE
This option allows you to provide a password for
accessing an rsync daemon via a file or via standard
input if FILE is -. The file should contain just the
password on the first line (all other lines are
ignored). Rsync will exit with an error if FILE is
world readable or if a root-run rsync command finds a
non-root-owned file.
This option does not supply a password to a remote
shell transport such as ssh; to learn how to do that,
consult the remote shell's documentation. When
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accessing an rsync daemon using a remote shell as the
transport, this option only comes into effect after the
remote shell finishes its authentication (i.e. if you
have also specified a password in the daemon's config
file).
--list-only
This option will cause the source files to be listed
instead of transferred. This option is inferred if
there is a single source arg and no destination speci-
fied, so its main uses are: (1) to turn a copy command
that includes a destination arg into a file-listing
command, or (2) to be able to specify more than one
source arg (note: be sure to include the destination).
Caution: keep in mind that a source arg with a
wild-card is expanded by the shell into multiple args,
so it is never safe to try to list such an arg without
using this option. For example:
rsync -av --list-only foo* dest/
Starting with rsync 3.1.0, the sizes output by
--list-only are affected by the --human-readable
option. By default they will contain digit separators,
but higher levels of readability will output the sizes
with unit suffixes. Note also that the column width
for the size output has increased from 11 to 14 charac-
ters for all human-readable levels. Use --no-h if you
want just digits in the sizes, and the old column width
of 11 characters.
Compatibility note: when requesting a remote listing
of files from an rsync that is version 2.6.3 or older,
you may encounter an error if you ask for a non-recur-
sive listing. This is because a file listing implies
the --dirs option w/o --recursive, and older rsyncs
don't have that option. To avoid this problem, either
specify the --no-dirs option (if you don't need to
expand a directory's content), or turn on recursion and
exclude the content of subdirectories: -r
--exclude='/*/*'.
--bwlimit=RATE
This option allows you to specify the maximum transfer
rate for the data sent over the socket, specified in
units per second. The RATE value can be suffixed with
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a string to indicate a size multiplier, and may be a
fractional value (e.g. "--bwlimit=1.5m"). If no suf-
fix is specified, the value will be assumed to be in
units of 1024 bytes (as if "K" or "KiB" had been
appended). See the --max-size option for a description
of all the available suffixes. A value of zero speci-
fies no limit.
For backward-compatibility reasons, the rate limit will
be rounded to the nearest KiB unit, so no rate smaller
than 1024 bytes per second is possible.
Rsync writes data over the socket in blocks, and this
option both limits the size of the blocks that rsync
writes, and tries to keep the average transfer rate at
the requested limit. Some "burstiness" may be seen
where rsync writes out a block of data and then sleeps
to bring the average rate into compliance.
Due to the internal buffering of data, the --progress
option may not be an accurate reflection on how fast
the data is being sent. This is because some files can
show up as being rapidly sent when the data is quickly
buffered, while other can show up as very slow when the
flushing of the output buffer occurs. This may be
fixed in a future version.
--write-batch=FILE
Record a file that can later be applied to another
identical destination with --read-batch. See the "BATCH
MODE" section for details, and also the
--only-write-batch option.
--only-write-batch=FILE
Works like --write-batch, except that no updates are
made on the destination system when creating the batch.
This lets you transport the changes to the destination
system via some other means and then apply the changes
via --read-batch.
Note that you can feel free to write the batch directly
to some portable media: if this media fills to capacity
before the end of the transfer, you can just apply that
partial transfer to the destination and repeat the
whole process to get the rest of the changes (as long
as you don't mind a partially updated destination sys-
tem while the multi-update cycle is happening).
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Also note that you only save bandwidth when pushing
changes to a remote system because this allows the
batched data to be diverted from the sender into the
batch file without having to flow over the wire to the
receiver (when pulling, the sender is remote, and thus
can't write the batch).
--read-batch=FILE
Apply all of the changes stored in FILE, a file previ-
ously generated by --write-batch. If FILE is -, the
batch data will be read from standard input. See the
"BATCH MODE" section for details.
--protocol=NUM
Force an older protocol version to be used. This is
useful for creating a batch file that is compatible
with an older version of rsync. For instance, if rsync
2.6.4 is being used with the --write-batch option, but
rsync 2.6.3 is what will be used to run the
--read-batch option, you should use "--protocol=28"
when creating the batch file to force the older proto-
col version to be used in the batch file (assuming you
can't upgrade the rsync on the reading system).
--iconv=CONVERT_SPEC
Rsync can convert filenames between character sets
using this option. Using a CONVERT_SPEC of "." tells
rsync to look up the default character-set via the
locale setting. Alternately, you can fully specify
what conversion to do by giving a local and a remote
charset separated by a comma in the order
--iconv=LOCAL,REMOTE, e.g. --iconv=utf8,iso88591.
This order ensures that the option will stay the same
whether you're pushing or pulling files. Finally, you
can specify either --no-iconv or a CONVERT_SPEC of "-"
to turn off any conversion. The default setting of
this option is site-specific, and can also be affected
via the RSYNC_ICONV environment variable.
For a list of what charset names your local iconv
library supports, you can run "iconv --list".
If you specify the --protect-args option (-s), rsync
will translate the filenames you specify on the com-
mand-line that are being sent to the remote host. See
also the --files-from option.
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Note that rsync does not do any conversion of names in
filter files (including include/exclude files). It is
up to you to ensure that you're specifying matching
rules that can match on both sides of the transfer.
For instance, you can specify extra include/exclude
rules if there are filename differences on the two
sides that need to be accounted for.
When you pass an --iconv option to an rsync daemon that
allows it, the daemon uses the charset specified in its
"charset" configuration parameter regardless of the
remote charset you actually pass. Thus, you may feel
free to specify just the local charset for a daemon
transfer (e.g. --iconv=utf8).
-4, --ipv4 or -6, --ipv6
Tells rsync to prefer IPv4/IPv6 when creating sockets.
This only affects sockets that rsync has direct control
over, such as the outgoing socket when directly con-
tacting an rsync daemon. See also these options in the
--daemon mode section.
If rsync was complied without support for IPv6, the
--ipv6 option will have no effect. The --version out-
put will tell you if this is the case.
--checksum-seed=NUM
Set the checksum seed to the integer NUM. This 4 byte
checksum seed is included in each block and MD4 file
checksum calculation (the more modern MD5 file check-
sums don't use a seed). By default the checksum seed
is generated by the server and defaults to the current
time() . This option is used to set a specific check-
sum seed, which is useful for applications that want
repeatable block checksums, or in the case where the
user wants a more random checksum seed. Setting NUM to
0 causes rsync to use the default of time() for check-
sum seed.
DAEMON OPTIONS
The options allowed when starting an rsync daemon are as
follows:
--daemon
This tells rsync that it is to run as a daemon. The
daemon you start running may be accessed using an rsync
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client using the host::module or rsync://host/module/
syntax.
If standard input is a socket then rsync will assume
that it is being run via inetd, otherwise it will
detach from the current terminal and become a back-
ground daemon. The daemon will read the config file
(rsyncd.conf) on each connect made by a client and
respond to requests accordingly. See the
rsyncd.conf(5) man page for more details.
--address
By default rsync will bind to the wildcard address when
run as a daemon with the --daemon option. The
--address option allows you to specify a specific IP
address (or hostname) to bind to. This makes virtual
hosting possible in conjunction with the --config
option. See also the "address" global option in the
rsyncd.conf manpage.
--bwlimit=RATE
This option allows you to specify the maximum transfer
rate for the data the daemon sends over the socket.
The client can still specify a smaller --bwlimit value,
but no larger value will be allowed. See the client
version of this option (above) for some extra details.
--config=FILE
This specifies an alternate config file than the
default. This is only relevant when --daemon is speci-
fied. The default is /etc/rsyncd.conf unless the dae-
mon is running over a remote shell program and the
remote user is not the super-user; in that case the
default is rsyncd.conf in the current directory (typi-
cally $HOME).
-M, --dparam=OVERRIDE
This option can be used to set a daemon-config parame-
ter when starting up rsync in daemon mode. It is
equivalent to adding the parameter at the end of the
global settings prior to the first module's definition.
The parameter names can be specified without spaces, if
you so desire. For instance:
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rsync --daemon -M pidfile=/path/rsync.pid
--no-detach
When running as a daemon, this option instructs rsync
to not detach itself and become a background process.
This option is required when running as a service on
Cygwin, and may also be useful when rsync is supervised
by a program such as daemontools or AIX's System
Resource Controller. --no-detach is also recommended
when rsync is run under a debugger. This option has no
effect if rsync is run from inetd or sshd.
--port=PORT
This specifies an alternate TCP port number for the
daemon to listen on rather than the default of 873.
See also the "port" global option in the rsyncd.conf
manpage.
--log-file=FILE
This option tells the rsync daemon to use the given
log-file name instead of using the "log file" setting
in the config file.
--log-file-format=FORMAT
This option tells the rsync daemon to use the given
FORMAT string instead of using the "log format" setting
in the config file. It also enables "transfer logging"
unless the string is empty, in which case transfer log-
ging is turned off.
--sockopts
This overrides the socket options setting in the
rsyncd.conf file and has the same syntax.
-v, --verbose
This option increases the amount of information the
daemon logs during its startup phase. After the client
connects, the daemon's verbosity level will be
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controlled by the options that the client used and the
"max verbosity" setting in the module's config section.
-4, --ipv4 or -6, --ipv6
Tells rsync to prefer IPv4/IPv6 when creating the
incoming sockets that the rsync daemon will use to lis-
ten for connections. One of these options may be
required in older versions of Linux to work around an
IPv6 bug in the kernel (if you see an "address already
in use" error when nothing else is using the port, try
specifying --ipv6 or --ipv4 when starting the daemon).
If rsync was complied without support for IPv6, the
--ipv6 option will have no effect. The --version out-
put will tell you if this is the case.
-h, --help
When specified after --daemon, print a short help page
describing the options available for starting an rsync
daemon.
FILTER RULES
The filter rules allow for flexible selection of which files
to transfer (include) and which files to skip (exclude).
The rules either directly specify include/exclude patterns
or they specify a way to acquire more include/exclude pat-
terns (e.g. to read them from a file).
As the list of files/directories to transfer is built, rsync
checks each name to be transferred against the list of
include/exclude patterns in turn, and the first matching
pattern is acted on: if it is an exclude pattern, then that
file is skipped; if it is an include pattern then that file-
name is not skipped; if no matching pattern is found, then
the filename is not skipped.
Rsync builds an ordered list of filter rules as specified on
the command-line. Filter rules have the following syntax:
RULE [PATTERN_OR_FILENAME]
RULE,MODIFIERS [PATTERN_OR_FILENAME]
You have your choice of using either short or long RULE
names, as described below. If you use a short-named rule,
the ',' separating the RULE from the MODIFIERS is optional.
The PATTERN or FILENAME that follows (when present) must
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come after either a single space or an underscore (_). Here
are the available rule prefixes:
exclude, - specifies an exclude pattern.
include, + specifies an include pattern.
merge, . specifies a merge-file to read for more rules.
dir-merge, : specifies a per-directory merge-file.
hide, H specifies a pattern for hiding files from the
transfer.
show, S files that match the pattern are not hidden.
protect, P specifies a pattern for protecting files
from deletion.
risk, R files that match the pattern are not protected.
clear, ! clears the current include/exclude list (takes
no arg)
When rules are being read from a file, empty lines are
ignored, as are comment lines that start with a "#".
Note that the --include/--exclude command-line options do
not allow the full range of rule parsing as described above
-- they only allow the specification of include/exclude pat-
terns plus a "!" token to clear the list (and the normal
comment parsing when rules are read from a file). If a pat-
tern does not begin with "- " (dash, space) or "+ " (plus,
space), then the rule will be interpreted as if "+ " (for an
include option) or "- " (for an exclude option) were pre-
fixed to the string. A --filter option, on the other hand,
must always contain either a short or long rule name at the
start of the rule.
Note also that the --filter, --include, and --exclude
options take one rule/pattern each. To add multiple ones,
you can repeat the options on the command-line, use the
merge-file syntax of the --filter option, or the
--include-from/--exclude-from options.
INCLUDE/EXCLUDE PATTERN RULES
You can include and exclude files by specifying patterns
using the "+", "-", etc. filter rules (as introduced in the
FILTER RULES section above). The include/exclude rules each
specify a pattern that is matched against the names of the
files that are going to be transferred. These patterns can
take several forms:
o if the pattern starts with a / then it is anchored to a
particular spot in the hierarchy of files, otherwise it
is matched against the end of the pathname. This is
similar to a leading ^ in regular expressions. Thus
"/foo" would match a name of "foo" at either the "root
of the transfer" (for a global rule) or in the
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merge-file's directory (for a per-directory rule). An
unqualified "foo" would match a name of "foo" anywhere
in the tree because the algorithm is applied recur-
sively from the top down; it behaves as if each path
component gets a turn at being the end of the filename.
Even the unanchored "sub/foo" would match at any point
in the hierarchy where a "foo" was found within a
directory named "sub". See the section on ANCHORING
INCLUDE/EXCLUDE PATTERNS for a full discussion of how
to specify a pattern that matches at the root of the
transfer.
o if the pattern ends with a / then it will only match a
directory, not a regular file, symlink, or device.
o rsync chooses between doing a simple string match and
wildcard matching by checking if the pattern contains
one of these three wildcard characters: '*', '?', and
'[' .
o a '*' matches any path component, but it stops at
slashes.
o use '**' to match anything, including slashes.
o a '?' matches any character except a slash (/).
o a '[' introduces a character class, such as [a-z] or
[[:alpha:]].
o in a wildcard pattern, a backslash can be used to
escape a wildcard character, but it is matched liter-
ally when no wildcards are present.
o if the pattern contains a / (not counting a trailing /)
or a "**", then it is matched against the full path-
name, including any leading directories. If the pattern
doesn't contain a / or a "**", then it is matched only
against the final component of the filename. (Remember
that the algorithm is applied recursively so "full
filename" can actually be any portion of a path from
the starting directory on down.)
o a trailing "dir_name/***" will match both the directory
(as if "dir_name/" had been specified) and everything
in the directory (as if "dir_name/**" had been speci-
fied). This behavior was added in version 2.6.7.
Note that, when using the --recursive (-r) option (which is
implied by -a), every subcomponent of every path is visited
from the top down, so include/exclude patterns get applied
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recursively to each subcomponent's full name (e.g. to
include "/foo/bar/baz" the subcomponents "/foo" and
"/foo/bar" must not be excluded). The exclude patterns
actually short-circuit the directory traversal stage when
rsync finds the files to send. If a pattern excludes a par-
ticular parent directory, it can render a deeper include
pattern ineffectual because rsync did not descend through
that excluded section of the hierarchy. This is particu-
larly important when using a trailing '*' rule. For
instance, this won't work:
+ /some/path/this-file-will-not-be-found
+ /file-is-included
- *
This fails because the parent directory "some" is excluded
by the '*' rule, so rsync never visits any of the files in
the "some" or "some/path" directories. One solution is to
ask for all directories in the hierarchy to be included by
using a single rule: "+ */" (put it somewhere before the "-
*" rule), and perhaps use the --prune-empty-dirs option.
Another solution is to add specific include rules for all
the parent dirs that need to be visited. For instance, this
set of rules works fine:
+ /some/
+ /some/path/
+ /some/path/this-file-is-found
+ /file-also-included
- *
Here are some examples of exclude/include matching:
o "- *.o" would exclude all names matching *.o
o "- /foo" would exclude a file (or directory) named foo
in the transfer-root directory
o "- foo/" would exclude any directory named foo
o "- /foo/*/bar" would exclude any file named bar which
is at two levels below a directory named foo in the
transfer-root directory
o "- /foo/**/bar" would exclude any file named bar two or
more levels below a directory named foo in the trans-
fer-root directory
o The combination of "+ */", "+ *.c", and "- *" would
include all directories and C source files but nothing
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else (see also the --prune-empty-dirs option)
o The combination of "+ foo/", "+ foo/bar.c", and "- *"
would include only the foo directory and foo/bar.c (the
foo directory must be explicitly included or it would
be excluded by the "*")
The following modifiers are accepted after a "+" or "-":
o A / specifies that the include/exclude rule should be
matched against the absolute pathname of the current
item. For example, "-/ /etc/passwd" would exclude the
passwd file any time the transfer was sending files
from the "/etc" directory, and "-/ subdir/foo" would
always exclude "foo" when it is in a dir named "sub-
dir", even if "foo" is at the root of the current
transfer.
o A ! specifies that the include/exclude should take
effect if the pattern fails to match. For instance,
"-! */" would exclude all non-directories.
o A C is used to indicate that all the global CVS-exclude
rules should be inserted as excludes in place of the
"-C". No arg should follow.
o An s is used to indicate that the rule applies to the
sending side. When a rule affects the sending side, it
prevents files from being transferred. The default is
for a rule to affect both sides unless
--delete-excluded was specified, in which case default
rules become sender-side only. See also the hide (H)
and show (S) rules, which are an alternate way to spec-
ify sending-side includes/excludes.
o An r is used to indicate that the rule applies to the
receiving side. When a rule affects the receiving
side, it prevents files from being deleted. See the s
modifier for more info. See also the protect (P) and
risk (R) rules, which are an alternate way to specify
receiver-side includes/excludes.
o A p indicates that a rule is perishable, meaning that
it is ignored in directories that are being deleted.
For instance, the -C option's default rules that
exclude things like "CVS" and "*.o" are marked as per-
ishable, and will not prevent a directory that was
removed on the source from being deleted on the desti-
nation.
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MERGE-FILE FILTER RULES
You can merge whole files into your filter rules by specify-
ing either a merge (.) or a dir-merge (:) filter rule (as
introduced in the FILTER RULES section above).
There are two kinds of merged files -- single-instance ('.')
and per-directory (':'). A single-instance merge file is
read one time, and its rules are incorporated into the fil-
ter list in the place of the "." rule. For per-directory
merge files, rsync will scan every directory that it tra-
verses for the named file, merging its contents when the
file exists into the current list of inherited rules. These
per-directory rule files must be created on the sending side
because it is the sending side that is being scanned for the
available files to transfer. These rule files may also need
to be transferred to the receiving side if you want them to
affect what files don't get deleted (see PER-DIRECTORY RULES
AND DELETE below).
Some examples:
merge /etc/rsync/default.rules
dir-merge .per-dir-filter
dir-merge,n- .non-inherited-per-dir-excludes
:n- .non-inherited-per-dir-excludes
The following modifiers are accepted after a merge or
dir-merge rule:
o A - specifies that the file should consist of only
exclude patterns, with no other rule-parsing except for
in-file comments.
o A + specifies that the file should consist of only
include patterns, with no other rule-parsing except for
in-file comments.
o A C is a way to specify that the file should be read in
a CVS-compatible manner. This turns on 'n', 'w', and
'-', but also allows the list-clearing token (!) to be
specified. If no filename is provided, ".cvsignore" is
assumed.
o A e will exclude the merge-file name from the transfer;
e.g. "dir-merge,e .rules" is like "dir-merge .rules"
and "- .rules".
o An n specifies that the rules are not inherited by sub-
directories.
o A w specifies that the rules are word-split on
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whitespace instead of the normal line-splitting. This
also turns off comments. Note: the space that sepa-
rates the prefix from the rule is treated specially, so
"- foo + bar" is parsed as two rules (assuming that
prefix-parsing wasn't also disabled).
o You may also specify any of the modifiers for the "+"
or "-" rules (above) in order to have the rules that
are read in from the file default to having that modi-
fier set (except for the ! modifier, which would not be
useful). For instance, "merge,-/ .excl" would treat
the contents of .excl as absolute-path excludes, while
"dir-merge,s .filt" and ":sC" would each make all their
per-directory rules apply only on the sending side. If
the merge rule specifies sides to affect (via the s or
r modifier or both), then the rules in the file must
not specify sides (via a modifier or a rule prefix such
as hide).
Per-directory rules are inherited in all subdirectories of
the directory where the merge-file was found unless the 'n'
modifier was used. Each subdirectory's rules are prefixed
to the inherited per-directory rules from its parents, which
gives the newest rules a higher priority than the inherited
rules. The entire set of dir-merge rules are grouped
together in the spot where the merge-file was specified, so
it is possible to override dir-merge rules via a rule that
got specified earlier in the list of global rules. When the
list-clearing rule ("!") is read from a per-directory file,
it only clears the inherited rules for the current merge
file.
Another way to prevent a single rule from a dir-merge file
from being inherited is to anchor it with a leading slash.
Anchored rules in a per-directory merge-file are relative to
the merge-file's directory, so a pattern "/foo" would only
match the file "foo" in the directory where the dir-merge
filter file was found.
Here's an example filter file which you'd specify via --fil-
ter=". file":
merge /home/user/.global-filter
- *.gz
dir-merge .rules
+ *.[ch]
- *.o
This will merge the contents of the /home/user/.global-fil-
ter file at the start of the list and also turns the
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".rules" filename into a per-directory filter file. All
rules read in prior to the start of the directory scan fol-
low the global anchoring rules (i.e. a leading slash matches
at the root of the transfer).
If a per-directory merge-file is specified with a path that
is a parent directory of the first transfer directory, rsync
will scan all the parent dirs from that starting point to
the transfer directory for the indicated per-directory file.
For instance, here is a common filter (see -F):
--filter=': /.rsync-filter'
That rule tells rsync to scan for the file .rsync-filter in
all directories from the root down through the parent direc-
tory of the transfer prior to the start of the normal direc-
tory scan of the file in the directories that are sent as a
part of the transfer. (Note: for an rsync daemon, the root
is always the same as the module's "path".)
Some examples of this pre-scanning for per-directory files:
rsync -avF /src/path/ /dest/dir
rsync -av --filter=': ../../.rsync-filter' /src/path/
/dest/dir
rsync -av --filter=': .rsync-filter' /src/path/
/dest/dir
The first two commands above will look for ".rsync-filter"
in "/" and "/src" before the normal scan begins looking for
the file in "/src/path" and its subdirectories. The last
command avoids the parent-dir scan and only looks for the
".rsync-filter" files in each directory that is a part of
the transfer.
If you want to include the contents of a ".cvsignore" in
your patterns, you should use the rule ":C", which creates a
dir-merge of the .cvsignore file, but parsed in a CVS-com-
patible manner. You can use this to affect where the
--cvs-exclude (-C) option's inclusion of the per-directory
.cvsignore file gets placed into your rules by putting the
":C" wherever you like in your filter rules. Without this,
rsync would add the dir-merge rule for the .cvsignore file
at the end of all your other rules (giving it a lower prior-
ity than your command-line rules). For example:
cat <<EOT | rsync -avC --filter='. -' a/ b
+ foo.o
:C
- *.old
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EOT
rsync -avC --include=foo.o -f :C --exclude='*.old' a/ b
Both of the above rsync commands are identical. Each one
will merge all the per-directory .cvsignore rules in the
middle of the list rather than at the end. This allows
their dir-specific rules to supersede the rules that follow
the :C instead of being subservient to all your rules. To
affect the other CVS exclude rules (i.e. the default list of
exclusions, the contents of $HOME/.cvsignore, and the value
of $CVSIGNORE) you should omit the -C command-line option
and instead insert a "-C" rule into your filter rules; e.g.
"--filter=-C".
LIST-CLEARING FILTER RULE
You can clear the current include/exclude list by using the
"!" filter rule (as introduced in the FILTER RULES section
above). The "current" list is either the global list of
rules (if the rule is encountered while parsing the filter
options) or a set of per-directory rules (which are inher-
ited in their own sub-list, so a subdirectory can use this
to clear out the parent's rules).
ANCHORING INCLUDE/EXCLUDE PATTERNS
As mentioned earlier, global include/exclude patterns are
anchored at the "root of the transfer" (as opposed to
per-directory patterns, which are anchored at the
merge-file's directory). If you think of the transfer as a
subtree of names that are being sent from sender to
receiver, the transfer-root is where the tree starts to be
duplicated in the destination directory. This root governs
where patterns that start with a / match.
Because the matching is relative to the transfer-root,
changing the trailing slash on a source path or changing
your use of the --relative option affects the path you need
to use in your matching (in addition to changing how much of
the file tree is duplicated on the destination host). The
following examples demonstrate this.
Let's say that we want to match two source files, one with
an absolute path of "/home/me/foo/bar", and one with a path
of "/home/you/bar/baz". Here is how the various command
choices differ for a 2-source transfer:
Example cmd: rsync -a /home/me /home/you /dest
+/- pattern: /me/foo/bar
+/- pattern: /you/bar/baz
Target file: /dest/me/foo/bar
Target file: /dest/you/bar/baz
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Example cmd: rsync -a /home/me/ /home/you/ /dest
+/- pattern: /foo/bar (note missing "me")
+/- pattern: /bar/baz (note missing
"you")
Target file: /dest/foo/bar
Target file: /dest/bar/baz
Example cmd: rsync -a --relative /home/me/ /home/you
/dest
+/- pattern: /home/me/foo/bar (note full path)
+/- pattern: /home/you/bar/baz (ditto)
Target file: /dest/home/me/foo/bar
Target file: /dest/home/you/bar/baz
Example cmd: cd /home; rsync -a --relative me/foo you/
/dest
+/- pattern: /me/foo/bar (starts at specified
path)
+/- pattern: /you/bar/baz (ditto)
Target file: /dest/me/foo/bar
Target file: /dest/you/bar/baz
The easiest way to see what name you should filter is to
just look at the output when using --verbose and put a / in
front of the name (use the --dry-run option if you're not
yet ready to copy any files).
PER-DIRECTORY RULES AND DELETE
Without a delete option, per-directory rules are only rele-
vant on the sending side, so you can feel free to exclude
the merge files themselves without affecting the transfer.
To make this easy, the 'e' modifier adds this exclude for
you, as seen in these two equivalent commands:
rsync -av --filter=': .excl' --exclude=.excl
host:src/dir /dest
rsync -av --filter=':e .excl' host:src/dir /dest
However, if you want to do a delete on the receiving side
AND you want some files to be excluded from being deleted,
you'll need to be sure that the receiving side knows what
files to exclude. The easiest way is to include the
per-directory merge files in the transfer and use
--delete-after, because this ensures that the receiving side
gets all the same exclude rules as the sending side before
it tries to delete anything:
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rsync -avF --delete-after host:src/dir /dest
However, if the merge files are not a part of the transfer,
you'll need to either specify some global exclude rules
(i.e. specified on the command line), or you'll need to
maintain your own per-directory merge files on the receiving
side. An example of the first is this (assume that the
remote .rules files exclude themselves):
rsync -av --filter=': .rules' --filter='. /my/extra.rules'
--delete host:src/dir /dest
In the above example the extra.rules file can affect both
sides of the transfer, but (on the sending side) the rules
are subservient to the rules merged from the .rules files
because they were specified after the per-directory merge
rule.
In one final example, the remote side is excluding the
.rsync-filter files from the transfer, but we want to use
our own .rsync-filter files to control what gets deleted on
the receiving side. To do this we must specifically exclude
the per-directory merge files (so that they don't get
deleted) and then put rules into the local files to control
what else should not get deleted. Like one of these com-
mands:
rsync -av --filter=':e /.rsync-filter' --delete \
host:src/dir /dest
rsync -avFF --delete host:src/dir /dest
BATCH MODE
Batch mode can be used to apply the same set of updates to
many identical systems. Suppose one has a tree which is
replicated on a number of hosts. Now suppose some changes
have been made to this source tree and those changes need to
be propagated to the other hosts. In order to do this using
batch mode, rsync is run with the write-batch option to
apply the changes made to the source tree to one of the des-
tination trees. The write-batch option causes the rsync
client to store in a "batch file" all the information needed
to repeat this operation against other, identical destina-
tion trees.
Generating the batch file once saves having to perform the
file status, checksum, and data block generation more than
once when updating multiple destination trees. Multicast
transport protocols can be used to transfer the batch update
files in parallel to many hosts at once, instead of sending
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the same data to every host individually.
To apply the recorded changes to another destination tree,
run rsync with the read-batch option, specifying the name of
the same batch file, and the destination tree. Rsync
updates the destination tree using the information stored in
the batch file.
For your convenience, a script file is also created when the
write-batch option is used: it will be named the same as
the batch file with ".sh" appended. This script file con-
tains a command-line suitable for updating a destination
tree using the associated batch file. It can be executed
using a Bourne (or Bourne-like) shell, optionally passing in
an alternate destination tree pathname which is then used
instead of the original destination path. This is useful
when the destination tree path on the current host differs
from the one used to create the batch file.
Examples:
$ rsync --write-batch=foo -a host:/source/dir/
/adest/dir/
$ scp foo* remote:
$ ssh remote ./foo.sh /bdest/dir/
$ rsync --write-batch=foo -a /source/dir/ /adest/dir/
$ ssh remote rsync --read-batch=- -a /bdest/dir/ <foo
In these examples, rsync is used to update /adest/dir/ from
/source/dir/ and the information to repeat this operation is
stored in "foo" and "foo.sh". The host "remote" is then
updated with the batched data going into the directory
/bdest/dir. The differences between the two examples
reveals some of the flexibility you have in how you deal
with batches:
o The first example shows that the initial copy doesn't
have to be local -- you can push or pull data to/from a
remote host using either the remote-shell syntax or
rsync daemon syntax, as desired.
o The first example uses the created "foo.sh" file to get
the right rsync options when running the read-batch
command on the remote host.
o The second example reads the batch data via standard
input so that the batch file doesn't need to be copied
to the remote machine first. This example avoids the
foo.sh script because it needed to use a modified
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--read-batch option, but you could edit the script file
if you wished to make use of it (just be sure that no
other option is trying to use standard input, such as
the "--exclude-from=-" option).
Caveats:
The read-batch option expects the destination tree that it
is updating to be identical to the destination tree that was
used to create the batch update fileset. When a difference
between the destination trees is encountered the update
might be discarded with a warning (if the file appears to be
up-to-date already) or the file-update may be attempted and
then, if the file fails to verify, the update discarded with
an error. This means that it should be safe to re-run a
read-batch operation if the command got interrupted. If you
wish to force the batched-update to always be attempted
regardless of the file's size and date, use the -I option
(when reading the batch). If an error occurs, the destina-
tion tree will probably be in a partially updated state. In
that case, rsync can be used in its regular (non-batch) mode
of operation to fix up the destination tree.
The rsync version used on all destinations must be at least
as new as the one used to generate the batch file. Rsync
will die with an error if the protocol version in the batch
file is too new for the batch-reading rsync to handle. See
also the --protocol option for a way to have the creating
rsync generate a batch file that an older rsync can under-
stand. (Note that batch files changed format in version
2.6.3, so mixing versions older than that with newer ver-
sions will not work.)
When reading a batch file, rsync will force the value of
certain options to match the data in the batch file if you
didn't set them to the same as the batch-writing command.
Other options can (and should) be changed. For instance
--write-batch changes to --read-batch, --files-from is
dropped, and the --filter/--include/--exclude options are
not needed unless one of the --delete options is specified.
The code that creates the BATCH.sh file transforms any fil-
ter/include/exclude options into a single list that is
appended as a "here" document to the shell script file. An
advanced user can use this to modify the exclude list if a
change in what gets deleted by --delete is desired. A nor-
mal user can ignore this detail and just use the shell
script as an easy way to run the appropriate --read-batch
command for the batched data.
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The original batch mode in rsync was based on "rsync+", but
the latest version uses a new implementation.
SYMBOLIC LINKS
Three basic behaviors are possible when rsync encounters a
symbolic link in the source directory.
By default, symbolic links are not transferred at all. A
message "skipping non-regular" file is emitted for any sym-
links that exist.
If --links is specified, then symlinks are recreated with
the same target on the destination. Note that --archive
implies --links.
If --copy-links is specified, then symlinks are "collapsed"
by copying their referent, rather than the symlink.
Rsync can also distinguish "safe" and "unsafe" symbolic
links. An example where this might be used is a web site
mirror that wishes to ensure that the rsync module that is
copied does not include symbolic links to /etc/passwd in the
public section of the site. Using --copy-unsafe-links will
cause any links to be copied as the file they point to on
the destination. Using --safe-links will cause unsafe links
to be omitted altogether. (Note that you must specify
--links for --safe-links to have any effect.)
Symbolic links are considered unsafe if they are absolute
symlinks (start with /), empty, or if they contain enough
".." components to ascend from the directory being copied.
Here's a summary of how the symlink options are interpreted.
The list is in order of precedence, so if your combination
of options isn't mentioned, use the first line that is a
complete subset of your options:
--copy-links
Turn all symlinks into normal files (leaving no sym-
links for any other options to affect).
--links --copy-unsafe-links
Turn all unsafe symlinks into files and duplicate all
safe symlinks.
--copy-unsafe-links
Turn all unsafe symlinks into files, noisily skip all
safe symlinks.
--links --safe-links
Duplicate safe symlinks and skip unsafe ones.
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--links
Duplicate all symlinks.
DIAGNOSTICS
rsync occasionally produces error messages that may seem a
little cryptic. The one that seems to cause the most confu-
sion is "protocol version mismatch -- is your shell clean?".
This message is usually caused by your startup scripts or
remote shell facility producing unwanted garbage on the
stream that rsync is using for its transport. The way to
diagnose this problem is to run your remote shell like this:
ssh remotehost /bin/true > out.dat
then look at out.dat. If everything is working correctly
then out.dat should be a zero length file. If you are get-
ting the above error from rsync then you will probably find
that out.dat contains some text or data. Look at the con-
tents and try to work out what is producing it. The most
common cause is incorrectly configured shell startup scripts
(such as .cshrc or .profile) that contain output statements
for non-interactive logins.
If you are having trouble debugging filter patterns, then
try specifying the -vv option. At this level of verbosity
rsync will show why each individual file is included or
excluded.
EXIT VALUES
0 Success
1 Syntax or usage error
2 Protocol incompatibility
3 Errors selecting input/output files, dirs
4 Requested action not supported: an attempt was made to
manipulate 64-bit files on a platform that cannot sup-
port them; or an option was specified that is supported
by the client and not by the server.
5 Error starting client-server protocol
6 Daemon unable to append to log-file
10 Error in socket I/O
11 Error in file I/O
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12 Error in rsync protocol data stream
13 Errors with program diagnostics
14 Error in IPC code
20 Received SIGUSR1 or SIGINT
21 Some error returned by waitpid()
22 Error allocating core memory buffers
23 Partial transfer due to error
24 Partial transfer due to vanished source files
25 The --max-delete limit stopped deletions
30 Timeout in data send/receive
35 Timeout waiting for daemon connection
ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES
CVSIGNORE
The CVSIGNORE environment variable supplements any
ignore patterns in .cvsignore files. See the
--cvs-exclude option for more details.
RSYNC_ICONV
Specify a default --iconv setting using this environ-
ment variable. (First supported in 3.0.0.)
RSYNC_PROTECT_ARGS
Specify a non-zero numeric value if you want the --pro-
tect-args option to be enabled by default, or a zero
value to make sure that it is disabled by default.
(First supported in 3.1.0.)
RSYNC_RSH
The RSYNC_RSH environment variable allows you to over-
ride the default shell used as the transport for rsync.
Command line options are permitted after the command
name, just as in the -e option.
RSYNC_PROXY
The RSYNC_PROXY environment variable allows you to re-
direct your rsync client to use a web proxy when con-
necting to a rsync daemon. You should set RSYNC_PROXY
to a hostname:port pair.
RSYNC_PASSWORD
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Setting RSYNC_PASSWORD to the required password allows
you to run authenticated rsync connections to an rsync
daemon without user intervention. Note that this does
not supply a password to a remote shell transport such
as ssh; to learn how to do that, consult the remote
shell's documentation.
USER or LOGNAME
The USER or LOGNAME environment variables are used to
determine the default username sent to an rsync daemon.
If neither is set, the username defaults to "nobody".
HOME The HOME environment variable is used to find the
user's default .cvsignore file.
FILES
/etc/rsyncd.conf or rsyncd.conf
ATTRIBUTES
See attributes(5) for descriptions of the following
attributes:
+---------------+------------------+
|ATTRIBUTE TYPE | ATTRIBUTE VALUE |
+---------------+------------------+
|Availability | network/rsync |
+---------------+------------------+
|Stability | Volatile |
+---------------+------------------+
SEE ALSO
rsyncd.conf(5)
BUGS
times are transferred as *nix time_t values
When transferring to FAT filesystems rsync may re-sync
unmodified files. See the comments on the --modify-window
option.
file permissions, devices, etc. are transferred as native
numerical values
see also the comments on the --delete option
Please report bugs! See the web site at
http://rsync.samba.org/
VERSION
This man page is current for version 3.1.0 of rsync.
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INTERNAL OPTIONS
The options --server and --sender are used internally by
rsync, and should never be typed by a user under normal cir-
cumstances. Some awareness of these options may be needed
in certain scenarios, such as when setting up a login that
can only run an rsync command. For instance, the support
directory of the rsync distribution has an example script
named rrsync (for restricted rsync) that can be used with a
restricted ssh login.
CREDITS
rsync is distributed under the GNU General Public License.
See the file COPYING for details.
A WEB site is available at http://rsync.samba.org/. The
site includes an FAQ-O-Matic which may cover questions unan-
swered by this manual page.
The primary ftp site for rsync is
ftp://rsync.samba.org/pub/rsync.
We would be delighted to hear from you if you like this pro-
gram. Please contact the mailing-list at
rsync@lists.samba.org.
This program uses the excellent zlib compression library
written by Jean-loup Gailly and Mark Adler.
THANKS
Special thanks go out to: John Van Essen, Matt McCutchen,
Wesley W. Terpstra, David Dykstra, Jos Backus, Sebastian
Krahmer, Martin Pool, and our gone-but-not-forgotten com-
padre, J.W. Schultz.
Thanks also to Richard Brent, Brendan Mackay, Bill Waite,
Stephen Rothwell and David Bell. I've probably missed some
people, my apologies if I have.
AUTHOR
rsync was originally written by Andrew Tridgell and Paul
Mackerras. Many people have later contributed to it. It is
currently maintained by Wayne Davison.
Mailing lists for support and development are available at
http://lists.samba.org
NOTES
This software was built from source available at
https://java.net/projects/solaris-userland. The original
community source was downloaded from
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http://rsync.samba.org/ftp/rsync/src/rsync-3.1.0.tar.gz
Further information about this software can be found on the
open source community website at http://rsync.samba.org/.
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